Shannon Dingle, author of Living Brave: Lessons from Hurt, Lighting the Way to Hope, is a Christian writer and activist.
Posts By This Author
My Church Can’t Possibly Pay for My Child’s Needs
Christopher Penler / Shutterstock
THIS YEAR, REPUBLICAN House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed through a budget resolution that calls for cutting at least $880 billion over 10 years from funding that includes Medicaid. A number of Republicans see these cuts as damaging to voters in their districts. Johnson’s job, however, is to advance the budget set forth by the Trump administration — a budget aimed at increasing spending on border security and deportations while also extending the tax cuts from the first Trump administration.
Those 2017 tax cuts saved households with incomes in the top 1% and the top 5% three times more than they did for those with incomes in the bottom 60%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Trump administration wants Medicaid to foot the bill, effectively stealing money from disabled children to give tax cuts to billionaires.
Medicaid is widely popular, but we can get so caught up in rhetoric and budget numbers that we fail to understand it. Broadly known as a joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income and disabled people, Medicaid also covers services for 47% of all disabled children in the United States. My daughter Zoe is one of them.
So is Mia, daughter of Adam and Joy Beth Crownover, who gave me permission to tell their story. Mia was born with lissencephaly, a condition in which the brain is smooth where it should be wrinkled. Many babies like Mia don’t live past their second birthday, but Mia is already 2.
When Christian Schools Decry Racism While Ignoring it Internally
Photo by Roel Dierckens on Unsplash
Parents and students across the country are challenging public and private schools to do something and not just say something.
The Coronavirus Crisis Exposes Society's Casual Ableism
Image via REUTERS/Brad Brooks
We’re the canaries in the mine, sensing the danger before it comes, and I hope for all of us that next time you’ll listen sooner. Maybe we can all learn the words of Philippians 2:4, to not only look to our own interested but also to the interests of others, or Jesus’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves.
The Full Affirmation of Disability Justice
Photo by mauro mora on Unsplash
We don’t know what disability justice is because we haven’t begun to reckon with our history of injustice.
Resisting Ableism in the American Church
Going to a new church as a disabled person is a brave act. Why? Because churches have a history of being unwelcoming to us.
I love the church. I can’t and won’t give the church up, no matter how wounded I feel. Yet, I know more disabled people who have left the church than who have stayed. I know more parents who have left after giving birth to or adopting children with disabilities than who have stayed. Whenever I’m asked about Christian speakers, writers, and leaders who are disabled, I pause to think if I can add any new names to the short list.