wfn.org | KABUE TO AACC: All, Including Disabled, Are in God's Image

[cfouke@ncccusa.org]

For Immediate Release
AACC Media Team: (011) 237 966 3059 or 3063

KABUE: ALL, INCLUDING DISABLED, ARE CREATED IN GOD’S IMAGE

November 25, 2003, Yaounde, Cameroon – “No one can say that
someone 
missing one organ of the body isn’t part of the image of God,”
asserted 
Samuel Kabue, a Presbyterian from Kenya who is a consultant to the 
Ecumenical Disabilities Network, a program of the World Council of 
Churches, today (Nov. 25).

Kabue, who is blind, addressed the more than 500 delegates who came here 
from across Africa to the 8th Assembly of the All Africa Conference of 
Churches, meeting in Yaounde Nov. 22-27.

We are all created in the image of God, he said, and “it’s not
the body or 
the intellect that reflects the image of God.  Each of us has talents and 
gifts without which the church of Christ is not whole.”

He reminded his audience that “Christ’s body was broken on the
cross for 
our salvation.”  He continued, “People with disabilities are not
a 
homogeneous group.  We are men, women and children with unique stories, 
and not just a group with medical conditions to be fixed.”

Healing, Kabue said, is not so much about having the disability removed 
as “restoration to society.  When the sight of blind Bartimaeus was 
restored, he joined the procession and came under Jesus’
protection.”

Kabue described the work of the Ecumenical Disabilities Network (EDAN) to 
press churches for the inclusion of people with disabilities, whether from 
birth or as a result of disease, accidents, violence or war, as full and 
active players in all aspects of church life – spiritual, social and 
political.”

Among the network’s resources is the statement “A Church of All
and for 
All,” available in English and French.  Copies were distributed to all 
AACC Assembly delegates to take home and use in their churches.

The WCC Central Committee has asked member churches to support EDAN and 
promote it at all levels, lobby their governments to ensure that the U.N. 
frame a convention on disability as agreed in June 2003 and to make 
churches part of drafting of the convention.

He challenged churches to break down the walls that shut people out … 
walls of shame of fear, of ignorance and prejudice, of anger and 
misunderstanding.”  He urged congregations to set an example for the
wider 
society by “creating an inviting environment and space for all,”
making 
their buildings and their sanctuaries accessible to people with 
disabilities.

“Just as we provide French-English interpretation at this meeting, we 
should provide access so that people with disabilities can become 
participants in worship,” he said.  Such elements as adequate light and

appropriate seating arrangements opens churches to “all the gifts and 
challenges everyone brings.”

Churches can take many other actions, he said, among them including 
training on disabilities in seminaries, campaigning against discrimination 
against people with disabilities, including people with disabilities when 
allocating scholarships, training suited persons with disabilities for the 
ministry, fostering economic empowerment of people with disabilities, and 
more.

Committees and official delegations also should include persons with 
disabilities, he said.	Noting that he is at the AACC Assembly as a 
resource person and not as a delegate, he said the requirement that 
delegations include “a head of the church, a woman and a youth”
gave no 
room for him.  “I don’t seem to fit any of those
categories,” he said, 
drawing the Assembly’s laughter and scattered applause.

Kabue concluded by saying that “when God looked at Creation, God said
it 
was good, not that it was perfect.  In our fragile world, we are all part 
of the whole that reflects God’s image.”

Carol J. Fouke-Mpoyo	AACC

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