Autism and belief: beyond the stereotypes

Reflect on living with the illogical beauty of feeling hemmed in by faith.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A theatrical set door stands in the middle of a snowploughed road between fields of snow under a blue sky.

Photo by Zach Vessels on Unsplash.

Do autistic people believe in God? Can they? The stereotype says no. The stereotype says that autistic people have a preference for all things logical, scientific and systematic, and therefore God, accessed only through the medium of metaphor and subjective experience, must be beyond the autistic ken.

But we all know about stereotypes – they rarely serve us well. As it turns out that there are quite a few autistic people in churches, worshipping a God in whom they supposedly cannot believe. In fact, at the Centre for Autism and Theology (based at the University of Aberdeen) we have whole programme of research dedicated to understanding what it means to be an autistic person of faith.

It is not only true that autistic people can and do believe in God (some, anyway), but also autistic Christians can teach the rest of us a thing or two about the assumptions we make when it comes to why people live a life of faith. For example, if we assume that anyone with a preference for all things logical, scientific, and systematic is not going to believe in God, then we are also assuming that that faith is some kind of considered, intellectual choice; a conscious decision that Christians have made on how to approach the world and the experience of living in it.

But is faith really a choice? For many centuries the church was mired in this very argument about free will versus predestination. The matter never really got settled, indeed some theologians still earn their bread and butter by carrying the discussion on. Meanwhile, here in the academic cheap seats (so called ‘practical’ theology) we ask a different question: not do people have free will to choose the Christian faith, but do people feel like they have free will to choose the Christian faith? And what difference does this feeling make?

If I reflect on my own life as a Christian, I know there have been times when I’ve stumbled into prayer, angry or in despair (often both), feeling as if I don’t like my faith all that much. Or that maybe that God just doesn’t like me. More than once I’ve prayed, “I’m going to keep following you, God, no matter how hard you make this!” Is this great faith, or just sheer bloody-mindedness? I like to believe that I can walk away from practicing my faith, but can I really walk away from having it?

My research with the centre for autism and theology has been an education in how to live with the illogical beauty of feeling hemmed in by faith.

At one point in the Old Testament a psalm-writer speaks of feeling “hemmed in” by God. This resonates. My life is a patchwork quilt of being faithful to the Christian call, but also unfaithful, reluctantly faithful, faithful in public but, frankly, a bit iffy in private… yet every time I get to the very edge, somehow God is there. I cannot rationally explain God’s persistence in always catching me before I fall into utter, irrevocable faithlessness. It is certainly not logical. It is most certainly beyond my ken.

My research with the centre for autism and theology has been an education in how to live with the illogical beauty of feeling hemmed in by faith. Autistic Christians have taught me so much in the way that many of them persist in attending church, even when it is being stated or implied, not only by their non-Christian acquaintances but also by other churchgoers, that they are simply not meant to be there. Some have wandered from church to church and from denomination to denomination, trying to find acceptance and welcome. As one autistic young woman put it:

‘Going to church is just part of what Sunday is… [but] a lot of spiritual life is just up in the air and me working things out.’

When the purpose is counting bums-on-seats, research does tend to show that autistic people are more likely to be atheists. At the same time research also tends to show that socialisation is a big factor in the formation of faith. Perhaps it is little wonder then, that a group who often find themselves excluded socially are less likely to nurture and develop a faith. But then again, how do we explain a whole cohort of people who still have their bums on the Sunday seats and their hearts engaged in worship? Autistic people can and (some) do believe in God, and they keep engaging with church, working things out. Is this great faith, or sheer bloody-mindedness? At any rate such resilience is certainly not logical or rational, but perhaps it is just another thing that is beyond my ken.

Article

Change

Death & life

Mental Health

Psychology

29 November 2024

4 min read

Letting go and welcoming in

Your new life will cost you your old one. It's OK.

Mica Gray

Mica Gray is a wellbeing practitioner working in adult mental health. She is training to be a counselling psychologist.

