A Different Dialogue

At the world’s oldest church for the deaf, God’s voice is visual

In a small, quiet chapel room beneath the steeples of St. George’s Episcopal Church on the western flank of Stuyvesant Park, God’s word isn’t meant to be spoken. A hand-painted sign by the door indicates the word “church” in American Sign Language, and an arrow points inside.

Rev. Christine Selfe, clad in a white ceremonial robe, stands behind a short brass podium and smiles at her small Sunday gathering. Her congregation of four sits abreast in the front pew of metal folding chairs, comfortable and quiet. There’s an altar adorned with two lit candles, and a white tablecloth that adds a sense of ceremony to the modest chapel room. A fan hums breeze into stagnant air.

Rev. Seife gingerly opens a bulky Bible, her eyes scanning the weathered pages behind thick wire-rimmed glasses. Bangs and a button nose lend an endearing youthfulness to her countenance in spite of her 47 years.

The reverend looks up and smiles once again, full cheeks dimpling. Then, she lifts her hands to preach:

“Jesus said, ‘but when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be…’” She begins with Mark 13: 14-23, her arm movements brisk as she signs the gospel verse with grace and gusto. “…then those in Judea must flee to the mountains…”

Though she voices the passage and her words are audible, the message of her sermon — and the power of her preaching — is rendered through the rhythm of her hands.

Rev. Christine Selfe, one of the eight deaf priests currently alive, is the second deaf woman ordained in the Episcopal Church and 46th deaf priest in the ministry since 1892. Here at St. Ann’s, the world’s oldest church for the deaf, she has preached to and prayed with Manhattan’s hard-of-hearing community as the vicar since the beginning of 2006. Her roots here were spawned seven years ago when she came to the church as a student assistant from New York’s General Theological Seminary.

There are no interpreters here — no middlemen translating spoken verses from the King James Bible, itself a translation from many originals, to sermons in American Sign Language (ASL). Rev. Selfe chooses to conduct her services alone and in both English and ASL, pegging the delicate task of simultaneous voicing and signing — a practice seldom mastered within the deaf community, and even rarer in the religious one.

She preaches with conviction, but also with the knowledge that translation is always a thorny battle of semantics. ASL, Rev. Selfe tells me, is not English-based but what she calls “concept-based.” In English, there can be a spectrum of synonyms for one meaning — “closing” and “shutting” the door, for example. ASL, however, designates one sign for a particular concept.

But when it comes to translating the Bible, it’s not the concepts Selfe finds most challenging.

“ASL does ‘justice’ to the ideas,” she says, lip-reading my questions. “But it’s in the idioms and figurative language where there are a lot of challenges to overcome — finding a way to convey the true meaning, while attempting somehow to maintain the beauty of the imagery and language.”

Her congregation watches her intently today, oblivious to the resounding music and voices from the concurrent service upstairs where hearing churchgoers flood the oak pews. Above, the stained-glass windows and organs of the main chapel hover over the annexed quarters of St. Ann’s. But Rev. Selfe is content with the “warm, intimate space.”

“The key, for me, was to focus on what God has given us,” she says. “Let’s face it. St. Ann’s is not very big, and even if we had our own building, I’m sure it would have been of humble stature.”