Retrospectively, I realize we did not do a lot of work to facilitate his being there. The effort was put onto his parents. They oversaw the supplementation of his religious education, left their own classes and roles in the church to take care of him, and he was forced to miss out on many activities where accommodations were not made for his participation. This rings true for all my neurodiverse churchmates: the work to facilitate the needs of neurodiverse church members was being done by their families. This was not the case for physical disabilities and illnesses; I remember how cautious we were during sacramental services to keep our hands clean and avoid contamination while serving sacramental bread to participants with gluten allergies.
This marginalization, via lack of accommodation, does not line up with the neurodiversity model. Neurodiversity is the belief that neurological differences, like autism and ADHD, are natural variations to the human genome. John Elder Robison, an author who himself has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), states that “people with differences do not need to be cured; they need help and accommodation instead” (2013). Common to this ideological framework is not just that neurodiverse individuals require and deserve these accommodations, but that they also have unique ways to contribute to their social groups, such as Temple Grandin’s claim that her autism helped her think concretely and solve engineering problems (2010). Bruce Parsons refers to this as “optimizing,” as in “optimizing autism:” a process of neurodiverse individuals harnessing their skills and talents in a manner which maximally contributes to their communities (Week 13).
This paper is going to be a breakdown of how religious institutions can better facilitate spiritual growth with a neurodiversity model, with an emphasis on assisting members with autism, though the framework provided could be used to improve circumstances for many people with various conditions. Two axial assumptions are made: 1) religious participation is valuable for enough individuals with autism that making improvements to religious communities is worthwhile 2) religions can be discussed in a practical, non-dogmatic, manner where changes (minor or dramatic) can be made to serve the needs of particular communities. It is not necessarily the case that either of these are true; there are members of the New Atheist community who believe that religion is largely destructive for everyone involved (Jillette, 2007), neurodiverse or not, and there are fundamentalists who believe their particular religion is perfect, regardless of criticism (Akin, 2019). However, these two core assumptions will be used to find a proposed middle ground where religion can be treated as a valuable way to develop socially and personally while treating religion not as something one serves, but rather as a tool to serve humanity. With proper accommodations in place, the neurodiversity model under the Parsonsian assumption of optimization predicts not only that individuals with autism can benefit more from their religious activities, but that they will be better able to provide unique contributions to their spiritual communities which may benefit all who walk a spiritual path.
We will be relying on the work of James W. Fowler and Mary Lynn Dell to provide a structure for this discussion. Fowler, a theologian, and Dell, a psychiatrist, collaborated on a summary of research and theory of religious development titled which broke down several stages of spiritual growth in the context of developmental psychology, summarized here:
Adapted from (Fowler & Dell, 2005).
Fowler and Dell say that only stages one through four are inevitable in normal development, some people never break through to five and beyond; each step involves an expansion of identity and a more mature understanding of the universe. Adulthood stages can be reached earlier, or later, than cited; they note relatively young people, such as Martin Luther King Jr., as having reached the Universalizing stage. Each stage is both a personal achievement and facilitated by religious institutions/philosophies, and some of these steps could use improvements in institutions/philosophies to better serve autistic members. We will break down the stages where this is the case and offer potential solutions or research avenues for each one with the goal of best serving the needs for the religious development of believers with autism.
Stage 1: Primal/Infancy
The primal stage occurs before children have significant interactions with religious institutions. Screening for autism should be done at the ages of eighteen months and twenty-four months, with the hopes that autistic youth can be diagnosed and enter key treatment at the age of two (Carbone, Week 4). During this time, however, religion can provide solace to parents who may be stressed out or overwhelmed. One relevant thing of note: the primal stage is often mythologized by religiously charged pseudo-scientific psychoanalysis. Statements such as, “your autistic child has entered a state of disconnection from the world due to his disconnection from the archetype of the eternal mother,” is not appropriate, does not line up with actual diagnostic criteria, and is akin to other issues related to autism and the blaming-of-parents.
Stage 2: Intuitive-Projective (Early Childhood)
During the earliest stages of socializing in a religious context, children of all types are often asked to engage with cosmological (“God created the universe”) and didactical (“Don’t be like Jonah, follow God’s commands the first time they are given”) themes. It should be noted that some research has shown that children with autism are more likely to struggle with imagination and tend to think more concretely (Craig & Baron-Cohen, 1999). While some question this research, this does align with the subjective claims of some adults with autism, including Temple Grandin (Grandin, 2010). No broadly codified existing techniques exist to accommodate the spiritual needs of autistic children in this area. Were I in charge of a research program, my first move would be to do qualitative research in the vein of Hickey, Crabtree, and Stott’s interviews with autistic adults (2017). Their research on autistic self-acceptance, retrospective life narration, and social connections can act as a model to ask autistic individuals about their earliest stages of meaning-making in both religious and non-religious contexts, to see what they say helped and hurt the most.
