Disability as an Ecumenical and Ecclesiological Concern

Abstract This article compares two documents from the World Council of Churches (WCC): The Church: Towards a Common Vision , published by the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order in 2013, and The Gift of Being , published as a joint venture by the WCC’s Ecumenical Disabilities Advocates Network and Faith and Order and presented to the WCC central committee in June 2016. This article explores the concerns of persons with disabilities as ecumenical and ecclesiological issues. These issues tend to be understood as questions of human rights and of working against practices that discriminate against persons with disabilities. However, this article explores how our understanding of these concerns changes if they are seen as ecumenical and ecclesiological questions.