Theology without Words

Theology in the Deaf Community

Wayne Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317011071
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

This book is a study of a Christian theology without words, focussing on theology in the Deaf Community. Deaf people's first and preferred method of communication is not English or any other spoken language, but British Sign Language - a language that cannot be written down. Deaf people of faith attend church on a regular basis, profess faith in God and have developed unique approaches to doing theology. While most Western theology is word-centred and is either expressed through or dependent on written texts, theology in the Deaf Community is largely non-written. This book presents and examines some of that theology from the Deaf Community and argues that written texts are not necessary for creative theological debate, a deep spirituality or for ideas about God to develop.

PART I
The Deaf Community and their Language

Chapter 1

A Sense of Deaf Identity

Introducing the Deaf Community

Estimates suggest that between 50,000 and 100,000 Deaf people live all over the United Kingdom1. The Deaf community includes men, women and children, people from across the variety of ethnic groups present in the UK, with different expressions of sexual orientation. They can be found in rural and urban environments and across all levels of the class system. Some Deaf people live with other impairments such as autism, blindness, or physical impairments while others do not2. A few Deaf children are born to Deaf parents while the majority are not3. Deaf experiences of education are also diverse, some are taught primarily through oral means4, some by a bilingual approach5 and others somewhere in between using a method of total communication6.

The Deaf community does not include everyone in society who has a hearing loss. Indeed, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) suggests that one in every seven people in society lives with some level of hearing impairment, which amounts to somewhere in the region of nine million people7. This group should be distinguished from the 50,000 to 100,000 members of the culturally Deaf community. The Deaf community or Deaf people, who are the focus of this book, includes people who are profoundly Deaf – usually being Deaf at birth or before spoken language is acquired – they use BSL as their first or preferred language, identify with the culture of Deaf people and meet regularly together for corporate social, religious and political activities8. The traditional focus of Deaf communities were Deaf clubs, now declining in significance as Deaf people meet together in similar contexts to and alongside hearing people9. In this book, in line with current convention in the Deaf community, the use of the upper case ‘D’ refers to culturally Deaf people who use sign language, while the lower case ‘d’ refers to people with a profound hearing loss who use English to communicate10.

No chapter of a book or a book on its own could do justice to the Deaf community by trying to sum up their rich and varied experiences in a few thousand words. Paddy Ladd’s seminal work, Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood (2003) provides many helpful insights for anyone who would want to read about the Deaf community in more detail. For our purposes here, I aim only to provide an introduction to the Deaf community, based on the available (though limited) literature on the subject and my own experiences with the Deaf community in Birmingham. In this introduction to the Deaf community, therefore, I will firstly outline the medical and social models of disability, and the impact these models have had on the Deaf community and the articulation of Deaf identity. Secondly, I will focus more specifically on the Deaf community and their continually developing sense of identity rooted in what has become known as ‘Deaf culture’.

Disability and the Deaf Community: In Search of an Understanding

Traditionally, both disability and Deafness have been understood among many people in the UK as primarily medical conditions or illnesses. Over the past thirty years or so, disabled people and Deaf people have made considerable efforts to distance themselves from such a perspective and have made reference to themselves using a ‘social’ rather than a ‘medical’ perceptual framework11. In more recent times, the Deaf community has further developed thinking surrounding Deaf identity and now argues that Deaf people should not be perceived primarily as disabled, but as a cultural and linguistic minority group12. These models and their development are outlined below. Some Deaf people may feel angry that I have decided to begin discussing an understanding of the Deaf community by beginning with ‘disability’. I have done so because many hearing non-disabled people still see being Deaf as a disability or even an illness even if that is not how Deaf people today understand themselves. By beginning at where most people are at the present moment and recalling that the main audience for this book will be hearing people, I hope that the arguments that follow will help to transform the more general social understanding of the Deaf community, so that it will be recognized that Deaf people are a unique group of people who should be viewed as a community in their own right, without needing to make reference to anyone else.