Stage 3: Mythic-Literal (Middle Childhood)
Moral development is key to this stage, with children focusing on a “what goes around, comes around” perspectives on the universe. Most individuals find out, at some point during this stage, that the world does not work on a reciprocal morality (Fowler & Dell, 2005). Sometimes good guys lose, sometimes bad guys win. God’s role, it is found, is not to bless His people with temporal blessing and, sometimes, the divine allows terrible things to happen to one’s loved ones. Two pieces of research are central to understanding the relevance of autism to this stage: 1) autistic adults have been shown to have a more negative, fearful, relationship with God than their peers (Schaap-Jonker, Roekel, & Sizoo, 2012) 2) autistic adults have been shown to value fairness over other forms of morality (Dempsey, Moore, Richard, & Smith, 2020).
I hypothesize that autistic children at this age become aware that the world is not designed for them, that our society often considers them to be an afterthought. This hypothesis could be proven by polling autistic and neurotypical children with questions about whether the world treats them fairly. The null hypothesis would be that both groups consider the world to be equally fair, but if autistic children reveal their disbelief in the fairness of the world from an early age, perhaps some work in the theology of fairness, such as work from theologian John Rawls, could be adapted to serve autistic children to give them spiritual language for their insights.
Stage 4: Synthetic-Conventional (Adolescence)
Social development is the central theme in Fowler and Dell’s work during this age range. Teenagers develop a social identity, in the context of authority and peer ship, and this synthesized with one’s religious identity. In Christian cultures, church is going to be central to this process. Christian youth groups permeate religious society in the United States, many of which are interest-based with faith themes rather than the reverse. To best facilitate autistic children work could be done to help integrate them into an existing program, also populated by neurotypical children, or the development of autism-specific programming can be done. Research into which is more effective is, unfortunately, ambiguous (Waddington & Reed, 2017). Dr. Cheryl Wright’s work in strength-based programming may be relevant here:
In research not related to autism, but rather strength-based mental health programming, “having faith that one's own life matters and life has meaning, including a moral sense of connection to others” has been theorized to be essential to the creation and maintenance of a personal model of resilience (McCamey & Murty, 2014). If this principle holds true across contexts the following might be proposed: 1) strength-based programming is an area of high need for autistic children and adolescence (Wright C. , Week 7) 2) these sorts of programs are also developed with social interaction in mind (Diener, Wright C., Wright S., & Anderson, 2016) 3) religious institutions could launch such programs, attempt to guide autistic youth in matters of faith and meaning, develop a personal model of resilience, and help cultivate their social identity in the context of working alongside other youth with ASD.
Stages 5 & 6: Individuative-Reflective (Early Adulthood) and Conjunctive (Middle Adulthood)
A “theology of autism” is far from common knowledge, but if the Individuative-Reflective stage is about the creation of a unique identity in a religious context, it does not seem fair to ask autistic individuals to create a cosmological understanding of their position in the world without the help of thoughtful experts on the topic. Similarly, while my essay here has been Christian-toned, autistic individuals live all around the world and grow up in many religions. The Conjunctive stage centers on open-mindedness and pulling from truth, no matter its source. Both stages, which Fowler and Dell speak in less depth about, require an education which is beyond my own understanding. Relying on research, I have created a starting point for that education with a reading list on autistic-theological topics. Religious institutions would be doing a good by creating their own neurodiversity cannons to support their autistic membership and to help their neurotypical members learn about an area of life they may not be familiar with:
1. Confessions of an Autistic Theologian: Doing Theology in Pictures-A Contextual, Liberation Theology for Humans on the Autism Spectrum, by Daniel Aaron Salomon
2. Autism and the Church: Bible, Theology, and Community, by Grant Macaskill
3. The Autistic Buddha: My Unconventional Path to Enlightenment, by Thomas Clements
4. A Neurodiverse God?, by Samuel Wells
5. An Ethnographic Study on Religion, Spirituality and Maternal Influence on Sibling Relationships in a Muslim Family with a Child with Autism, by Brinda Jegatheesan and Klaus Witz
6. Autism and Spirituality: Psyche, Self, and Spirit in People on the Autism Spectrum, by Olga Bogdashina
Stage 7: Universalizing (Late Adulthood)
This final stage is the pinnacle of spiritual development. In a Christian context it might be described as holding a space of true love for not just God, not just one’s family, but for all of creation. Buddhists have nirvana, a mental and metaphysical state of liberation and compassion.
