THE Sunday service is moving towards the eucharist, and, from behind the communion table, the Revd Neil Robinson looks up, smiles, and begins a series of hand gestures. To one side, a woman reads out lines of liturgy.
What follows, the Eucharistic Prayer in British Sign Language (BSL), is a startling rendering of the familiar words, at times balletic, at others, brutal. Angels and archangels flutter across Mr Robinson’s front, while blood shed on the cross spills from the palm of his hand, and “for ever” spirals away like a corkscrew.
Mr Robinson, deaf since birth, draws the hearing congregation of St Paul’s, Salisbury, not only into the Passion story but into a complex, vibrant world.
Mr Robinson is chaplain to the deaf and hard of hearing in Salisbury diocese. He conducts funerals, weddings, baptisms, and other services for BSL-users, as well as for hearing congregations. He also hosts online Bible studies, visits deaf social clubs across the diocese, and leads Sunday services for Visual Word Ministry, an online church for deaf BSL users.
He says that God had to call him three times into ordained ministry. “I declined the first call. Then the second call came to me, but when I asked the local vicar, their poor attitude towards me put me off,” he explains by email. “On the third call, I saw a vision, while driving along a road, of myself seeing my mirror reflection wearing a clerical collar, and I heard God saying, ‘Go! I have sent you to do my work.’”
He is one of seven BSL-using deaf clergy in the Church of England and eight chaplains appointed to the deaf community, all but two of whom are part-time and/or self-supporting.
ACCORDING to the British Deaf Association, the UK is home to about 87,000 deaf users of BSL, which, since 2022, has been recognised as an official language of England, Scotland, and Wales. If these numbers seem modest, it is worth remembering that poor hearing affects many more people. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People says that more than half of over-55s have hearing loss. Mr Robinson reckons that only two per cent of deaf people in the UK are born-again Christians.
The Church of England’s work with people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and support for deaf clergy and ordinands, has accelerated in the past few decades, but efforts are under way to make its output across the dioceses more consistent and reflective of need rather than funding.
The C of E website lists only 19 of its 42 dioceses as offering some kind of ministry to deaf people, from a monthly BSL-signed service to a chaplain for the deaf (sometimes in conjunction with the Baptist church). The information is not up to date or exhaustive, however: for example, the diocese of London, with its three deaf churches and a disability ministry enabler, is not listed.
Within C of E structures, the concerns of deaf laity and clergy are shared and amplified by the Deaf Ministry Task Group (DMTG), a sub-committee of the Council for Ministry of and among Deaf and Disabled People (CMDDP), which is appointed by the Archbishops’ Council. The deaf chaplain for Bristol diocese, Canon Gill Behenna, works one day a week as the C of E’s National Deaf Ministry Adviser, supporting deaf people and those who work with deaf people in ministry, and encouraging dioceses to do more to welcome deaf people.
For deaf laity and clergy, Deaf Anglicans Together (DAT) offers fellowship and teaching in BSL, and sends three representatives to the General Synod. Its annual conference attracts about 30 people, says the Revd Dr Hannah Lewis, its incoming chair, who is also chaplain among the deaf community in the diocese of Oxford, and author of Deaf Liberation Theology (Routledge, 2007).
Janice ConnollyDr Hannah Lewis using British Sign Language at Christ Church, Bebbington, Merseyside
The Church of England has realised it needs to do much more to facilitate “full belonging and participation”, as the lead bishop for ministry of and among deaf and disabled people, the Rt Revd Richard Atkinson, the Bishop of Bedford, terms it. His comment was part of his welcoming the Archbishops’ Council’s commitment of £2.4 million last year to “help churches become more accessible and welcoming and enable deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent people to explore vocation and grow in the Church’s ministry and leadership”. This funding stemmed from a General Synod motion, carried unanimously (News, 15 July 2022) affirming and including disabled people in the whole life of the Church.
