Bethesda Lutheran Communities, affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and based in Watertown, Wis., serves people with developmental disabilities. Its support services include religious education. The media contact is Julie Timm.

Joni and Friends is an international disability ministry and advocacy group in Agoura Hills, Calif., founded in 1979 by Joni Eareckson Tada. It has a number of field service branches. Melany Ethridge handles media queries.

L’Arche is a faith-based residential community and movement founded in 1964 in France by Jean Vanier for people with developmental disabilities. L’Arche is now an international federation of communities. L’Arche came to the United States in 1972 and now has 18 American communities.

FaithNet of the National Alliance on Mental Illness is an outreach effort to religious communities to enhance understanding of the value of spirituality in responding to and recovering from mental illness.

The American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities has a Religion and Spirituality Division. Its mission is to promote spiritual growth for people with developmental disabilities. Margaret Nygren is executive director and CEO.

John Swinton is a nurse, ordained minister and theologian who teaches at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He has written extensively on the theology of disability; his publications include Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science Needs the Church (as co-editor) and the article “The Body of Christ Has Down’s Syndrome: Theological Reflections on Disability, Vulnerability […]

Rabbi Judith Abrams of Houston co-edited Jewish Perspectives on Theology and the Human Experience of Disability.

Christopher R. Smit teaches mass media, including television, gender and sexuality, and popular music at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. Smit’s essays on disability, media, popular music and culture have appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Studies in Popular Culture and elsewhere. His current book project concerns theology, disability and the Christian faith. He is also a singer/songwriter.

Erik Carter is the author of Including People With Disabilities in Faith Communities: A Guide for Service Providers, Families & Congregations and an associate professor of special education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.