"Supporting people living with special needs and disabilities"

ADNet supports Anabaptist congregations, families, and persons touched by disabilities to nurture inclusive communities.

The National Catholic Partnership on Disability (NCPD) works to ensure meaningful participation of people with disabilities in all aspects of the life of the Church and society.

A ministry that supports and encourages the inclusion of people with disabilities in the life and work of the church.

Liz Grossman writes about her brother's experience with church in Newsweek magazine. Her brother Tim has Asperger syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder with "savant characteristics of autism." From the article:

I had no idea what Tim did on those Sunday afternoons, but I knew that it filled him with a kind of peace no medication or doctor ever had. After church, he'd come over to our parents' house for family dinners with a sense of calm, his eyes settled, his body slightly less rigid. He even began making a habit, one of his thousands, of giving our mom a quick hug before he'd head home.

An essay by George Will about his oldest son who was born with Down syndrome.

Jon has Down syndrome, a chromosomal defect involving varying degrees of mental retardation and physical abnormalities. Jon lost, at the instant he was conceived, one of life's lotteries, but he also was lucky: His physical abnormalities do not impede his vitality and his retardation is not so severe that it interferes with life's essential joys--receiving love, returning it, and reading baseball box scores.

ASNA exists to support the spiritual, social, physical and emotional needs of people living with disabilities and special needs

An organization with a focus on the theology of disability and the relationship between spirituality, health and healing and the significance of the spiritual dimension for contemporary healthcare practices.

Community Connections at the University of Maryland offers a great quarterly Welcoming Spiritual Communities Newsletter (appears to no longer be published, archives available).

Think how you would feel if you were very spiritual and you couldn't go to a church; you couldn't take communion; you couldn't sing; you couldn't be a part of that...