KEN GARFIELD Group offers know-how for special-needs issues

Activists and parents have told me over the years that a lack of money and manpower keeps some congregations from reaching out to those with special needs.
Other congregations fall short because they don't have anyone to show them where to build a wheelchair ramp or how to start a Sunday school class for autistic children.
In working to open every sanctuary to every soul, we can deal with those well-meaning congregations.
But what do we do with those other congregations that choose to make no effort to welcome people who are different?
We share with them the sermon preached by the National Organization on Disability. Then we share it again and again until they get it:
"Inclusion," spokeswoman Lorraine Thal told me, "is what we strive for."
I've always thought congregations that fail to welcome people with disabilities will also shy away from people of various colors, cultures or economic class. You either want to be all-embracing, or you don't.
What group does
Thal's Washington-based group fights for the rights of the 54 million Americans with disabilities -- and as unfathomable as it might seem, the faith community is one of its toughest battlegrounds.
From churches that confine people in wheelchairs to the back of the sanctuary to synagogues and mosques that ask parents to keep their hyperactive kids home, insensitivity can be a multifaith reality.
The National Organization on Disability has a Web site (www.nod.org/religion) full of answers: Ramps, easy-opening doors, sign-language interpreters, better sound and lighting, transportation, accessible bathrooms, large-print prayer books and pew and pulpit cuts that allow people with disabilities to go where they choose.
There's also a how-to guide, "That All May Worship." You can carry it to the next meeting of your congregation's lay leaders, so you can talk about more important stuff than personalities and politics.
Who should feel guilty?
Building a ramp is one thing. Building a new attitude is another, and that's where the words of a Charlotte mom ring true.
Her 7-year-old daughter is autistic, which makes her part of a fraternity of parents that must unite and work to ensure equal opportunities for their kids. She believes most congregations want to do right by her child.
Great example
She cited as one great example Matthews United Methodist, which has three Sunday school classes for kids who can't be mainstreamed, plus a Rainbow Express summer camp for those who deserve more love than we can ever give them.
But then there are those other congregations, the ones that need a nudge (or two) in the right direction. Some parents, she said, feel as if they have to lobby for a special program, or for teachers to have the training and tolerance to make their class a welcoming place for everyone.
You push, then you push some more. "Sometimes," she told me, "I feel guilty complaining about that."
The only ones who should feel guilty are the ones who fail to hear her plea.
XKen Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer.
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