Today, we celebrate the lives and work of 2 Episcopal priests; Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle. Both of whom lived and worked in the late 1800’s, both of whom became heroes within the deaf community.
But in order to fully understand and appreciate who these men were and what their work still signifies to the deaf community even to this day – we first have to take a look at what it meant to be deaf in the 19th century America.
I must begin by saying that religion has not been kind to the deaf community. 9 out of 10 deaf children were and are born to hearing parents. And, I tell you the truth, hearing parents who discover their child is deaf just cannot see this event as a blessing, as a gift from God. Usually, parents feel a crushing sense of guilt and wonder what they’ve done wrong? The deafness is seen as; punishment for sin, or is believed to be a result of possession by an evil spirit. The deafness is seen to be an evil in and of itself. That was true in the 19th century and it is true even now. How deeply do these feelings of guilt and/or rejection run? Well, today, less than 20% of hearing parents learn American Sign Language or learn to communicate effectively with their deaf children. In 19th Century America, that percentage was actually a great deal lower.
As late as 1817, there were no deaf schools in America. American Sign Language was unheard of and the deaf remained largely uneducated. They were truly handicapped – but not by their lack of hearing, rather they were handicapped by their lack of education.
By 1830, education of the deaf in America had taken many great strides forward, thanks to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet the father of the priest we are celebrating today and the founder of the 1stdeaf school in America. Because of his many and mighty efforts at establishing deaf education in America, others were inspired to do the same. So that by 1830 (just 15 years later), America had gone from having no deaf schools at all to having hundreds of deaf students who were learning sign language and how to read and write. There were now deaf schools in New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio. Soon, there were a great many deaf folks who were graduating from college and entering professions such as; doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc… But the one profession most deaf people were drawn to, the one profession closest to their hearts was deaf education. It soon came to be that the majority of teachers of deaf children were deaf themselves.
What a victory for Dr. Gallaudet and all of his associates! To bring the American deaf out of a world of isolation and away from the debilitating handicap of ignorance – to bring the deaf into both community and empowerment! And all within a space of just 15 years.
This was the world our first priest, Thomas Gallaudet, was born into. He was born to a hearing father and a deaf mother. He sawhis father take deafness as a state and the deaf as a community of people that religion had said was cursed by God and innately evil… He saw his father and mother prove all of those negative ideas completely wrong. He learned growing up, from experience, that the birth of every child (hearing or deaf) was a blessing. The deaf community was a good, intelligent, loving and productive community – capable even of producing the most excellent scholarship, when given the proper education and tools to work with. Fortunately, for the deaf community and the world, it was a lesson that Reverend Thomas Gallaudet would never forget. For religion was to deal the deaf community yet another cruel and nearly fatal blow. One that Thomas Gallaudet would have to meet head-on, both as a priest and educator.
Okay, so now enter a Roman Catholic and Italian priest name Giulio Tarra, who also took a leading position in deaf-education. His speeches are well-known and reviled among the leaders of the deaf-community even today.
Father Tarra arrived on the scene and began to teach that Sign Language was far too sensual, that it was leading the deaf into sin and contributing to their damnation. Where would he get such a crazy idea? Well, if you were ever really to watch deaf people use Sign Language, you very quickly learn that the deaf are extremely visual people. They not only use their hands and signs to communicate, they also use body postures and extremely animated facial expressions. Some would even say, exaggeratedfacial expressions… So, if a deaf person is describing a very angry fight that ends in murder, their exaggerated, angry facial expressions and fierce body postures really can become quite alarming to someone who is not used to sign language and deaf communication. To Fr. Tarra, it appeared as if the deaf person was indeed experiencing murderous anger – ready to strike, as opposed to just telling a story and he blamed the sensuality, the physicality of Sign Language. Likewise, we can imagine that the exaggerated facial expressions and seductive body postures of a deaf person telling a love story in Sign Language would have really been both threatening and revolting to Fr. Tarra. He would, in that case, have said that Sign Language was leading the story-teller and the audience into sexual sin!
Fr. Tarra also despised Sign Language as being quite simply “primitive mimicry”, incapable of abstract thought. What he is saying is; Sign Language cannot convey ideas like; Faith, Hope, Charity, God. Therefore, the person is just as ignorant as an animal and his ignorance condemns his soul to Hell… This was not at all true, of course. Sign Language does convey abstract ideas like God, Faith and Love. But it is what Fr. Tarra believed and taught nonetheless. So, for all these reasons, for the good of society and for the salvation of deaf souls, Fr. Tarra demanded that all Sign Language be completely forbidden and all deaf persons must be taught to lip-read and to speak.
And that is exactly what happened. All over the world, deaf teachers were driven out of the classrooms, Sign Language was forbidden, deaf heroes and deaf history were tossed into the nearest garbage can.
The result of all this? Complete isolation for the deaf child, who no longer has any deaf adults to look up to. There’s a 90% chance both of his folks are hearing, there are no more deaf teachers and no deaf heroes mentioned in school. This child is alone.
