How Can We Develop More Deaf Christian Leaders?

Introduction

Richard Aslatt Pearce was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England by the Bishop of Winchester on May 21, 1885. Unlike all of his contemporaries, he never proceeded to be ordained priest and ministered for the rest of his life as a deacon; unable to pronounce absolution, give a blessing, or preside at Holy Communion. ¹ The reason given for this restriction was that Rev. Pearce had been born Deaf ² and the canons of the Church of England (at the time) did not “admit the setting apart for the ministry of any man physically disqualified such as the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the lame.” ³ Pearce was only able to be ordained as deacon by special appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in recognition of the fact that he had been privately educated, had good speech, and because he spent his Sunday afternoons gathering together Deaf adults for religious worship and instruction in a language they could understand. ⁴ Even today Church of England Canon law states, “No person shall be admitted into holy orders who is suffering, or who has suffered, from any physical or mental infirmity which in the opinion of the bishop will prevent him from ministering the word and sacraments or from performing the other duties of the minister’s office.” ⁵

Richard Pearce was the first officially recognized Deaf Church of England minister—and the start of a trickle of others, a flow that has both grown and shrunk considerably over the years, but which has never quite dried up. At the present time we have, in the UK, a handful of ordained Deaf men and women across four denominations, with a few more formally recognized lay ministers. Recognition of vocation, selection, training, and ordination or licensing continues to be rather hit and miss, and all dependent on the local church authorities and how open they are to the ministry of Deaf and disabled people.

The point of this vignette of the first Deaf man ordained in the Church of England and the quoting of current canon law is to illustrate the tension that exists between institutional requirements for ordination (and arguably by extension for other ministerial and leadership roles in the Church of England) and the fact that, as evidenced through both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and subsequent history, a very wide variety of people have been called by God into what can be called leadership roles within the people of God, and in some cases at least this calling has been officially recognized at a variety of levels. In this article, I propose to examine this tension; to question some of the theological, sociological, and practical assumptions underlying the institutional requirements and how they are applied to Deaf people in particular, and to explore some ways in which we can encourage and enable more Deaf people to recognize and follow their own vocation. Along the way I will also look at some of the ways the experience of Deaf people in ministry critiques some current understandings and practice of leadership within the Church of England. And while this article is specifically written from the perspective of a Deaf priest ordained 22 years ago, ministering with the Deaf community in the Church of England, working from the standpoint of liberation theology, and specifically focusing on the Deaf community, I hope that it has relevance within other denominations and relates to the experience of other disabilities. In particular this article advocates for a wider definition of ministry and leadership in the church than is currently understood, argues for a broader, more inclusive vision for vocation to this ministry, and asks how, therefore, we can grow more Deaf and disabled Christian leaders.

Obstacles to Deaf People Becoming Church Leaders

One of the challenges in an article like this is to define terms. There are many terms used to refer to the individuals that Christian communities look to for guidance and teaching and the administration of the sacraments; for example “minister,” “priest,” “pastor,” and so on. However, in recent years the term “leader,” and the concept of exercise of leadership, is increasingly used as an umbrella term to embrace all roles and all denominations. ⁶ I find it a useful term in which to discuss issues around the active role of Deaf and disabled people in the church. Despite the criticisms of the ingress of secular language and concepts into the church, it is a term that carries less baggage than other, more specialized, terms. I do, however, tend to use it interchangeably with “minister” and “ministry” to refer to those whom God has called and is calling into a particular role in the body of the church.

Traditionally, those recognized as leaders in the church have been those ordained or licensed in some formal way within the structures of the institution. This is why, despite the significant numbers of Deaf men (and probably women as well, although the intersection with gender issues means their names are often not recorded) who proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ in sign language and led communities of Deaf people in worship, it is those, like Rev. Richard Pearce, who were ordained that we celebrate. The stereotype of an ordained person (in the Church of England at least) has been a white, able-bodied man of a certain level of educational background. What this stereotype has done is to create within the minds of both church members and church leadership an unconscious mental picture of what a church leader looks like, what they sound like, how they should act, and what they should be able to do. It is notable that Richard Pearce is identified as being the son of an attorney and privately educated (albeit in a Deaf boarding school—his parents paid the headmaster to privately tutor him, along with his brother and sister). This birth and education, in England are signifiers of being a member of a certain class considered to have been “born to lead” and in fact “provided” the vast majority of clergy well into the twentieth century (my own father, ordained in the late 1960s, was one of a very small minority of men being ordained from a working-class background and without a university education at that time). It is also notable that Pearce was said (by the headmaster who tutored him) to possess good speech and therefore meet at least some of the expectations of what a minister in the church should or should not be able to do to be able to “minister the word and sacraments” in the “opinion of the bishop,” according to the canon quoted above.

