I’m delighted to have an article out this week in the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice. It’s called ‘I just didn’t fit into the way that they did church’: Barriers to Access and Participation for Disabled People in UK Churches. It’s a discussion of data from my PhD research with disabled Christians, looking at whether their churches were meeting their duties to disabled people under the Equality Act 2010. Disabled people have rights to participate in our religious communities. I argue that equality and human rights laws are tools that can help faith communities to address the barriers that disabled people face when they want to access and participate in churches. Following equality laws is a step that religious institutions – such as churches – can take towards social justice.

You can read the article at the IJDSJ website here, or read it as a PDF here.

And there’s a plain English version of the article here.

I hope the article will encourage discussion in faith communities (if only on a small scale) about the situations where institutions’ legal duties to disabled people under equality law meet our calling to “do justly.”*

Comments are very welcome. I hope you enjoy it!

*Micah 6:8 (from the Old Testament of the Bible).