More, the deaf child has an extremely difficult time learning spoken or written English, unless he has American Sign Language to compare it with. It’s an impossible task. So, all of education is drastically effected. From this point on, the average 16 year old deaf student reads as poorly as an 8 year old hearing child. In other words, from this day forward, most deaf adults are unable to even read a newspaper. Even in his best subject, math, he is 4 grades behind… Most deaf children are no longer graduating from high-school, - so college is out of the question. And for those few deaf who do graduate college, they are literally forbidden to teach or work with the deaf.
Furthermore, being set up for failure, the child internalizes not only the disability label, but the failure label too. This, combined with the frustration of not being able to communicate with or understand the world around him, leads to psychological depression and disturbance.
This is what religion has done for the deaf community.
Science too, though, was proving itself to be cruel to the deaf community. Beginning with Darwin’s theory of evolution and survival of the fittest. Scientists and other professional thinkers took Darwin’s theory and ran away with it in directions that poor Darwin never intended – I believe that if he had foreseen some of the uses his theory was going to be put to, he would have burned the manuscript before it was published and never said a word… In any case there were many professionals who used Darwin’s theory to more or less start rating people on a scale from 1 to 10. Those who were “10’s” were the youngest, tallest, strongest, healthiest, fittest, most good looking and the most human. Those people who were “1’s” were the oldest, the smallest, the weakest, the most frail, the handicapped, the ugly and the least human – more like animals. The deaf were placed in the “1’s” category, the most like animals category. And because the Philosopher Descartes was teaching that animals were not sentient, had no mind, no feelings, no soul – they were simply put here for our use, abuse and garbage – this teaching, combined with that of Darwin’s was extended to the deaf. They were ignored, left ignorant and impoverished, enslaved, prostituted, institutionalized and forgotten, even put on display in freak shows – treated every which way, but they were not being educated and not being given societal or religious value. And, according to Descartes’ teaching, that was okay – because they were not sentient, had no mind, no feelings, no soul.
As I’ve said earlier, having grown up well within the heart of an active, vibrant and academic deaf community; Thomas Gallaudet knew from his own experiences that the deaf were not cursed by God. He knew that deafness was not innately evil. He also understood the nature of sign-language – he knew that sign-language was very picturesque and he was not at all intimidated or threatened by the exaggerated facial expressions or body postures that accompanied the finger-signs. He knew the deaf were not stupid, that both the people and their sign-language were capable of conveying abstract ideas, such as; God, faith and love… Finally, he also knew that the deaf community needed to be both protected and nurtured, and that he loved these people enough to do just that.
Thomas Gallaudet first became a deaf educator, just like his father. Teaching all of his students sign language, then spoken and written English and the rest of their academic subjects. Setting his students firmly among the “family” of the deaf school, among community, among successful deaf adults and heroes. He set them up for success, calling them out to be the best they could possibly be and fully live up to their full potential. He empowered them – so they could discover they were loved and their lives could be of real consequence to the Community that surrounded them. He did everything in his power to lead his pupils on to discover that their lives had real value and worth.
It was around this time that Thomas Gallaudet met and married Miss Elizabeth Budd, who was deaf. This was and is most unusual. The vast majority of deaf people, like 9 out of 10, marry other deaf people. Because only another deaf person has shared their experiences, has shared their language, their heroes, their history and culture. Yet, both Dr. Gallaudet and his son (Reverend Gallaudet) were married to deaf women. For me, this represents just how great an impact their efforts and work had on the deaf community. It demonstrates just how much they were accepted and loved by this community.
Thomas Gallaudet was ordained in 1851, and in 1852 he established St. Ann’s Church in New York, especially for deaf persons - with services primarily in sign-language… This is so incredibly important! Once again, he is establishing a community for the deaf, so that none need be isolated. He is conducting the services in sign-language, just like his classes – so that the language and the culture it carries with it are so firmly entrenched that men like Fr. Giulio Tarra cannot rip it away. They may drive sign-language under-ground or into the closet, but it will remain all the same – and generations of Gallaudets will step forward to defend it.
I’m quite sure that Father Gallaudet refused to tolerate any of religion’s or science’s negative and prejudiced teachings to walk through the doors of St. Ann’s. No! Inside St. Ann’s, the birth of every deaf child was a blessing, and the child was possessed only by the Holy Spirit of Love. Every deaf person was a child of God; fully human, fully sentient, blessed with a good mind, a heart and a soul. Made to be loved, nurtured and brought to their full potential by the entire community of St. Ann’s Church… We will never know how many people Father Gallaudet rescued from isolation, how many people he rescued from ignorance, how many people he rescued from depression and suicide. But I can tell you, it was a significant number.
As a result of Father Gallaudet’s work, congregations for the deaf were established in many cities. Where the joyous scenes of St. Ann’s were played out over and over again.
No saint stands alone, he or she often has co-workers and their combined efforts often inspires others… This is true for this story as well. We began with Dr. Gallaudet, who passed the torch to his son (Reverend Gallaudet), and he in turn passed the torch to Reverend Henry Winter Syle.
