Disability, Faith, and the Church by Courtney Wilder Ph.D

Author:Courtney Wilder Ph.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Craig Satterlee

Craig Satterlee is an ordained pastor, professor of homiletics, and the bishop of the North/West Lower Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He is an adjunct faculty member of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he taught full-time for 13 years, and at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. Satterlee earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Michigan, a Master of Divinity and a Master of Sacred Theology in pastoral care at Trinity Seminary, and a master’s degree and his PhD in homiletics and liturgical history at Notre Dame University.46 Although his primary academic interest is in preaching, as a person living with a disability, Satterlee also employs a hermeneutic of disability and writes frankly about his experiences as a blind person with a call to ministry.

Like VanGilder, Diericx, and Stewart, Satterlee was raised in the church and found that his early religious experiences helped to shape his call to ministry.47 His family was Lutheran and was active in the church, and like Diericx he was the first child in his Sunday School to be “mainstreamed.” His mother communicated with the Sunday School teachers and involved herself in the education of the young people in the congregation in part to help supervise her son’s experience in Sunday School.48 Satterlee remained involved in church activities, and an experience with horseback riding in Luther League that he describes as a crisis for the Luther League leaders remains one of his formative experiences of being blind.49 He discerned a call to ministry as part of his participation in Eagle Scouts in eighth and nine grades but set that call aside, with plans to be a lawyer. During college Satterlee was told he didn’t think like a lawyer; he reflects that his world collapsed. He found that he “needed, not wanted” to pursue ministry and enrolled in Trinity Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.50 His vision had gotten worse during college and had been corrected by the time he entered seminary; the seminary agreed to support his pursuit of ordination and encouraged him to describe his needs, but made no promises for his success.

After graduation from seminary, finding a full-time call as a pastor proved to be difficult for Satterlee. Because congregations were uncomfortable with the prospect of a pastor who was visually impaired, he waited for an internship and was turned down by three congregations. Interview experiences included skepticism about his ability to provide pastoral care while relying on others for transportation, and one congregation offered him a position paying significantly less than the suggested salary guidelines because, as they explained, they weren’t getting “the whole package.”51 However, beginning with a part-time call and eventually moving on to full-time positions, Satterlee was able to serve congregations as a pastor and eventually returned to graduate school to earn a PhD.52

Teaching has provided Satterlee with both some models of effective community response to disability and the opportunity to clearly articulate his needs and expectations. Satterlee recalls that

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