Disability and the Church, Part 1: Mental Health and Methodism

Did you know that July is Disability Pride Month? July was chosen because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by President G.H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990. Disability Pride Month originated in the United States and has since become a worldwide event. 
Approximately 15% of the world’s population is disabled. Close to 85 million disabled people live in the United States—that’s 1/4 of the population. Disability advocates note that “disability is the only marginalized group that anyone can (involuntarily) join at any time.”
This month I will exploring the ways in which the church interacts with disability and accessibility. In addition to this post about mental health disabilities, I am also planning a post about physical disabilities/accessibility and two posts specifically examining the autism spectrum and Christianity/the church. I can actually write all of these posts from personal experience—both my own and that of friends and family members. 
The United Methodist Church actually has a dedicated Disability Ministries Committee. They provide resources to local UMC churches, consult with churches and members on disability and accessibility issues, and award grants to churches to implement accessibility items such as ramps, lifts, automatic door openers, sensory spaces, and programming for children and adults. They also publish a quarterly mental health newsletter. 
The Winter 2025 edition of the newsletter discusses the topic of positive thinking, which is a topic my longtime (21 years) therapist suggested I explore in the future. The writer notes that “when we’re so depressed we can’t get out of bed or so manic we don’t go to sleep, positive thinking sounds impossible.” That is definitely my experience. Even now, when my bipolar disorder is well controlled, I find myself refusing to do activities that will change my thinking from negative to positive because that requires energy I don’t have. The writer adds, “We’re in survival mode, not thinking positively. It seems impossible to put a positive spin on our lives, so we give up, sinking into the mire that is our minds.” However, there is hope—in God.
True positivity draws from the fact that God is on our side. God is not giving up on us so neither should we. We have hope because of the God who loves us. God doesn’t always rescue us when and how we want, but promises to be by our side our entire life journey. When our brain betrays us, God is faithful.
Back in college, when I had very little experience with organized religion, those of us in the LGBT Allies group attended a Sunday service at the Metropolitan Community Church of the Spirit in Harrisburg city. I loved the service and talked about it enthusiastically once I returned home. Now, it’s possible I was hypomanic at the time, but once I was alone, I heard the voice of Jesus. I don’t remember the words† but I remember the feeling: pure, all-consuming joy and love. 
I understand that “approximately 38% of people with bipolar disorder experience religious delusions.” However, religious delusions in mental disorders are overwhelmingly negative (paranoid or persecutory delusions) or destructive (delusions of grandeur or jealousy). The article linked above notes that “while about one-third of psychoses have religious delusions, not all religious experiences are psychotic.” There is little to no evidence that bipolar delusions could ever be one hundred percent positive with no harmful aspects. 
So I really do think I heard the voice of Jesus. Next week’s post on autism and Christianity will start to explain why it took me so long to do anything about it.
The Methodist church is extremely supportive of people with mental health challenges. In an article titled “Faith and Mental Health,” lay leader Alan Whitley wrote:
In 1 Corinthians Paul talks about holy listening. I like to believe holy listening is suspending judgement and inviting people to heal their wounds. … It is comforting to know that no matter your wounds, no matter your struggle, and no matter your barriers, there is a God who knows you by name and loves all of who you are. As Christians we should emulate holy listening and love people just as they are. I wonder if that is how healing begins. Maybe, that is the value in building the relationship between faith and mental health.        
The United Methodist Church has made a theological statement on its ministries in mental illness. The beginning reads:
We believe that faithful Christians are called to be in ministry to individuals and their families challenged by disorders causing disturbances of thinking, feeling, and acting categorized as "mental illness." We acknowledge that throughout history and today, our ministries in this area have been hampered by lack of knowledge, fear, and misunderstanding. Even so, we believe that those so challenged, their families, and their communities are to be embraced by the church in its ministry of compassion and love.
I can say that the only place I’ve felt supported rather than punished and ostracized for talking about a past suicide attempt (outside of therapy) has been inside the church. And it’s only by the grace of God that I’m still here. God keeps putting really effective psych professionals and treatments in my path, and for that I’m extremely grateful. 
Even though David was only pretending to be insane in 1 Samuel 21:13-14, his words in Psalm 34 should be a comfort to those who actually are suffering from mental health issues:
I sought the LORD, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the LORD heard him;
he saved him out of all his troubles. (vv. 4-6)

The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
The righteous person may have many troubles,
but the LORD delivers him from them all; (vv. 17-19)
Of course, prayer and Scripture are no substitute for evidence-based psychiatric treatment, but God is our strength, our deliverer, our refuge, our shield, and our stronghold (Psalm 18:1-2), and he will never leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:8)—even when depression, anxiety, or disordered thinking tell us otherwise.

