Christ, Inaccessible
- SJ Williamson
- Mar 31, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 27, 2025
photo from: https://www.christianity.com/church/denominations/what-are-non-denominational-churches-meaning-examples.html
It was only my introduction to ableism in the church that got me interested in graduate school. I don't think I expected the roots of ableism in Christianity to run so deep. Instead, I hoped for there to be an easy solution to including everybody.
After my relationships with my prior churches in California withered away, I had fresh hope for Minnesota to house a new church community I could call home. I attended two college groups at the time, one that I felt connected with the student leaders but not the pastor and another that I felt like an outcast in but had messages that made me think more critically about my relationship with God and others. The last time I attended the second group, a fellow student told me during her time in prayer that I should stay for a potential leadership meeting after the message, something I too felt called to do. When I asked the pastor about it, he told me there were ways for normal attendees to be leaders by just showing up. I felt outcast again, and never looked back as I applied to be a resident peer minister in the first student ministry. The rest is history.
My time as a resident peer minister was filled with high highs and low lows with roommates and fellow peer ministers whom I no longer talk to for various reasons. The lowest low came in the form of an overbearing pastor that I thought wouldn't be able to break me as an older, more experienced student compared to the other peer ministers who he had intimidated into leaving the ministry in the past. I was wrong. In the course of one year, he had me fearing for my life by ignoring house safety protocols and depressed because of how he treated me in front of other peer ministers, guests, and board members. Finding out the group allowed him to participate in young adult events when he was clearly past age for the target audience and others had come forward about his abusive actions only led to me severing the last attachment to the ministry.
I needed a new church to call home. After student groups failed me in the past, I decided to search online for the next possible church. After a late night searching online, I found a church with a solid adult group that matched my beliefs and could possibly match my schedule if I trained myself to wake up at a decent time. I don't even know the name of the church now, a little over a year later. I never attended. Why? As I read through their website, a last sentence in the "About Us" page left me feeling unsettled. It started by stating something about the church taking place in a "historic" building downtown, so the building wasn't accessible as the church didn't have enough funding to remodel it. The ending is what stuck with me: We happily welcome donations :). And yes, they really did end with the smiley emoji.
The statement itself tried to be light-hearted. That smiley emoji created in a sense of derogatory victim shaming. If only the disabled were rich enough to be welcome to the church! If only the church was given money specifically set aside for ADA compliance would they happily comply! I was disgusted, disgusted enough to never forget that little disclaimer on their website. And I'm sure whoever wrote that part of their website didn't put a second thought to it when typing it onto the website.
In Depression, Anxiety, and Other Things We Don't Want to Talk About, Ryan Casey Walter says "Community is just as important if not more important than any amount of therapy and medication... Research has shown a direct correlation between size and strength of a person's support system and that person's likelihood to become depressed." On this Easter Sunday, I read student homework assignments and completed homework alone in my apartment instead of attending church or any holiday festivities. While I could say the reason for that is because I am really behind on grading, which is very very true, that's not the true reason I am not in church this day. I think about church and what comes to mind are masked outcasts, abuser enablers, and disgusting smileys. Whatever sense of community, support, and love I felt going to church as a child is no longer there. Instead, I find community in the Muslims from Bangladesh in my graduate program, a borderline-Communist atheist I met while gaming online, and queer scholars in my research field.
As I continue to move forward, my faith in God still remains. My faith in people of God is very low, however. I've only seen the people of God make Christ more and more inaccessible since entering graduate school. Ironically, Christ isn't inaccessible; it's all a trick. I don't meet God with others much anymore. I meet Him as I listen to an audiobook while typing away at work. I meet Him in prayer while lying in my bed at night. I meet Him as I snuggle with my cats on the living room sofa. Thank God Christ isn't as inaccessible as the people of God would have me believe. I hope He is more accessible for you, too.
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