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Note #7920 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

WCC urges full inclusion of persons with disabilities, but cuts funding
03374
September 4, 2003

WCC urges full inclusion of persons with disabilities, but cuts funding

By Jerry L. Van Marter
Ecumenical News International

GENEVA - Even though the funding of its own disabilities network has been
slashed by 75 per cent, the financially strapped World Council of Churches
(WCC) on Sept. 2 called for the organization "to be promoted and supported at
all levels of the church."

The appeal was part of the response by the WCC's central committee to a
statement by the Ecumenical Disabilities Advocates Network (EDAN), "The
Church of All and For All," which challenged churches to accept that "we are
not a full community without one another."

The main governing body of the WCC challenged its 342 member churches to
engage persons with disabilities in every aspect of the church and urged them
to advocate the framing of a United Nations Convention on Disabilities, which
the UN is considering.

EDAN was founded by the WCC's highest governing body, its general assembly,
in 1998, said Kenya - based EDAN coordinator, Sam Kabue. "But still," said
Kabue, who is blind, "there are walls that shut people in or shut them out,
preventing people from participating in life."

The UN estimates that worldwide there are 600 million people with
disabilities.

The latest WCC statement questions some theological assumptions about these
people. "Historically, disability has been interpreted as loss, as something
that illustrates the human tragedy," it says. "People with disabilities are
seen as weak or needing care. They are regarded as somehow less than fully
human."

Yet "the stories in the gospels [about Jesus healing people with
disabilities] are traditionally interpreted as acts of liberation."

Christian understanding of the church as the body of Christ increasingly
recognizes persons with disabilities as indispensable members of the body,
the statement says.

"We believe that humanity is created in the image and likeness of God," the
statement says, "with each human bearing aspects of that divine nature yet no
one of us reflecting God fully or completely."

Kabue said: "The guiding principle of the church's theology and life must be
that we are incomplete without the participation of all. Anything else is not
an option."

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