Christianity

Although religion and culture remain separate categories, the study of a religion cannot be successful without attention to how culture influences the expression of a religion and vice versa. [Page 121]An examination of Christianity and Deaf culture necessarily reveals the ways in which this relationship has been both harmful and helpful to Deaf lives. Historically, the balance between harm and help echoes larger cultural patterns of oralist conceptions of deafness and Deaf responses to the resulting oppression. This difficulty of separating religion and culture results in a diversity of encounters between Deaf cultures and Christianity.

One of the earliest Christian theologians to give attention to deaf people is Augustine of Hippo in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Augustine is largely vilified in Deaf Studies as originating the interpretation of Romans 10:17 that argues this scripture insists that faith comes through hearing and therefore excludes the use of signed languages. Leslie King notes that Luzerne Ray published an account of Deaf history in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb in 1848, which attributed this interpretation to Augustine. However, Ray’s account closely follows the sources of an 1823 publication by Joseph-Marie De Gerando, a prominent French champion of oralist education methods. Harvey Peet also wrote an influential article for the Annals in 1851 that repeated this attribution of an oralist interpretation of Romans 10:17 to Augustine. It was not until 1912 when Edward Fay published a corrective in the Annals that provided an interpretation of Augustine’s thought that relied on the original Augustinian sources. However, Deaf Studies scholars have repeatedly returned to the 1851 article by Peet in laying the blame for Christian oralism at the feet of Augustine. Leslie King’s own analysis of Augustine’s references to deaf people reveals a more helpful interpretation of Augustine’s comments. Augustine’s comments are couched in a dialogue with one of his pupils in the manner of philosophical and theological discourse. Although Augustine does state that the gestures used by the deaf people he and his pupil observe are inadequate for fully explaining matters of faith, he says this in the context of a larger argument that all human language, including spoken language, is inadequate to fully explain the mysteries of God. In a later passage, Augustine suggests that the gestural nature of the signed language he observes may actually do a better job than spoken languages in communicating religious mysteries as it seems to engage the body in a physical memory of the emotive content of a memory or story. Yet much of the positive import of this view of Augustine’s writing remains buried under years of oralist use of a single sentence of Augustine’s writing used to justify language bigotry and Deaf cultural responses to that oppression without a critical review of Augustine’s theological argument.

Education is another area in which Christianity has had a large impact on Deaf lives. In the 16th century, Spanish Benedictine monks began educating the children of noble families who were born deaf. Some of these deaf children were left in the care of monasteries because they served no benefit to their royal lineage, being unable to inherit property and titles due to their presumed uneducability. Susan Plann notes that Benedictine monks had a system of signs and gestures to communicate a variety of practical and religious concepts in order to conduct their daily lives under a vow of silence. This communication system made these monasteries places where being deaf was not an undue barrier and was progenitor of handshapes and signs still in use in signed languages today. However, some noble families charged monks with educating their deaf children in the ability to speak in order to facilitate their legal standings to inherit property and titles and keep wealth within their families if they were the only children capable of inheritance. This made these monasteries a progenitor of oralist education methods that denied the status of signed languages as a valid and complete form of human language. In the 18th century, the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds-Muets in Paris was founded by Charles-Michel de l’Épée. Harlan Lane chronicles the establishment and continuance of this school by Christian clergymen. In a story rooted in historical fact that has taken on mythical characteristics, l’Épée, a Catholic priest who had been frustrated in his attempts to be assigned to a parish, stumbled upon two Deaf women signing to each other. In this moment, he received an epiphany that this was his divine calling, to bring education and religious salvation to people like these women. His vision for a school for the deaf children of Paris was largely sustained by his [Page 122]religious motivations coupled with the financial and institutional support he was able to procure by appealing to the ethical obligations to care for the downtrodden that were prominent in 18th-century Christianity. A similar mixture of motivations led to the establishment of Deaf education in the United States in the early 19th century as the Second Great Awakening had unleashed a flurry of religiously motivated institution building. Congregationalist clergyman Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet established the first school for the Deaf in the United States, along with the Deaf French Catholic layman, Laurent Clerc. Clerc served as the primary teacher at this school while Gallaudet was largely occupied by traveling to garner financial and political support for funding the school by using appeals to Christian obligations to uplift their fellow humans. Unlike the Spanish educational efforts, the Paris school and American schools supported the use of signed languages and became sites of cultural development and a flourishing of Deaf identity. In the global South, Deaf schools are often the result of Christian missionary outreach. Many Deaf schools in Africa are the result of the efforts of Andrew Foster. Foster was the first African American graduate of Gallaudet University, and he spent the remainder of his life establishing Deaf schools. He was motivated by his Christian faith, and a great deal of his funding also came from Christian missionary sources. Catholic Christian missionary orders are another source of Deaf schools in the global South, as the worldwide network of support that Catholicism provides allowed for financial and personnel support to be extended into areas that had previously not established formal education for Deaf people.

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