The Medical Model

Pamela Knight describes the ‘medical model’ as a response to disability that, in effect, understands impairment as an illness and places the responsibility for the condition and its consequences, personal and social, with disabled people themselves. She explains: ‘It is their functional limitation which is the root cause of the disadvantages experienced, and these disadvantages can only be rectified by treatment or cure’13. Based on guidelines from the World Health Organization14, McCloughry and Morris label and then define three dimensions to the way disability is understood in the medical model15:

• Impairment: Any loss or abnormality of psychological or anatomical structure or function.

• Disability: Any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.

• Handicap: A disadvantage for a given individual resulting from an impairment or disability, that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role (dependent on age, sex, social and cultural factors) for that individual.

Both disabled people and the World Health Organization no longer work with these definitions, though they continue to reflect the attitudes of many towards disabled people in society – that impairment and its consequences are the problem of disabled people and that any difficulties they experience are their own responsibilities.

The term ‘handicap’ demonstrates another attitude towards disabled people as it derives from ‘cap-in-hand’ implying that disabled people are the objects of charitable benevolence rather than empowered individuals with a contribution to make to society. This benevolence that arises from the sense of pity of non-disabled people towards the ‘tragedy’ of disabled people should be seen as a consequence of the medical model. Many in the medical profession and many in society at large still live with the perception that disability is an illness that needs to be cured and if this is not possible, the individual disabled person is to be pitied16. This model ignores the experiences of many disabled people who live relatively happy lives as disabled people and do not necessarily seek or hope for medical intervention to change their condition. Most impairments cannot be cured medically, and so disabled people are perceived as an ‘abnormal’ and an undesirable presence in society with little to offer.

The Social Model

The social model of disability, while recognizing that impairment exists at the level of the individual person, though is not the fault of a disabled person, argues that many problems that disabled people experience in terms of leading a full life in society are due to social inequalities17. The language of ‘Impairment’ and ‘Disability’ has been redefined by disabled people, and the term handicap, at least in official documents in Britain18, has largely been dropped. McCloughry and Morris again outline the language used in the social model of disability as follows:

• Impairment: Lacking part or all of a limb or having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body.

• Disability: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities19.

I would add to the definition of disability that individuals as well as organizations can disable people with impairments. By challenging the medical model, the social model advocates a perspective on disability that does not place the blame on to the disabled person for her inability to participate in society. It recognizes that disabled people are an oppressed social group who, if social and environmental barriers are removed, can participate in the mainstream of society20.

Assessing the Medical and Social Models

The medical model has obvious limitations in terms of its ability to provide a framework in which to discuss disabled people’s experiences and identities because it defines them almost entirely in terms of them having a medical problem. It would be inappropriate, however, for disabled people and society to discount medicine from having a contribution to make towards the greater welfare of disabled people generally. Many disabled people, for example, live with chronic pain, label themselves as disabled, and use medical help to alleviate the pain. In such instances, medicine has an important role to play. Assessments made by medics of a particular condition are important in terms of defining an impairment as well as working to enable that person to live their life to the full. However, difficulties develop when it is perceived that living life to the full can only be achieved by medical intervention, with the purpose of cure, or as near to it as possible. Sometimes medicine can help, at other times it will do more harm than good. As will be discussed later, this has been particularly true for Deaf people.

The social model also presents limitations. Commenting on the social model, French argues:

Viewing a mobility problem as caused by the presence of steps rather than by the inability to walk, or regarding the inability to access information as due to the lack of sign language rather than to a hearing impairment is easy to comprehend … However, various profound social problems that I encounter as a visually impaired person, which impinge upon my life far more than indecipherable notices or the lack of bleeper crossings, are more difficult to regard as entirely socially produced or amenable to social action. Such problems include my inability to recognize people, being nearly blinded when the sun comes out, and not being able to read non-verbal cues or emit them correctly21.

The definition of ‘disability’ in the social model, while purposeful for many living with...