The attainment, or even the possibility, of achieving this stage is beyond the scope of this paper. However, in the context of religious institutions providing neurodiversity-oriented accommodations for this stage, we can look at research being done which indicates that many autistic adults feel disconnected from their social worlds (Hickey, Crabtree, & Stott, 2017) and that, as they age, autistic adults often lose their support networks (Wright S., Week 14). If the Universalizing stage is a major step towards ultimate connection, how can an autistic individual achieve this while feeling so disconnected? Religious institutions here, more than anywhere, have an opportunity to help their membership by developing an inclusive culture and actively supporting neurodiverse membership. The world could benefit immensely from this; as someone passionate about religious studies, both ancient and contemporary, I cannot wait to encounter my first autistic prophet/bodhisattva/psychic/etc., fully connected to the universe, no matter which religious tradition they come from. This would be a sacred version of “optimizing autism.”
The ultimate perspective, when it comes to neurodiversity and spiritual development, is that autistic individuals have a divine potential which is either equal or equivalent to the potential of neurotypical believers. Religion is a source of joy and community for billions, including many autistic theists, and I suspect there are many great religious minds in neurodiverse communities who are waiting in the wings for religious institutions to get their act together and create a space of love, compassion, and understanding which includes people with autism. The kids on my old block deserve to live in a world where their spiritual gifts are accommodated, and it can be done.
References
Akin, D. (2019, September 10). 3 Reasons to Believe the Bible is Inerrant. Retrieved from Lifeway Voices: https://lifewayvoices.com/bible-theology/3-reasons-to-believe-the-bible-is-inerrant/
Carbone, D. P. (Week 4). Module 2. Autism in Early Childhood: Pediatrics and Childcare.
Craig, J., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). Creativity and imagination in autism and Asperger syndrome. J Autism Dev Disord.
Dempsey, E. E., Moore, C., Richard, A. E., & Smith, I. M. (2020). Moral foundations theory in autism spectrum disorder: A qualitative investigation. Autism, 2202-2212.
Diener, M. L., Wright, C. A., Wright, S. D., & Anderson, L. L. (2016). Tapping Into Techinical Talent: Using Technology to Facilitate Personal, Social, and Vocational Skills in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In T. A. Cardon, Technology and the Treatment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (pp. 97-112). New York: Springer.
Fowler, J. W., & Dell, M. L. (2005). Stages of Faith from Infancy to Adolescence: Reflections on Three Decades of Faith Development Theory. In E. C. Roehlkepartain, The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence (pp. 34-45). New York: SAGE Publications.
Grandin, T. (2010, February). The World Needs All Kinds of Minds. Long Beach, California.
Hickey, A., Crabtree, J., & Stott, J. (2017). ‘Suddenly the first fifty years of my life made sense’: Experiences of older people with autism. Autism, 1-11.
Jillette, P. (2007). There Is No God. In C. Hitchens, The Portable Atheist (pp. 349-350). Cambridge: Da Capo Press.
Jimmy D. McCamey, J., & Murty, K. S. (2014). The role of spirituality and religion in the strength base approach to mental health treatment among African-American women. Journal of Scientific Research and Studies, 1-8.
Parsons, B. (Week 13). Module 5. Autism and Adulthood and Aging: Adulthood & Midlife.
Robison, J. E. (2013, October 7). What is Neurodiversity? Psychology Today.
Schaap-Jonker, H., Roekel, J. v.-v., & Sizoo, B. (2012). [The God image in relation to autistic traits and religious denomination]. Tijdschr Psychiatr, 419-428.
Waddington, E. M., & Reed, P. (2017). Comparison of the effects of mainstream and special school on National Curriculum outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder: an archive‐based analysis. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 132-142.
Wells, S. (2020, May 27). A neurodiverse God? The Christian Century.
Wright, C. (Week 7). Module 3. Autism in Middle Childhood and Adolescence: Educational Programs.
Wright, S. (Week 14). Module 5. Autism in Adulthood and Aging: Aging & Later Life.
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