A family with a mother holding a small child, look up and to the left.

Eduardo Fernando on Unsplash.

Last week my family laid my great-grandmother to rest. A few hours afterwards, we celebrated my cousin's birthday.

It felt strange to go from a place of death to a place of life in the space of a day. One minute I was throwing flowers into the open grave of a woman whose earthly life has come to an end and the next I was in a restaurant handing flowers to a girl whose life as a woman is just beginning. The contrast was a bit surreal, but much of life is like that; beginnings and endings flowing into each other. The transition between the two events was made easier by the fact that the funeral did not really feel like one. In alignment with my great-grandmother’s spiritual beliefs, the ceremony was very simple. It was over in less than four hours and featured a short reading of spiritual texts and quiet, reverent reflection. There were no solemn looks, no songs of lament, no dirt shoveling, no loud wailing or aunties and uncles dancing to Beres Hammond at the reception. Instead, there was just the quiet nod of acknowledgement that her spirit has journeyed on.

Though I missed the eulogies and shared tears that usually detail funeral services, I appreciated the simplicity of the ceremony. I appreciated the way death was described as a transition of the spirit into a new kind of life, the way it was treated as something so normal. Which in fact it is. Death is happening around us every day yet as a society it is something that we struggle with - whether it’s the death of a loved one, a career, a relationship or a part of ourselves. Our attempts to curate eternity with anti-aging procedures and technological permanence betray how deeply uncomfortable we are with the inevitability of endings in our modern world.

And to be honest, of course we are. The loss of loved ones shakes entire worlds. Job losses throw our lives into instability and leave us feeling unsafe. The loss of youth and power challenges long held ideas of identity and invites existential anguish. Divorce carries with it its own special grief. The pain of these experiences makes it hard for us to embrace when things are ending in our lives and make it hard for us to let go, even when we need to.

And we do often need to.

What fears, habits, thoughts or behaviours need to be given to the earth? What cycles or patterns do we need to bury and mourn so that we can usher in new and better ways of being?

Lately I’ve been thinking about the saying ‘your new life will cost you your old one’ and how true that is in many areas of our lives. In my own life, I recently started a new role at work that has cost me the comfort of my old one. I have had to give old versions of myself to the ground and shed skin so that I can continue to grow into the space of it. This new year of doctoral study has cost me Saturdays spent lazing around with friends, new relationships have cost me old patterns of behaviour and new depth in old relationships have cost me pride and ego.

At each point of transition, I have been asked to leave something behind to experience something new and it seems like so many of us at the moment are being asked to do the same. People are moving houses, leaving jobs, leaving seats of power, churches, ending relationships, wrestling with friendships, forming new ones and experiencing ego-deaths.

Like my cousin, some people are exchanging adolescence for adulthood. Others, like my great-grandmother, are exchanging their earthly bodies for their spiritual ones.

In this moment individually, politically and spiritually - it seems like we’re collectively being asked the question: what are we needing to let go of? and then what do we need to welcome in? What fears, habits, thoughts or behaviours need to be given to the earth? What cycles or patterns do we need to bury and mourn so that we can usher in new and better ways of being?

When life asks us questions like this it can feel overwhelming or intimidating to confront, but it is always necessary. I have found that when you do not allow yourself to grow out of old skin you will suffocate within it. The times of transition that we find ourselves in ask us to trust that something greater is unfolding. They ask us not to resist change but to flow with it. Not to forsake the present or the future by holding on to what has gone to the grave, but to be open to what is next.

As strange as it was last week to celebrate a birthday after a funeral, it was a reminder that though endings are painful we can embrace them because they usher in new beginnings. It was a reminder that funeral clothes can be exchanged for dancing shoes and that mourning can be exchanged for joy.

Overall, the day was a reminder that if we make room for it, life can follow death, both in this earthly life, and into the next.

Selah.

This article was first published on Substack. Follow Mica there.