I am not trying to negate Pearce (or indeed any clergy who “fit the mould”) but aiming to illustrate the power of the stereotype such that alone of the Deaf Christian leaders of his time Pearce was able to be ordained because he matched at least some of the qualities of that stereotype. The enduring presence of this stereotype in expectations surrounding Christian leadership has been recently articulated in the concept of unconscious or implicit bias. ⁷ Most work on unconscious bias, especially in the area of church leadership, has focused on issues around gender, race, and economic class, ⁸ but the secular world, especially in relation to equality in the workplace, has expanded this to include attitudes towards disabled people as well.

Unconscious bias brings a theoretical, psychological perspective to the theological and sociological assumptions made about the ability (and therefore vocation) of Deaf people to lead in the church that is highlighted in Deaf Liberation Theology. ⁹ For example, in the negative constructions of disabled people in the church first highlighted by Nancy Eiesland in 1994, ¹⁰ Deaf people have been seen as a “travesty of the divine image” ¹¹ or “not normal” and therefore unable to represent God at the altar, or minister in the church in any way unless they do so using speech in the “normal” way. While this construction would probably be rejected as out of date by a church who have since 1999 formally recognized BSL as a language suitable for Divine Service, ¹² I would argue it still operates at the level of unconscious bias in two ways. First, those involved in developing, encouraging, and selecting leaders still tend to look for those they can communicate directly with and make assumptions about those that they can’t, and second, our unconscious mental image of a church leader is someone who stands up in the front of church and speaks. Many people can’t envisage how church leadership can be exercised any other way and therefore assume the inability to speak clearly invalidates the possibility that God could be calling such a person to leadership in the church.

Unconscious bias isn’t the only factor in relation to the struggle for Deaf people to become recognized as church leaders. Another is related to the construction of them as “objects of charity,” ¹³ which I argue is the major source of the structural oppression of Deaf people in the Church of England. This model divides the world into donors and recipients; the former are perceived as active and capable, the latter as passive, in need of help, and definitely not “leadership material.” This is discussed extensively in Deaf Liberation Theology, ¹⁴ but one way in particular it impacts on the discernment and development of Deaf leaders in the church is in assumptions about the need for degree-level qualifications (which is a challenge for many potential ordinands from backgrounds where they have not had the opportunity to gain a good education, not just Deaf people, who often have English as a second language), and/or assumptions that if you try hard enough you can do anything and overcome any barrier. Both of these assumptions ignore the ways in which structural inequality, lack of opportunities, encouragement, and role models make it much harder for Deaf people (and others) to tick the relevant boxes required to be recognized by the institution.

While this article is specifically written from the context of the Church of England, and is particularly relevant to other denominations that also require a high level of academic achievement and a long formation process from their ordained clergy, I think it is worth asking if similar unconscious stereotypes of “what an effective minister looks like” operate in churches who do not require degrees and long training for ordination. Do these denominations limit the ministry of Deaf people to Deaf signing members of their congregation? Or is the ministry of Deaf pastors in these congregations recognized as a ministry to all, Deaf and hearing, signing and speaking, equal to the ministry of hearing, speaking pastors? Unconscious bias can be found everywhere, operating even where explicit barriers do not seem to exist.

One of the key findings of the work on unconscious bias has been that it doesn’t operate on a simple binary as assumptions by men about women, by white people about BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) ¹⁵ people, or by able-bodied people about disabled people, it can be internalized and operate within groups in terms of belief about others in the same group. ¹⁶ So, for example, not only hearing people might question the ability of Deaf people to be church leaders, Deaf people themselves might too. I have often experienced an attitude among members of the Deaf community that I must either not be “properly Deaf” (i.e. I can speak well so I must be able to hear more than them—which is challenged when they realize I am as reliant on BSL interpreters as they are and can’t use the phone) or I can’t be a “proper priest.” In other words there are many Deaf people who, as a result of unconscious, internalized bias, would rather have a hearing priest who can sign or a hearing priest who can’t sign, but who comes with a BSL interpreter, than a Deaf priest who can communicate directly with them in their own language (although as I am female there are possibly also some unconscious biases operating about gender as well in some cases).

Having now unpicked a few of the assumptions that underlie the struggle for both hearing and Deaf people to see Deaf people as church leaders, exercising an active ministry of teaching, guidance, and administering the sacraments, I will now turn to some of the concepts and strategies that may serve to improve this situation. These cover two different but related areas: understandings of leadership and ministry in the church and how they operate, and also how we can encourage and develop individual Deaf people to follow the calling of God.