Father Henry Winter Syle was deaf from a very early age. He was fortunate enough to be both a student of Reverend Gallaudet and a parishoner at St. Ann’s. Which means, he received an excellent education and strong community support. As a result he did not become one of those cast-off, ill-used and abused deaf men who cannot even read a newspaper. Far from it! Instead, he was empowered enough to attend Trinity College (Hartford, CT.), St. John’s (Cambridge, England) and Yale. This incredible academic achievement, alone, qualifies him to be a deaf-hero, but there’s much more. In 1876, he became the first deaf person to be ordained a priest by the Episcopal Church in the United States. He, too, established a congregation, a community for the deaf, in 1888. And like his spiritual father, Reverend Gallaudet, Fr. Syle built a protective hedge around his community. He nurtured them, educated them and never allowed them to think of themselves as; handicapped, ignorant, less than human, stupid animals cursed by God. No. He gave them the gift of a happy and healthy self, an empowered self. He gave them each other. And He demonstrated the love of God for them, and he gave them a powerful and loving God.
Now, if Father Thomas Gallaudet and Father Henry Winter Syle were able to stand before you today, I can well imagine that they would say something to you like this;
“Brothers and Sisters, we are honored that you have dedicated this celebration to remembering our hard work among you. We are grateful and we thank you very much – but the work we began while we were among you is not finished and there are some things we’d like for you to think about or to know about the deaf community today…”
First of all, we’d like for you to answer this question: Do you know any deaf people? If your answer is “no”, why not? There are millions of deaf people in America, where are they?
Can you name more than one deaf actor or actress? If you answer is “no”, why not?
And, do you know what happens when hearing parents first discover that their child is very hard of hearing or deaf? Their doctor begins to make appointments for the child with otologists, audiologists, speech therapists, perhaps even surgeons for cochlear-implantation… But the doctor will not speak to them about the necessity of learning American Sign Language (less than 20% of parents learn Sign Language or even learn to effectively communicate with their deaf child), the doctor will not mention anything about nearby deaf schools or deaf clubs. The doctor will not mention anything about the child’s need to be among other deaf children, to be among successful deaf adults, or the isolation and psychological devastation that child will feel if this need is not met.
Do you know, it is the law that every completely deaf child is forced to wear two hearing aids to school everyday – even though they do no earthly good at all? To the deaf child, this is very stigmatizing – much like the yellow star the Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. It is a sign that they are handicapped, that they are not normal – that they are medicalized, a perpetual patient that has something wrong with them, something so wrong that it cannot be fixed.
Do you know, that most cochlear-implants are complete failures? That the deaf child who receives one of these mutilating and savaging surgeries, is still sent to speech therapists in order to learn to lip-read and to speak?… Do you know that the child who receives a cochlear implant has large, ugly scars and feels like “Frankenstein” – especially since most people can’t help but stare and other kids are cruel enough to make fun of them? Between the visits to the speech therapist, the ever present scars, and the stares of those around him, this child will always be painfully aware that Society thinks he is broken, Society thinks there is something WRONG with him and he needs to be fixed. This is called internalizing the handicap and failure label.
Do you know, that for some time now, deaf schools are being closed down and deaf children are being mainstreamed into ordinary schools? Imagine it, the child is the only deaf person in the class. Even if the child somehow has learned Sign Language, there is no interpreter provided – the child is expected to learn to lip-read and to read English, an impossible task without Sign Language to compare it to. The child doesn’t know how to communicate to the teacher, doesn’t understand what is going on in the classroom, has no way to communicate with other students and feels not only at a total loss, but feels like a stupid, handicapped, failure. Is it any wonder that most deaf children do not graduate from High-school, that most deaf adults cannot even read a newspaper? Is it any wonder that only 2 deaf children out of 100 will go on to college?… Is it any wonder that deaf people marry other deaf people? Is it any wonder that deaf people so very completely shun the company of hearing people?
Okay, so what can we do to demonstrate Christ’s reconciliation and love to this oppressed community who live within our country, but live within another culture so completely apart from our own? So close, yet so far away! What can we do?
The first step is stop looking at them as a “problem” that needs to be fixed. The deaf do not see themselves as handicapped, they see themselves as a linguistic minority and as a culture that simply has a different way of being. And so, when Jesus heals the deaf in the Scriptures, the deaf community understands those verses to mean that Jesus brought enlightenment and understanding to that person, not that he actually healed or “fixed” them.
The second step is to approach the deaf community in the spirit of love and reverence. Love, after all, is the universal language. For example, virtually everyone understands what a hug or a smile means… Jesus said: “The one who does not gather with me, scatters.” Dr. Gallaudet and Reverend Gallaudet, and Fr. Henry Winter Syle were good workers within the harvest, they understood that love covers a multitude of sins, and so while they gathered their people together through Sign-language, they bound their people together with love.
These are the two most important steps out of so many that can be taken. These are the two that must be taken, even if no further steps are taken.
And, now, I say;
“Ephphatha”! Be opened!…
Let us all be opened to the understanding and enlightenment that only Christ can give. “Ephphatha”! Let all of our hearts be opened in a great outpouring of Christ’s love.
“Ephphatha”! Be opened!
Amen.
