Last week I read a Church Times article about new Church of England guidance on prayer ministry and pastoral prayer. At first glance, it looks like a safeguarding resource. In reality, I think it could become one of the most important disability inclusion documents the Church has produced in recent years, outside the Fearfully and Wonderfully Made report.
The guidance warns against confusing God's voice with our own opinions, agendas, assumptions, and desires. It speaks about the dangers of prayer becoming controlling, harmful, or abusive, even when those involved have good intentions. It also encourages humility, discernment, and a willingness to hold our impressions provisionally rather than treating them as unquestionable divine truth.
The examples discussed in reporting focus heavily on conversion therapy, sexuality, safeguarding, and spiritual abuse. Those issues matter deeply. Yet the principle applies far beyond sexuality.
For disabled and neurodivergent people, this could be groundbreaking.
Many disabled Christians, like myself, have experienced prayer that wasn't really prayer. It was an agenda. Someone had already decided why disability existed, what God wanted, and had already decided what healing looked like. Prayer simply became the mechanism used to deliver that belief.
I've experienced healing prayer where the expectation was that disability would disappear. I've experienced theology that connected disability with spiritual deficiency. I've heard sermons linking disability to demons, dark spirits, and sin. I've watched disabled people blamed when healing did not happen because they supposedly lacked faith.
I once went to Ashford for a blogging event in the shopping centre. Unlike many of the other bloggers, I didn't want to miss church that morning. Within minutes of walking through the door, my friends and I became a prayer spectacle and were pushed towards things that simply weren't physically possible. When nothing happened, the blame quietly shifted towards us. Then, years later, came the experiences I've written about before with "Simon”.
The script is often predictable.
You are prayed for. Nothing changes. The explanation becomes your responsibility. You didn't believe enough, pray hard enough, or have enough faith. The disabled person always carries the burden. The theology never gets questioned.
What stands out in the new guidance is its recognition that human judgement can be mistaken for the voice of God.
That sentence should stop us in our tracks.
How much disability theology has been shaped by exactly that confusion?
How many assumptions about disabled people have been presented not as opinions, but as God's will?
How many people have been told they have demons because someone believed it?
How many people have endured exorcisms because somebody confused their interpretation with divine revelation?
How many disabled children and adults have been taught that God sees them as broken because a church leader believed it to be true?
The guidance does not specifically address disability in these ways, it’s focus mentions sexuality and conversion therapy, yet the implications are enormous.
If prayer ministry must remain humble, provisional, and aware of human fallibility, then many harmful assumptions about disability immediately become questionable.
Prayer is a gift.
The guidance rightly describes prayer as something that can bring comfort, healing, connection, and a deeper awareness of God.
It also reflects concerns raised in Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. One of the report’s recurring themes is how disabled and neurodivergent clergy are often interpreted through assumptions rather than understood through lived experience. When churches mistake their assumptions for God’s voice, harm follows.
That is the prayer ministry I believe in.
Prayer that listens, accompanies, supports, and honours the dignity of the person standing in front of you.
Not prayer that begins with the assumption that somebody's body or mind is a mistake. Not prayer that treats disabled people as projects, assumes every wheelchair user wants to walk or neurodivergence needs correcting. Not prayer that starts with a diagnosis and ends with somebody else's agenda.
Prayer should create space for God's voice, not amplify our prejudices.
If churches take this guidance seriously, disabled people might finally be asked what prayer they actually want. Healing could become broader than bodily correction. Prayer could focus on strength, justice, belonging, accessibility, community, courage, and hope rather than assuming a disabled body is the problem.
Most importantly, a culture where disabled and neurodivergent people are recognised as image bearers, gifts to the Church, and valued members of God's kingdom. This won't change overnight. The harm will continue until the culture catches up.
I am, however, hopeful. The most powerful part of this guidance is not what it says about prayer.
It's what it says about power.
It acknowledges that well-intentioned Christians can be wrong, that prayer can become controlling, and that spiritual practices can cause harm.
That honesty matters.
Prayer should always leave room for God's intervention. It should never become a vehicle for somebody else's assumptions about disability. That's the difference between prayer and projection.
One seeks God's will. The other seeks confirmation of our own.
For disabled people who have spent years being prayed at rather than listened to, that's not a small distinction. It's the difference between being welcomed as God's image bearer and being treated as somebody's project.
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