The project manager of the C of E’s Disability Project, Helen James, oversees initiatives funded by this £2.4 million. She says that some of the money helped to fund a conference this month, arranged by the Deaf Ministry Task Group, which was attended by about 40 people. Some funds will go towards training deaf lay ministers and encouraging vocations within the deaf community.
The lion’s share — £1.5 million — has funded a grant scheme to enable parishes in the Northern Province to become more accessible. (It is hoped that a similar scheme for the Southern Province will open next April.) There have been many applications for help with the cost of ramps and accessible lavatories, but fewer for hearing-aid T-loops and new audio-visual equipment, such as monitors that can display the words of hymns. Mrs James says: “Hearing vicars sometimes aren’t sure how to develop deaf-ministry work; so what they need is input from the deaf-ministry world.”
The Priest-in-Charge of Northfleet and Rosherville, in north Kent, the Revd Gordon MacBean, knows just how to. A T-loop has been installed at both St Mark’s, Rosherville, and St Botolph’s, Northfleet. At St Mark’s: “We’ve put in a Bluetooth connection, so we can play music [via] Bluetooth which should be heard through the T-loop,” he says.
Fr MacBean, who is profoundly hard of hearing but can lipread and wears a hearing aid, adds: “We use good microphones for people speaking to be heard clearly. It’s not about volume, it’s about clarity.”
Fr MacBean is taking part in a one-year leadership development programme for deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent clergy and lay ministers, which is also being funded from the £2.4 million grant. The Enabling Leaders programme has trained two groups of around 12 people, and is soon to open for applications for its third. The course aims to be fully accessible. “For the current cohort, we make sure that there is an induction loop at the in-person conferences, and on all of our webinars we’re using captions and subtitles,” Mrs James says.
Fr MacBean says he wanted to take part in the course to “show people across the Church that disability is not a hindrance, it’s just a difference”, and to “learn how people with other disabilities, or difference, get on in their ministry”.
IN DAY-TO-DAY ministry, nonetheless, deaf clergy have to surmount plenty of obstacles. Mr Robinson says that there is a “chronic shortage of sign-language interpreters” in Salisbury diocese, for instance.
Fr MacBean attended a meeting in May at the theological college where he had trained. The T-loop system had been unplugged by the speakers “to plug in all their equipment”. He asked for it to be plugged back in, but was refused; so he positioned himself to catch as much as possible, but “only got about 60 per cent of what was being said”.
Resourcing the C of E’s work among deaf people is a challenge, agrees Dr Lewis. There are “too many possibilities and ideas of things to develop, and not enough time to do it all”. She adds: “Being one of so few full-time stipendiary chaplains with the deaf community, and so few deaf priests, means there are only a few of us to do everything.”
She argues that the Church needs to “recognise and affirm and financially support the ministry of the deaf church and BSL-using congregations as equal to hearing parishes.” She says that through BSL “people who have experienced constant exclusion and rejection in the hearing world find a space where they can flourish and encounter the love of God in their own language.”
Revd Susan Myatt, Lichfield diocese’s adviser among the deaf community and the Baptist Union’s first deaf Baptist minister, leading a service at Rising Brook Baptist Church, in Stafford
Helen Robinson, Mr Robinson’s wife, who is also deaf, says that while she appreciates interpreted church services, a service led in BSL offers a “conversation flow with no barriers”.
Dr Lewis’s and Mr MacBean’s advice to deaf people considering a vocation is equivocal. “You’ll need a lot of determination and support, but if God is calling you, it will happen,” Dr Lewis says.
“Don’t be hung up on the disability as something that you feel you have to make amends for. You don’t. [God]’s going to use you to bring glory to his name,” Fr MacBean says.
“Some individual churches are excellent,” Miss Behenna reflects. “Leaders listen to what deaf people need, and try to engage, and deaf people take an active role in the life of the church. . . But I can’t honestly say that the whole Church is very good at enabling deaf people to flourish yet.”
Making the Church a place where people who are deaf or hard of hearing can flourish, or making more parts of the Church places where they can flourish, takes willingness, empathy, curiosity and funding. Technology, some of it inexpensive, can be a huge help.
