Reconstructing Faith

The author conducts a support group for 20 Jewish parents (ten couples) of children diagnosed with autism. The author finds that for parents struggling with or living with the diagnosis of a child with autism, the experience presents challenges to their faith system and belief in God. This informal, or embedded, theology-based on the theological assumptions they make both consciously and unconsciously about the way and the why the world works as it does-collapses in light of their changed reality. The support group enables parents in such a predicament to explore their faith assumptions and their relationship with God in order to reframe their life's experiences into a theologically, emotionally and mentally meaningful understanding, into a deliberative theology consciously articulated. Creating such a deliberative theology- based on carefully reflected theological convictions- offers the participants hope and courage as they face the trials and tribulations that life inevitably throws their way.