July 10, 2025

† I have ADHD, so my memory for conversational speech is nearly nonexistent—even when it’s my favorite celebrity speaking at an event I paid several hundred dollars to attend. If there’s no anxiety involved (like verbal instructions from an employer), I simply don’t remember things that are said to me even when I really, really want to. 

Is There A “Right Side of History” in Middle East Conflict?

by Amanda Straw

Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
I am for peace;
but when I speak, they are for war. – Psalm 120: 6-7
On my personal Facebook and Instagram accounts, I follow a handful of my classmates from Penn State Harrisburg’s American Studies graduate program. One of them is a prominent Jewish Studies scholar at a university on the East Coast. I’m not going to identify her further due to the potentially controversial nature of the statements and also because they were posted to her personal social media accounts rather than professional ones. 
I am not an expert on Middle East conflict. This is just me trying to untangle my own thoughts about disturbing things I’ve seen this Jewish Studies professor and other Jewish friends saying on social media in the past few months. 
Of my Jewish friends that have made public statements about the conflict, they are all unabashedly pro-Israel. They firmly believe that Israel is the victim in this conflict, not the aggressor. Their posts reflect absolute certainty that Israel is morally in the right, and they have no doubt that they as well as Israel are on the right side of history. 
And there’s another thing that my Jewish friends have started to do that really bothers me. They’ve started to consider any and all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. I’m going to quote Italian- and Jewish-American stand-up comedian Gianmarco Soresi, because he explains it in an accessible way that’s infused with humor.
“That’s what anti-Semitism used to mean. It used to mean you’d say, ‘Oh, Jews, they run the banks, they run Hollywood. They’re all cheap. They all have big noses.’ But then something changed. And now anti-Semitism seems to mean criticizing Israel in any way, shape or form. It feels…different. I mean now, if you say something like ‘Oh, I think Israel should stop bombing innocent civilians’, some people are like, ‘Uhhh…that’s a stereotype. Not all Jews shouldn’t bomb innocent civilians.’” 
And yes, that last part is a joke that got a big laugh, but I’ve seen it written in serious ways as well. This is something my professor friend posted on Facebook on June 16th.
“Each time I open social media, a naive part of me hopes to see those quick to condemn other civilian attacks take a stand to also condemn the destruction of and target on Israeli lives.  If you say none of us is free until all of us are free, does that include Israeli and Jewish lives, too?”
And to me that just sounds like white people responding to Black Lives Matter with “all lives matter.” No one is saying that the attacks by Hamas were acceptable. They weren’t. What they’re saying is that Israel’s incredibly disproportionate response of attempting to perpetrate genocide on the Palestinians of Gaza is far less acceptable and needs to stop. 
Here’s another statement from her Facebook, this one from May 22nd.
“I am a Zionist. I support Israel. I am a pacifist. I do not support Netanyahu. I want the hostages returned. I want Gazans to be fed. I do not want to be murdered for being a Jew. I want peace.
It's not about Israel. Americans, open your eyes.”
Now, I’m not Jewish. I’m a white American, and like most other white Americans I know, I believe Israel is in the wrong here. But that line in the middle referring to the increase in anti-Semitic attacks strikes me as a false equivalence. And most other white Americans I know feel like we do have our eyes open, and our eyes see Israel attempting to commit a genocide on the Palestinian people. And I don’t think we’re wrong about that. Amnesty International has declared Israel’s attacks on Palestine to constitute genocide. AI’s Secretary General stated that “Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.” The United Nations concurs with AI’s assessment, concluding that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been met.”
I don’t understand why my Jewish friends, who identify politically as liberal and/or progressive, can’t seem to entertain the idea that Israel is on the wrong side of history here. Yes, the Jewish people were once victims of an attempted genocide. No one is denying that. But that doesn’t mean that the Jewish ethnostate isn’t now committing a genocide of their own. My Jewish friends appear to believe that Israel is acting in self-defense by bombing civilians in Gaza. And they respond to allegations of genocide by calling it anti-Semitism and refusing to consider that the allegations could be accurate. How could such smart, educated people get it so wrong?
The two sides of this moral conflict are so far apart that it’s impossible for both of them to be correct. Either Israel is committing genocide or it isn’t. Those can’t both be true. One side of the conflict is on the wrong side of history. But neither the pro-Israel nor the anti-Israel side is willing to entertain the possibility of being on the wrong side of history. 
So is it possible that there is no “right side of history” here? Am I the one who is wrong about my Jewish friends? Is it really anti-Semitic to think that Israel doesn’t have the right to bomb civilians?
These are questions I can’t answer. They may never have a clear answer. Even with the most recent US military action supporting Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, Americans are split on whether it was morally right or wrong, mostly along political party lines. 
I’m going to close with a quote from John Pavlovitz. It’s actually referring to Christianity in context, but I think it fits here too.
Religion at its best can be a beautiful thing; it can be a path to experiencing peace, to doing life better, and to becoming the kind of person the world needs—but as we too often see, it can also be the source of profound violence… that we can come to believe God approves of, so do all that you can to make sure yours is yielding something worthy, something helpful, something loving.
 
