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The Church, Autism and Men

1: The Church and individuals on the autistic spectrum

By Craig Millward

The world is becoming a friendlier place for the 700,000 people in the UK who have an autistic spectrum diagnosis. It is fairly widely understood that the spectrum is a wide one and that, whilst some individuals may display characteristics that are recognisable to those who know what to look for, there are many more on the spectrum who struggle silently. They may have learned to fit in, but often still feel the world to be an alien environment.

I know, because I am one of them. I didn't receive a diagnosis until I was in my mid-50s, and it took me a good few years to reprocess key events in my life in the light of this new knowledge. Moments of enlightenment came alongside periods of deep mourning as I grasped the reality that, despite every extreme effort I had made to fit in, I was never going to glide as effortlessly through life as I dreamed I would once I understood the hidden scripts that everyone else seemed to know instinctively, but were a complete mystery to me. Every time I learned a script it changed. Fitting in was just too much hard work.

By the time I received my diagnosis I had a 30+ year career as a church minister behind me. My natural abilities to arrange ideas in unique ways and connect disparate themes into a coherent narrative made me a popular preacher. I knew I had weaknesses, so I empowered those with the requisite strengths to share leadership with me. I saw instinctively that much of church culture was foreign to those on the edge, and to potential newcomers, so I changed the culture. The church I led grew and flourished. But I didn't know why insights that were so blindingly obvious to me were opaque to others. I became a conference speaker, a fringe academic, a mentor to students, a writer of resources, a coach of leaders. All the time blind to my own differently-wired brain.

There are plenty of resources out there to assist individuals on the spectrum to understand what to expect of church. And guides for church leaders to help them understand how to help differently-wired people to fit in. I don't intend to repeat this advice in this series of blogs. Instead, I contend that, if things we do in church make little sense to someone with Asperger's Syndrome, maybe they just don't make sense at all.

The boy who called out the Emperor who wore no clothes was probably on the Spectrum. Or if not, since it is only a parable, every feature of his behaviour can be understood by an Aspie. Please forgive me if anything in this blog series offends you - I am only trying to tell what I believe to be the truth.

Bibliography

'They just can't help it' article from The Guardian
Steve Silberman - Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about People who Think Differently (Allen & Unwin, London, 2015)
Simon Baron-Cohen - The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (Penguin, London, 2003)