by Peggy A. Johnson

Deaf people are for the most part strangers in their own families

We would hope and want to believe that the church would be different, better. Sadly, for the most part, it is the same as the world.

The combination of Deafness and Blindness constitutes one of the severest handicaps known to humankind

Deaf people are for the most part strangers in their own families. According to statistics printed in Charisma Magazine’s March 2001 edition (a mission publication of the Assembly of God Church) there are 364 million Deaf people world wide. Most of these people, or at least 90 per cent of them, come from hearing families. The Deaf people of my church tell with sadness stories of growing up in a family that barely communicated with them. Most families did not learn sign language, and if they did, it was only the superficial kinds of signs like: bed, eat, school. Deep discussions about values and life’s meaning never happened because there was not enough usable language in the family.

Deaf people from these families are deeply hurt over numerous family gatherings where they were ignored and when they asked what people were talking about or what people were laughing at during a party, they would be told "I will tell you later" or "It is not important." Times of family crisis are particularly painful as the Deaf one is frequently excluded from plans for funerals and sometimes not even told when a loved one is sick or has died. One of my members read about the death of his brother in the newspaper, and this wasn’t the obituary. This was a local paper’s story remembering this dead man months later. The deaf man never had an opportunity to attend his own brother’s funeral.

Deaf people are strangers out in the world a million times a day as communication in this sound-oriented, spoken-word planet breaks down again and again. Deaf people go to doctors who often won’t pay for an interpreter, so they fake it as best they can with a few written notes and lipreading. For years, one of my members communicated with his urologist via lipreading and notes. When he needed to consult his doctor about possible prostate cancer problems, he asked me to get an interpreter. This time he wanted to be really clear about things. I asked the doctor to pay for an interpreter as the Americans with Disability Law requires, and he refused. It costs $75 for an interpreter and he said that was unreasonable. So I personally paid for an interpreter to go on the next visit. When she walked into the doctor’s office with the Deaf man, the doctor threw her out. He thought I had hired her at his expense without telling him. I called him back and explained that I had paid for the interpreter. He was not sorry, nor would he pay for the interpreter when the next appointment came around. I paid again and he knew it this time. The results of the cancer test had come in, and the Deaf man walked into the office with the interpreter. The doctor got a piece of paper, wrote NO CANCER on it, and walked out. He would not speak to the Deaf man or answer any of his questions. He was simply not going to let that interpreter do anything. His reasoning: "I have had this patient for a long time and we got along fine, so why all of a sudden do we need an interpreter?" All along it was not fine. The doctor just thought it was.

A thousand times a day, at the store, at work, at the beauty shop, at the vet, at the car repair place, it is the same story: communication breaks down when a person cannot hear. Some of the misunderstandings have cost Deaf people jobs, promotions, heart-break. On more than one occasion when the police yelled "halt" and the Deaf person kept walking (because they couldn’t hear), they were shot to death.

We would hope and want to believe that the church would be different, better. After all, Jesus says to welcome the stranger and, by doing so, we are welcoming Christ. Sadly, for the most part, it is the same as the world.

I teach religious education classes in an after-school programme at the MD School for the Deaf. The students who attend my classes live in the school dorm during the week and go home on weekends. Only two of the 36 students have any interpreters back home at their churches. The children who have no interpreters say they hate church. It is boring. They have to sit and be good and no one ever talks to them. The hearing kids make fun of them sometimes, and some Deaf students report that their churches try to heal them at special healing services and then when they are not healed they think God has no power. Some are even told they didn’t get healed because they needed more faith. When these Deaf students grow up and can decide whether or not they go to church on their own, I doubt if many will ever darken a church door. "God is hearing," one boy told me. "He doesn’t understand my signs when I pray."

Add blindness to this mix and Deaf-Blind people find themselves a thousand times more of a stranger than Deaf people. The church I serve ministers to people who are both Deaf and Blind. They are just like any other person intellectually. They just cannot hear or see. One University of Arkansas study gave a figure of 750,000 people in the US today who are Deaf and Blind. The same study states that "The combination of Deafness and Blindness constitutes one of the severest handicaps known to humankind, and a person with this dual disability faces unique problems of communication and mobility that drastically curtail and limit their sources of information and experience. It is severely isolating and leads to great dependence on others and promotes intense isolation and loneliness." (Watson, A Model Service Delivery System for Deaf-Blind Persons, University of Arkansas).

Deaf-Blind people tell me they can be in a crow-ded room with people all around them but it is as if there is nobody there because most people are uncomfortable with them due to the difficulty in communicating with them. In addition, many Deaf-Blind people feel a strong rejection from the Deaf community. Some Deaf-Blind people begin their life with deafness only and later they lose their vision. They report that many of their close Deaf friends desert them when they become blind because Deaf people have a great fear of

Deaf-Blind people report great difficulties in school with the tedious, slow process of education without the benefit of sight and sound. Finding meaningful employment is a challenge because the Deaf-Blind worker needs much support from sighted people in order to do their jobs. Transportation is always dependent on a sighted person who is willing to volunteer. Good, reliable help is hard to find, and economically it is difficult to afford the luxury of transportation.

Again, the church should be the place that welcomes the stranger. There are very few churches that minister to this community. I know of only five. The problem is the level of skilled helpers necessary and the labour-intensive kind of work involved. A person assisting a Deaf-Blind person not only interprets but takes the person to the bathroom, finds the soap at the sink, goes through the lunch line, describes the food choices, does all the leading and driving. Helpers like this are hard to find. The church I serve, which has a Deaf-Blind ministry, has to turn down people who want to come sometimes because we don’t have enough help to service them all.

Deaf and Deaf-Blind people are precious children of God. They should not only be viewed as recipients of able-bodied peoples’ care and concern in a helping relationship. Deaf and Deaf-Blind people are gifted in the areas of ministry as well as sighted, hearing people. The body of Christ is not complete without the gifts and graces for ministry that they bring us. They teach us the gift of visual and tactile worship, the gift of resourcefulness and tenacity, and the gift of supportive community. For the most part, the church chooses, sadly, not to receive their gifts. Some churches feel that the access accommodations required are too much trouble and cost too much money. But where Deaf and Deaf-Blind people are received and welcomed and seen as co-ministers with the hearing and sighted, the church learns things they "never knew, they never knew."

Rev. Peggy A. Johnson is a hearing pastor who serves the Christ United Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, US. She is also consultant for the General Board of Global Ministries - Deaf Ministry National Committee in the US.