If you are a religious person, try like hell to get religion right. 

July 3, 2025

Do Certain Bible Verses Really Condemn Homosexuality?*

As we close out LGBTQ+ Pride month for 2025, I’d like to spend a little bit of time examining what, if anything, the Bible actually says about homosexuality in individual verses. Christians hostile to LGBTQ+ identities and culture often point to several specific verses or passages that supposedly condemn homosexuality or homosexual acts. But is that really what those verses are saying, or are they being misunderstood or mistranslated, then taken out of context and weaponized against a marginalized community?
We’ll begin with the “sin of Sodom” as told in Genesis 19, specifically verses 4 and 5:
But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”
According to Daniel Helminiak, Ph.D, in his book What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality, scholars consider the verb “to know” to refer to engaging in sex acts (p. 39). However, what the passage is condemning is abusive sex acts—i.e., sexual assault. The “sin of Sodom” is not homosexual acts in general. It’s violence and abuse towards strangers, and failure to provide hospitality to those in need (p. 40). 
Next, let’s consider Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13:
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. … If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.
The first point I’d like to make comes from Dan Kimball’s book How (Not) To Read the Bible, and it is this: Never read a Bible verse. Kimball puts it this way:
“Never read a Bible verse” is a reminder that every Bible verse is written in a context, in a specific time period and for a specific purpose. Every Bible verse fits within a larger story, and whenever we read any verse, we want to: 
• Look at the specific Bible verse (many people stop here). 
• Look at the paragraph the verse is in. 
• Look at the chapter the Bible verse is in. 
• Look at the book of the Bible that the chapter and verse are in. 
• Look at where the book of the Bible the verse is in fits in the Bible’s
  whole storyline. (p. 40)
Thus, these two verses should not be separated from the rest of that chapter in Leviticus and used to make a point about modern culture and identity that those verses were never intended to comment on. 
The second point is that these two verses are part of a much larger passage known as “The Holiness Code.” The Holiness Code was a list of “laws and punishments [that spell] out requirements for Israel to remain ‘holy’ in God’s sight” (Helminiak, p. 46). The Holiness Code was written to and for Israelites living several thousand years ago. There are a ton of verses in the Holiness Code describing behaviors that we freely do today, like eating shrimp (forbidden by Lev 11:10) and wearing polyester (forbidden by Lev 19:19).
So cherry-picking these two verses and using them to condemn modern LGBTQ+ people is ridiculous when none of this is meant to apply to 21st-century Americans. And if you’ve never seen the TV show The West Wing take on this argument, please watch this video, because it’s brilliantly written and performed. 
And thirdly, these two verses come from the Old, or Hebrew Testament. That means they are part of the old covenant between God and the Israelites. But we’re Christians. We’re not subject to the old covenant. 
Jesus replaced the old covenant of the law with a new covenant “not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:4). In Hebrews 8:6, we are told that “Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.” Later, in verse 13, we read this: “In speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
We, as modern American Christians, are not subject to the laws laid down in the first covenant between God and the Israelites. Thus, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 do not apply to us because Jesus rendered the old covenant obsolete. 
In short: the Bible does not condemn homosexuality as we understand it today. Bible verses supposedly condemning homosexuality do not apply to modern LGBTQ+ people because they are not written to or about us. The Holiness Code was never meant to apply to 21st-century American Christians. Plus, it was invalidated when Jesus made the new covenant, which is for us. 
June 26, 2025


* If you’ve ever encountered Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, you know where this is going.

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