The Revd Susan Myatt, Lichfield diocese’s adviser among the deaf community and the Baptist Union’s first deaf Baptist minister, gave the keynote address at the DMTG deaf ministry conference. She notes: “Empowering deaf individuals in church leadership fosters inclusion, celebrates diversity and enriches the faith community. Inclusion becomes a lived practice, benefiting all marginalised groups.”
deafanglicanstogether.org.uk
Difference or disability?
THE institutional Church is improving in its approach to people who are deaf, disabled or neurodivergent, but it still has a way to go, the Disability Adviser for the diocese of Oxford, the Revd Katie Tupling, says.
Disabled volunteers within the Church’s Disability Task Group have been drawing on their lived experience to make the Church more accessible. In addition to a deaf ministry task group and a disability task group, additional groups have been set up in the past six years: “the neurodivergent working group, the learning disabilities working group, mental health group … the accessible liturgy group”, Mrs Tupling notes. Each includes people who are “part of that demographic”.
Deaf people are not included in the disability group, she adds, because they may not see themselves as disabled but rather as having a different culture and, through BSL, a different language. The neurodivergent group includes “autism, ADHD — different ways of being wired so that you process the world differently.” She points to scholarship that suggests that Nicodemus showed traits of being autistic.
“No one should be written off on the basis of anything,” she says. “Every disabled, or neurodivergent, or deaf person, or someone who’s got mental-health issues, or anything like learning disabilities, they are beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of God.”
Emma ThompsonRevd Katie Tupling, chaplain among deaf people and disability adviser for the diocese of Oxford, outside St Mary and St Nicholas Church in Littlemore, Oxford
If someone with a divergence or disability contacts her to say that they are discerning a vocation and want to speak to their priest or diocesan vocations team, she says: “I always ask them which diocese they’re in [and] who they’re going to go and talk to.” In her experience, some gatekeepers are more-open minded than others. But on the whole, the institution “is getting safer for those inquirers to be more honest about disability, deaf issues, neurodivergence, and what have you”.
This is partly because “it’s not just one person saying yes or no any more,” and partly because diocesan directors of ordinands and bishops’ advisers are better trained in understanding disability and neurodivergence, and can see them as “things are to be celebrated, as interesting human gifts rather than stumbling blocks.”
She advises enquirers to be themselves but also to “know [their] narrative”. This means learning the language needed to “interpret yourself to the non-neurodivergent and non-disabled”. This “is really knackering”, she says; so she recommends finding an advocate who understands the system. “Then trust the system; trust God.”
Once in training, Mrs Tupling believes, there has been a “culture shift” in theological colleges’ willingness to spend money on making adaptations for deaf, neurodivergent, and disabled ordinands.
IN 2018, the Church Times ran an interview with a member of clergy with a chronic pain condition who said that most clergy with disabilities were non-stipendiary, and that dioceses considered whether an ordinand could “work 70 hours a week and look after six parishes” (Features, 6 July 2018).
Mrs Tupling says that today, “anecdotally, I think fewer disabled people are being syphoned off into non-paid roles.” However, she says, effecting culture change is “trying to melt a glacier with a match”.
The expectation persists that disabled and neurodivergent clergy must adapt to the status quo rather than vice versa — yet she argues that a reversal could have wider benefits. “We [disabled] clergy come in and ask: ‘But why are clergy being asked to do 70-hour weeks? No one can do that.’ We’re not seen as the experts.”
Mrs Tupling chairs the network of diocesan disability advisers (DDAs), and is one of the few DDAs who is paid. She notes that the Synod agreed, in 2007, that “each diocese should have its own named lead, resourced, trained person on disability advocacy.”
Currently, of the 42 dioceses, “maybe two-thirds have somebody, and a third has nobody,” because of inertia, other priorities, or lack of a suitable person, she says. None the less, the DDAs meet monthly with Bishop Atkinson and the Director of Faith and Public Life, the Revd Dr Richard Sudworth, who act as “conduits” to communicate their work to other parts of the Church.