Thread by @AnnaCaudill4

@Tish_H_Warren I urge you to reconsider this op-ed. Millions of disabled & high-risk ppl are not safe attending in-person church. The message from your huge platform is the church doesn’t care whether we can attend or whether we live or die. nytimes.com/2022/01/30/opi…

2. The message from the church at large in America is that disabled & immune-compromised ppl are an annoyance the church should be protected from. It’s been that way since an Assoc of Christian Schools Int’l atty told Congress the ADA would HARM churches. books.google.com/books?id=gyduZ…

3. @Tish_H_Warren your op-ed telling churches to drop the most accessible part of worship for folks like me during this endless pandemic shows that even though I’ve been in church my whole life, taught Sunday school, gone on mission trips, etc., I am not worth considering.

4. @Tish_H_Warren I have chronic severe asthma. I take 2 different inhalers daily, carry a rescue inhaler & a pulse oximeter at all times. I’ve had pneumonia twice in the last 9 years, shingles 5x, & mono. My pulmonologist follows me closely.

5. My asthma escalated after @Shane_E_Caudill & I adopted two disabled young boys from China. To access one’s medical care, I drove 1600 miles every other week for over a year to see his specialist. In 12 years the boys have had 24 surgeries, & I rarely get a full night’s sleep.

6. @Tish_H_Warren I haven’t been to church since Sunday, February 23, 2020. It’s the longest time in my almost 50 years that I haven’t been inside a church. I trust my pulmonologist, who is also a Christian, when he tells me I can’t go. Online worship is a lifeline.

7. Texting the peace of Christ to friends during online service is a lifeline.
Despite a life of membership & service, what I hear when I read your op-ed is “Fuck you Anna. The church didn’t really need you before, & it’s just fine without you now.”
Is that your intent?

8. Last May, I attended a Carl Trueman lecture at Christ Presby Church’s school in Nashville. I was double vaxxed & knew others wouldn’t be masked/vaxxed. Trueman condemned disabled ppl for finding identity in disability community.
When you close the church to us, that happens.

9. @Tish_H_Warren I’m not the only Christian w/ chronic illness or disability saying this publicly. Use your search tools to find others. I’m not doing the work you get paid to do.
Listen to disabled ppl before you write alienating crap like this. Ask for input. Do better.

10. @Tish_H_Warren, I’m not the only one who read you that way. When you sound reasonable to those w/out disability & chronic illness, they follow your lead w/out thinking of us, too. With one column, you cut us from of the fellowship of believers. From communion. From life.

PS. Since @Tish_H_Warren is “off twitter” for now, I sure hope your team shares my 🧵 with you. People with disability & chronic illness bear God’s own image, too, & to ignore us is to reject that.

PS2 “You can’t speak of embodiment w/out accounting for the church’s continuing exclusion of disabled people.” 🔥

https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass/status/1487987788683399171?s=21