A Protestant View of Physical Gestures in Church Life

There is an emerging crisis in churches across denominational lines concerning the place and presence of people with disabilities in congregations and parishes. The debate is over whether to integrate them into the total life of a congregation or to segregate them into some activities with others who are likewise disabled. Those who advocate their inclusion into the rush of church life, including worship, Sunday school programs, fellowship, and youth group activities, carry with them the hope that we will learn from one another’s different ways of being members of the body of Christ. However, the concern among others is that bringing people with disabilities like mental retardation into a church without special programs is a big mistake. Southern Baptist educator Gene Nabi asks, “are mentally retarded persons going to get the point of the Bible lessons?”

At issue is how we learn to receive the Good News of Jesus Christ. For a century or more, churches have been held captive by the public school paradigm of learning the Gospel. There is very little if any difference between how we learn in the public school or the church school. Whether it involves children’s ministry or adult education, pedagogical practice focuses on learning as an activity of the mind, rather than of mind, body, and spirit. And as the public schools have segregated people with disabilities out of the “normal” classroom into segregated programs, so churches have adopted the same approach, for learning the Gospel is said to be a thing of the mind, not of mind, body and spirit. But the human being is not primarily “mind,” but a complex, mysterious union of mind, body, and spirit.

Christians are a “peculiar people,” practicing what the world would consider strange gestures. Who else would love their enemies, lay down their life for friends, all the while praying without ceasing?

Both those labeled “disabled” and “able” are capable of learning gestures. Consider Sal, a “hugger,” a compassionate giver of hugs in the body of Christ. She would, if given the chance, throw herself upon you, with all 80 pounds of childhood kinetic energy, as she simultaneously asks whether she may hug you or not. I met Sal while she was living at an institution for children with disabilities. She was labeled mentally retarded, and as having an attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, plus a speech impediment, but this didn’t slow her down.

By the time I met Sal at this institution, she had been living there for over two years. After my first weeks at the hospital, I began what was called “Religious Story Time.” I would gather some 12 young people from her unit, between the ages of 8 and 13, to sing songs, read Bible stories, and pray together.

During these sessions, Sal would typically sit by my side, sometimes touching the side panels of the guitar as I strummed it to various tunes. But one day, as I sang “Jesus Loves Me,” Sal suddenly started bouncing up and down, and raised both hands high over her head. “I know that song,” she said. “Start it again,” she squealed in her delight at knowing the song. And singing it again, Sal revealed to everyone that she knew the hand signs for the entire song. We were amazed, staff and children alike. What was remarkable was that she had to have learned this song before she came to the hospital, because neither her speech pathologist nor I had ever taught her the hand gestures to the song, and she had never sung that song on the unit. Yet for over two years, Sal had known that song far better than we could have imagined possible! Finishing her hand gestures, with a big, knowing grin, she said, “I love that song. It’s one of my favorites. Can we sing it again?”

When talking with her mother a few weeks later, I found out that Sal had learned these gestures not by sitting in the front of the sanctuary with the other children during a children’s sermon, but by sitting and watching from the pew. She was not allowed to participate in the children’s sermon because of her disability.

The second story concerns Father Bill, an Episcopal priest. I had become good friends with him while working at the children’s hospital mentioned above. A particular worship service had awakened his sleeping faith when he was a boy. The place of this awakening was First Presbyterian Church in the small Georgia town where he was raised. He remembered distinctly one Sunday morning worship service when he was around age 12, rushing in at the last minute, late for worship, and sitting in the back of the church. He was surrounded by the leaders of the town: the mayor, the bank president, the owner of the general store, the principal of his school, and the ruling elders of the church. After the sermon was preached, which young Bill did not remember, he was caught off guard by the power of the next act in the liturgy of worshipping God: The people stood up for the Affirmation of Faith, using the Apostles’ Creed. Young Bill saw in their act of standing together and reciting this ancient creed in unison, especially the men with their strong, rich, baritone voices, a powerful act of Christian faith. They were acknowledging that there is a higher authority in life than even themselves, the mighty ones who seemed omnipotent and omniscient to many in this Georgian town. At that moment, by the gestures of both standing together and a declarative speech act, these men proclaimed that Jesus is Lord. The words, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord…” would never be the same again.

The final story concerns a congregation that stopped practicing an essential gesture of its denominational heritage. As an interim pastor, I came into this Presbyterian church, looking forward to baptizing a newly born infant. After preaching a Presbyterian sermon on the Presbyterian practice of baptizing infants as a sign and seal of God’s grace, and practicing the sacrament of infant baptism, I went home, enjoying the memories of that marvelous worship service.

