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The Church, Autism and Men

4: God and the male brain - part three

By Craig Millward

In the second post in this series I referred to two articles which describe the reasons individuals on the autistic spectrum (who, statistically speaking, will be predominantly male) are less likely to believe in God. In the last post we looked at the difficulty people on the autistic spectrum have reading visual messages which it harder for them to attribute feelings and emotions to God. These struggles can also make it a great deal more difficult to see beyond the most literal interpretations of words used and may explain why churches tend to have far more women members than men, and why female attendees often seem more engaged with a great deal of the activity that goes on in ‘church’ services.

Many of the hymns and songs we sing, prayers we pray and sermons we hear are, by their very nature, upbeat, encouraging, faith-filled and sometimes overwhelmingly positive. But what if there are a group of individuals who are trying to engage with us but are simply left swimming in superlatives by the end of a gathering? The feelings, emotions and exhortations spoken about, and apparently experienced, in church are as foreign to them as a random collection of Egyptian hieroglyphs. And suppose this happens every single week, bolstered by the best testimonies and stories of ‘breakthrough’ being experienced by other people?

Individuals with AS will tend, not just to take words literally, but to assume that people mean exactly what they say. In everyday life this can make them appear gullible. But in Church it can also give rise to a great degree of frustration when they assume the words we sing about God, and about other people's experience of him, are literally true… and that, as the song will often say, are being experienced by everyone else in the room at that very moment. This can be hugely demoralising if there is no way to process the accumulated disappointment that results from repeated exposure to such events.

The problem, I guess, is that there is no point writing a song about an experience that happens just occasionally. But suppose the words projected on the screen on a Sunday are never going to be experienced, in any sense of that word, by a selection of people who are standing amongst us each week? Part of the issue is that the very act of singing generates a feeling of elation in some people, and that the ‘high’ is sometimes mistaken for the presence or approval of God.

As I have suggested previously, it is my understanding that many men may experience similar challenges due to the way their brains are wired. Men are often socialised to trust logic over emotion and, when placed in an environment when feelings seem to predominate, they can quickly lose their bearings.

I am not suggesting we should aim to keep feelings at bay when Christians gather together to seek God. I do believe, however, that it is essential that we foster an environment where questions can be asked without fear of being stigmatised and where differences in our make up can be owned and celebrated. There is a tendency within some Christian subcultures to normalise what is, by definition, the rare experience of elation and ignore the existence of mourning, and even confusion and doubt within our core scriptures. We surely don't need a person with autism to tell us that the truth is important. And I seem to recall Jesus saying that it sets us free.