Leadership and Power

One of the key issues that must be considered when reflecting on leadership—of any form—within the church is issues around power and hegemony. Even in churches where the power seems to be largely with the congregation (officially or in hidden ways) there is still a sense in which the leadership are, at the very least, invested with positional power. No matter how “collaborative” a church likes to see itself, Nash, Pimlott, and Nash have identified the hierarchical models of power and the seemingly inbuilt deference for ordained ministry as significant barriers to true shared power and true collaborative working. ¹⁷ The net result of these factors around power tends to be a pyramidal model of power and leadership whereby the “top leader” (usually the ordained minister) is perceived (and perceived as needing to be) the most competent at everything, then “lower” leaders are successively those who are perceived as younger or less experienced or less skilled or in some other way “less than.” Selection and training are often focused on aspiring to being the “top leader” and those who can’t do all the tasks or don’t feel called to that level or who are subject to unconscious bias that determines what level they are seen to be fitted for are all seen as somehow second best. Even the ideal of “servant leadership” is still operating within the hierarchy of leadership and power, albeit, when healthy, challenging that hierarchy. ¹⁸

The real challenge of this hierarchical understanding of power and leadership for Deaf (and disabled) ministers in the church is that they are constantly being measured against what they can’t do or can’t be like. Alternatively, they burn themselves out trying to achieve what is expected of them. One example is a Deaf woman in Australia who felt called to ministry and was selected and began to train, “part time.” Part time was still a large number of hours with a lot of travelling, in addition to working full time, and many people struggled with it. However, for a Deaf woman, it created impossible expectations as she was now spending all her time—work and study—in the hearing world and had no time or energy left to travel to meet with the Deaf community. She realized she could either train as a minister in this rather rigid context, or she could spend time in the Deaf community (and witness to Christ in that context), but not both, and decided that for the sake of her own health and mental well-being to withdraw from training.

So what are the alternatives? How might we understand leadership and power in ways that enable, rather than block, the different vocations of the Deaf and disabled people of God? Collaborative ministry often quotes the model of the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12) as an example—where each and every person has a valued place, where diversity of gifts is essential, and the only head is Christ. I was fascinated when I began spending significant amounts of time within the Deaf community outside of a church context, to notice true collaborative working in action. As the Deaf sociologist, Paddy Ladd, regularly asserts, Deaf culture is a naturally collective culture—everything is done together. ¹⁹ And this is true even of leadership in activities that the Deaf community organize themselves; for example “big bingo” (when local Deaf clubs take it in turns to host an afternoon or evening of playing bingo for other clubs in the area to join; larger numbers means larger prizes as well as a chance to see more people). “Big bingo” is usually organized by a group with different people taking on different roles, and working together to make everything happen, to communicate to other people what is happening, and make decisions. But what is interesting about this way of working in the Deaf community is that the “power” or “leadership” shifts according to the task being undertaken at the time. One member might have better mastery of English so they will be the one who creates posters or posts on social media about the event; however, it is likely that quite another member is the one who will address the “social group” (in sign language) to explain what is happening—because that member has the gift of communicating in a way everyone can understand. On the actual day one person (who may or may not be the same person who has undertaken one of the other roles) will be the bingo “caller” (pressing buttons for the numbers to appear on a screen and therefore usually determining when it’s time for everyone to stop gossiping and get down to business), and there will be one or two others who have the role of checking numbers when someone claims to have a “line” or “full house.” If something unexpected occurs, the whole group will get into a huddle to discuss the situation and decide what needs to be done. It is simply not possible, by observing the group in action, to determine who is “chair” or “in charge” either by their actions or by the behaviour of others. Yet the power to make things happen is present, all that needs to be done is done, and the event runs smoothly.

I’ve also seen this collective exercise of power in a Deaf church context; where I, the priest, had the spiritual authority to teach and celebrate sacraments, but I was not the one who made (or announced) decisions about when and where we met or what we spent our money on—an informal leader within the church did that, in collaboration with the rest of that congregation, and with me. Mutual respect and allowing the power to shift to where it was needed at the time made that congregation one of the most naturally collaborative contexts I have ever served in. This congregation has demonstrated resilience and healthy adaptation to changes of venue, time, and the stepping back of the “informal leader” due to health issues, with the balance of power ebbing and flowing where it was needed. It was a model of what Simon Western refers to as the “eco-leadership” discourse—distributed leadership, characterized by networks, connectivity, and interdependence. ²⁰

This kind of “eco-leadership” is a good model for leadership within the church that truly follows the ideal of the Body of Christ, and the servant leadership modelled by Christ himself. One that truly values the difference and diversity of gifts that people bring—and that recognizes all gifts as of equal value, that does not place all the weight of expectations of leadership on trained and authorized ministry, and that allows power to ebb and flow in a healthy dynamic as all recognize their need of the others in an interdependent relationship. “Eco-leadership” is particularly enabling for Deaf and disabled people to take their place in church leadership as it not only recognizes and values a wide diversity of gifts (and therefore removes the expectation that all church leaders need to have capabilities in all areas and that those who don’t have all these capabilities are subservient to those who do), it explicitly recognizes the essentially interdependent nature of all leadership, however it is expressed and exercised, thus enabling true collaboration; whereby if one person is missing, then the gap is felt.