That evening phone calls started coming in from distraught members. One parishioner wanted to find out if I really meant that the baby I had baptized that morning was a member of the church. When I replied that Presbyterians consider all who are baptized as members of the Church universal, the caller cursed me out. She was sure that it was impossible for this baby to be a Christian, for the baby had to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior first, after confessing his sins.

Unbeknownst to me, this small Presbyterian church had, except for rare occasions, stopped the practice of something that made us Presbyterians: infant baptism. The former pastor had never baptized any of his three young children. Instead of infant baptism, the majority of the baptisms were done as rationalistic baptisms (a kind of “believer’s baptism”). A new practice of gestures in the sacrament of baptism had come in and changed the very theology of this congregation, from that which was Presbyterian to something that was more Baptist in nature.

What these three stories have in common is the practice of particular gestures that not only enable us to communicate with one another, but, even more powerfully, shape and nurture our perspective on God in Christ. Gestures are learned and become part of our nature as we grow into the Christian community. Because Sal was born of Christian parents who attended worship with their children on Sunday morning, Sal learned the gestures to the song “Jesus Loves Me” that became so deeply embedded within her that she didn’t really need to practice them until the gestures were called forth. It was during worship, when the town’s leaders practiced the gestures of standing and engaging in the speech act of proclaiming the omnipotence of God that young Bill’s eyes, mind, and heart were opened to the majesty of God. Even something that may appear subtle, like changing the age for baptisms, reflects dramatic alterations in our sacramental gestures and theology.

Gestures are able to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between those who are disabled and those who are able-bodied, as well as between males and females, young and old. Both those who are considered “disabled,” like Sal, and able-bodied, like Fr. Bill, have been shaped by the gestures practiced in the Christian context. And it is gestures that, when practiced within a Christian context, make an immediate claim upon the lives of believers.

Prior to the formation of a personal conscience, and before any declaration of belief, a religion displays itself in the language of gestures, both spoken and enacted. Gestures are not one thing, belief and ritual another. Gestures enfold both beliefs and the rituals of worship.

By the gestures we practice we shall be known. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz asks the question, when is a wink a wink and when is it a twitch? Contracting one’s eyelid on purpose is different from reflexive behavior. Social psychologist George Herbert Mead wrote that a gesture comes from “within the given social group or community to stand for a particular act or response.” Knowing a culture by the practice of certain gestures is captured by a story about former New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia: One could switch the sound off the television and still know from his gestures alone whether he was speaking English, Italian, or Yiddish.

Among members of the deaf culture, whether people read lips or use American Sign Language, the primacy of gestures is easy to comprehend. Sign language is an iconic form of language, in which each gesture of the hand, arm, and sometimes body as a whole means something. Sign language gestures are so powerful a portrayal of speech that they have no analogue in verbal or written language.

Speaking itself can be a gesture, engaging both mind and body. In his book How to Do Things with Words, J. L. Austin discusses “performative utterances,” the issuing of which constitutes the performing of an action. So when the bride and groom are before the minister, and say “I promise” or “I do,” they are doing more than uttering words, they are committing an act.

Throughout the Bible, there are numerous examples of the power of gestures. Miracles performed by Moses involved a specific gesture in order for the miracle to occur. Moses was told to take the staff in his hand and strike the waters of the Nile, and they would be turned to blood (Exod. 7:17). Jesus took bread, “and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me'” (Lk. 22:20). To this day, ministers and priests alike read these words and act out the gesture of breaking bread, as modeled by Jesus.

Gestures give both immediate form and expression to what would otherwise be abstract and superfluous, and so we Christians are a “peculiar people” because, in part, of the “peculiar gestures” we perform. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes that “gestures embody as well as sustain the valuable and significant.” So we often learn to pray by learning to bend the body, a gesture. Indeed, gestures can be prayers.

As members of the body of Christ, we are called to follow Jesus (Jn. 21), itself a gesture. We practice certain gestures of love that are strange to the world. For example, Jesus tells us that we are to turn the other cheek when struck on the right cheek; if any one wants to take our coat, give him our cloak as well; and if someone forces us to go one mile, go the second one too. Give to everyone who begs from us; don’t refuse anyone who wants to borrow from us. According to Paul, members of the Church are supposed to do everything from outdoing one another in showing honor, living in harmony with one another, welcoming, admonishing, and greeting with a holy kiss to waiting upon and caring for one another.

In the debate on how we will welcome all who wish to come to church, we should remember that, as with Sal, gestures make a deep imprint. Regardless of one’s seeming abilities or limitations, gestures of faith can be learned and practiced.

The peculiar gestures of Christ’s body are being practiced all around us. Yet we fail to appreciate them. We might want to consider the gestures being acted out by the members of Christ’s body as God’s way of crafting us into the ways of God.