Deaf Church or Hearing Church

While many of the people in the deaf community can benefit from interpreted and/or captioned church services. I believe the culturally Deaf (prelingual deaf who use ASL as their first language) will likely never feel like they fit or belong in a hearing church. This isn't true of everyone, but I believe this may be the reason why very few prelingually Deaf individuals are found at hearing churches.

Hearing churches try to make deaf people feel at home in their churches but all deaf people are not alike. Hearing churches that try to minister to the culturally Deaf by bringing them into their church and providing an interpreter or captioning may be compared to missionaries who go to another country and try to make the people worship the American way and to learn from an English Bible. The people never quite feel like it's their church--never feel at home.

Best case scenario, it would be ideal for the culturally Deaf to have their own church where they worship in their own way and with a Bible that is in their heart language. Without this they will likely never feel it’s their church and they will likely also feel a distance from God. See the Door International website for more about Deaf Churches.