Press Releases
AAPD Announces Publication of Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion
February 17, 2012 | AAPD Press Team
WASHINGTON, DC – February 17, 2012–– The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the nation’s largest cross-disability membership organization, is pleased to announce the release of Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion, by the Alban Institute.
Amazing Gifts, by religion writer Mark I. Pinsky, tells sixty-four stories of real people of faith who either have disabilities or are close to a person with a disability. The stories emphasize the importance of inclusion, and efforts most congregations can utilize to accomplish it. According to Pinsky, “Sometimes, the start of a long and wonderful journey is simply to shake hands and say, ‘Welcome,’ without preconceived notions.” The author worked with the sixty-four storytellers and numerous others from many faiths to write Amazing Gifts.
AAPD Interfaith Program Director Ginny Thornburgh envisioned this bold project over four years ago. A driving force behind Amazing Gifts, Thornburgh wrote the book’s foreword, which states: “These are stories of people who understand the uniqueness of every human being, the pain of isolation and exclusion, and the healing power of inclusion within communities of faith.”
“Amazing Gifts is a collection of 64 stories, but it tells one story – a story about the transformative power of faith, and of inclusion in the faith community,” said Thornburgh.
“This book will be instructive to anyone exploring what it means to have a disability and to love someone with a disability,” said AAPD President and CEO Mark Perriello. “AAPD is grateful to Ginny Thornburgh for spearheading this remarkable project. Amazing Gifts will open many people’s hearts and, I believe, open the doors of faith communities,” he added.
The stories in Amazing Gifts include:
• Hartmut and Susan Kramer-Mills, pastors who found that truly accepting one young man with autism into the congregation would mean enlisting the help of many parishioners and changing the order of worship. This process “opened our eyes to people with other needs. Anybody working toward including a particular group soon discovers that inclusive ministry does not stop there. It leads to many other groups, whose access to the holy table deserves equal attention.”
• Rabbi Lynne Landsberg, who sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and has become a vocal and compelling advocate for people with disabilities. She offers a challenge to the synagogues of America, and by extension to all places of worship: “Let us take a hard look as Jews and see who is not in our midst. Who is not sitting next to us in a synagogue service or a Jewish community event?. . . We would never consciously do it, but are we unconsciously putting a stumbling block before the blind?”
• Caroline McGraw, a recent college graduate who resides at a L’Arche community in the Washington, D.C., area. L’Arche homes are faith communities in which people with and without intellectual disabilities live together. She compares L’Arche to the cross: “We exist because of humanity’s brokenness, but we also exist because of God’s love.”
Mark I. Pinsky is the author of several popular, critically acclaimed books, including The Gospel According to the Simpsons and A Jew among the Evangelicals. He was religion reporter for the Orlando Sentinel from 1995 to 2008. Columns and essays by Pinsky on faith, disability, and inclusion have been featured in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin.
Ginny Thornburgh is the Director of the AAPD Interfaith Initiative. She has 40 years of experience as an advocate for people with disabilities and was previously the Director of the Religion and Disability Program of the National Organization on Disability for 19 years. Thornburgh also co-authored and edited That All May Worship and From Barriers to Bridges, in addition to editing Loving Justice: The ADA and the Religious Community.
To purchase Amazing Gifts, click here.
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The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the country's largest cross-disability membership association, organizes the disability community to be a powerful force for change – politically, economically, and socially. AAPD was founded in 1995 to help unite the diverse community of people with disabilities, including their family, friends and supporters, and to be a national voice for change in implementing the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To learn more, visit the AAPD Web site: www.aapd.com.
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