The Associated Press

ATLANTA — Among the most humbling moments being confined to an electric wheelchair came when Shawana Bulloch realized it could prevent her from attending services at her Savannah church.

“The one place you should be able to go is in the church without assistance, you should be able to walk in — or roll in,” said Bulloch, who recently convinced her Full Gospel congregation to get a portable ramp.

The disabled faithful say such experiences remain common in houses of worship, stoked by ignorance of their needs and doctrines that paint disability as proof of sin.

Years after federal law required accommodations for the disabled, separation of church and state means houses of worship remain largely beyond the law’s reach. State laws and denominational measures meant to take up the slack are tricky to enforce and face resistance from churches who call them both costly and impractical. The issue is gaining new attention as the disabled community expands, fed by aging baby boomers and a growing number of people with intellectual disabilities who are demanding a more prominent place in the pews.

A Centers for Disease Control report released in April found that an estimated 1 in 5 U.S. adults —47.5 million people — reported a disability. The National Organization on Disability estimates less than half of disabled Americans attend services at least once a month compared to 57 percent without disabilities.

“While laws have their own power for forcing the public to not discriminate, faith communities really answer to a higher authority,” said Thomas Boehm, whose Nashville, Tenn.-based nonprofit Faith for All, counsels churches on improving access. “Why have they been so slow to respond, that’s the question.”

While the Americans with Disabilities Act sets accessibility requirements in government and public buildings, churches are mostly shielded by separation of church and state rights. Exceptions include secular businesses within a church building.

States have taken their own steps to ensure equal religious accommodations for the disabled. In Kansas, for example, officials have effectively applied the state’s own ADA-like law to houses of worship, according to state ADA coordinator Anthony Fadale. “It’s not a matter of necessarily enforcing it — it’s that people want to know what the law is,” said Fadale, who credits an eager religious community interested in creating churches with accessible bathrooms, benches and common areas.

Meanwhile Georgia has struggled to enforce measures on quasi-public buildings like churches. A 1995 opinion by the state attorney general deemed churches fell under the mandate.

Yet more than a decade later, do Georgia churches comply?

“I don’t think we can say that with certainty,” state ADA coordinator Mike Galifianakis said.

The law is enforced by local officials who can define a “reasonable accommodation.” That means a chair lift for an altar, for example, may be considered reasonable in one locality and excessive in another, he explained.

Yet activists say those areas are exactly where the disabled increasingly hope to access.

They want special touches like pew cutouts that let wheelchair users sit alongside other worshippers, or listening devices that aid in confession — accommodations that can be pricey, according to the Rev. Barbara Ramnaraine, coordinator of the Episcopal Disability Network, the denomination’s disabled ministry. Denominations like hers have passed efforts encouraging inclusion for years, but internal rules mean leaders can’t force a congregation’s hand.

“While we say our goal is accessibility in all congregations, neither the secular law nor the law of the Episcopal church makes that possible,” Ramnaraine said. That leaves it to churches to make including disabled worshippers a focus, often with little guidance.

“Even congregations that have a decent level of awareness, many of them have stopped at basic accommodations,” said Mark Crenshaw, of the consulting group Interfaith Disability Connection.

They include St. John Neumann, a Roman Catholic church in the Atlanta suburb of Lilburn. The church’s new $6.2 million worship space will include a moveable lectern to accommodate liturgy for those with trouble walking and textured flooring to help blind worshippers navigate the sanctuary, Monsignor David Talley said.

“Those of us who have worked in the ministry know the disabled are out there, (but) they become invisible to most folks,” Talley said. “We want to invite them to make themselves present.”

Advocates say catering to the disabled can help boost congregations with dwindling memberships.

“(Churches) can’t imagine how many people are sitting at home wanting to come but can’t,” said Bulloch, a lupus patient who said she often wants to visit other churches, but can’t get inside them. For some, there are still spiritual barriers more ingrained than the physical ones.

They include a history of labeling disability as a deviation to be corrected, typically through things like faith healing or even exorcism.

Modern prosperity gospel has only deepened the divide, said Kathy McReynolds, director of public policy at the Christian Institute on Disability in southern California. That doctrine says good things come to true Christians.

Conversely, “Because of your own personal sin, you have this disability and if you had faith, you would be healed,” McReynolds said.

Even after decades of blindness, Augusta churchgoer Willie Lee Jones said he still fields comments suggesting his sight could come back if he believed harder.

“People of faith will come to me and say, ‘God wants to heal you,’” said Jones, who replies that he’s complete even without his sight.

McReynolds points to biblical book of Luke, with its references to the blind and lame.

“What Christ is saying there is they’re not an afterthought, they are central to my mission,” she said “If they were crucial to Christ in his mission, why aren’t they in the church?”