Growing Deaf Leaders

A truly collaborative, Body of Christ, eco-leadership model in the church is one way of addressing some of the issues around unconscious bias, assumptions of what leaders “should” be able to do, and hierarchical understandings of power that create obstacles to Deaf and disabled people being able to follow their vocation in the church. But it will not challenge and change the balance of power and make-up of leadership in the church alone. We need to intentionally work on overcoming unconscious bias, both in ourselves and in others, and on increasing diversity in leadership to enable more Deaf and disabled people to grow into their God-given vocations. It is important to remember that unconscious bias can be internalized, and operate within individuals about their own gifts, abilities, and calling. It is not just Deaf and disabled people who experience this as an issue. It has been identified as a factor blocking leadership development for other groups, for example women and BAME people as well. ²¹ It is useful to look at what has helped increase the diversity of church leadership in terms of gender and race to see what we can learn from their experience to assist in the development of more Deaf and disabled people as leaders in the church.

Challenging unconscious bias and developing people as leaders is never as simple as removing barriers and confronting expectations, and ensuring access to training and development (vital though those are). We need to work with people from the “bottom up” as well as the “top down.” Rosie Ward builds on the work of James Lawrence in the Growing Leaders book and course developed by CPAS ²² in looking at how we can grow more women leaders. This model suggests that leadership development is as much about developing people’s sense of being “chosen” (as children of God), “called” (to a vocation), and growing their “Christ-like character” within the context of their community as it is about focusing on skills and competencies traditionally identified as “needed for leadership.” ²³ One of the strengths of this model of leadership development for Deaf and disabled people is in its open-endedness. It does not say “this is what a leader looks like, and this is how we are going to train you to get there”; it rather looks to develop people from where they are and to grow into what God is calling them to be, thus complementing the organic and shifting understanding of power and vocation in the eco-leadership model.

Another key idea in “growing leaders” and increasing diversity is the need for intentionality of the leadership development, especially of those from non-traditional “leadership material” type backgrounds. Deaf and disabled people do not usually grow up in environments with Deaf and disabled role models, or with mentors who spot their gifts and provide opportunities and encouragement for these gifts to be developed. It is interesting that, of the nine senior Church of England BAME clergy Stober interviews (and who have all broken barriers and surmounted many obstacles along the way), eight of them were born and partially raised abroad in contexts where BAME leaders were normal; some of her interviewees say this instilled in them a sense of who they were that could not be shaken by the racism and unconscious bias they experienced in the UK. ²⁴

We need to make our churches into places where Deaf and disabled people in leadership is seen as “normative”; where Deaf and disabled role models are visible; where a conscious decision is made to surface and reject unconscious bias (in others or in ourselves) and see each other as God sees us, as people of potential and gifts and abilities, called to share in God’s work as leaders in the church. This requires existing leadership and congregations to be open to the potential for leadership in others, even if they can’t see how these gifts can be developed or used, so that they can perhaps ask someone, “Might God be calling you to lead?” This is where a true collaborative model of ministry and an eco-leadership understanding of power are so helpful; instead of rejecting the idea that God could be calling someone because of all the things they can’t do, it starts with the assumption that there is a need and a place for a wide diversity of gifts.

Final Words

If I was to summarize the argument of this article, it would be in the idea that to enable Deaf and disabled people to flourish in our churches, to be able to use their God-given gifts in its service and to develop as leaders, then we all need to change our understanding of what ministry and leadership are, how power works in our churches, and how we develop people as leaders. The really exciting thing is that I believe, if this happens, then the mission and ministry of the whole church will benefit hugely. As one of Stober’s interviewees concluded, “Mission is about understanding people isn’t it? It’s about extending the love and the goodness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people. We are doing it in a very diverse society, and we need to understand how that society operates. I think [more diversity in leadership] will bring that understanding and will bring that sympathy and can only enhance and add value to our mission as a church in the present as well as the future.” ²⁵ There is a huge amount of work to be done to arrive at this state, but together we are the Body of Christ and it is together that we will increase the diversity of leadership in God’s church. This will not just enable Deaf and disabled people to take up their rightful place in the church alongside all others; but it will enable the church itself to be what Christ called it to be from the start.