Plain observation suggests **todays culture** tends to reject organized religion. As to autists, I would posit the following combination of factors: 1) those of us who need more specialized care and therapies, as my son does, will find them most readily available in the public schools which are generally, for better or worse, one of the most actively secularized and secularizing formative institutions in todays culture; and 2) there are few enough of us autists that the churches and Organized Religion establishments have not made autistic-specific outreach a priority by and large, even if its on their radar at all. I attend a middlin large downtown church in a middlin large Southern city, and we do have a Special Needs outreach ministry within the church. The ministry targets families of Special Needs kids within the congregation, and so far I know of three: one boy with Downs, one autist (my own son), and a girl with Rhetts Disorder. Theres also a middle-aged lady with Downs in the pews, but I dont think shes in this ministry group. But there are ENOUGH autists in the population at large that their (or Our--I count myself as one) needs cannot justifiably be merely lumped with every other disorder, or overlooked as statistically insignificant. And the divergence of our neurologic processing patterns from those of the general population mean that the gospel and the creeds must be presented in rather different means to us than to our neurotypical neighbors, and this is something that religious Organizations have generally neglected to do. As a population, autists are already rather adrift from the primary flow of social and cultural interaction, but our spiritual needs and questions are no less real and no less eternal than any other mans or womans.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 20:01:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015