Written by Harold H. Wilke
“We have a history of keeping people ‘out of sight, out of mind.'”
“Even more people are becoming alienated, and ever more of them are coming out into the open.”
“They are part of our society, not apart from it. More sharply than ever before, the idea of “mainstreaming†— keeping persons who differ from the norm within the main current of social life — is becoming a part of Western thinking.
In this context, there is an urgent need for society to respond to a “coming-out party†for those who are about to be deinstitutionalized, as well as a need for a far more adequate response to that much larger number who already are in our midst. Certainly the religious community, in its contact with people on every street corner and in every hamlet, has a prime opportunity to help in this mainstreaming process.”
In this article, Dr. Wilke presents four practical responses of the church.