Ben Bond, Faith Inclusion and Belonging Associate
Ben Bond
Rev. Ben Bond (He/They) is the Faith Inclusion and Belonging Associate at RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community.
Ben is ordained in The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which is a mainline progressive Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. Ben is a queer multiply disabled person with lived experience both growing up with a disability and acquiring one later in life. Faith inclusion and disability have been at the center of their work for many years. Ben founded and co-chaired Yale Divinity School’s first disability student organization named DivineAbilities which was dedicated to centering disability issues at an institutional level as well as providing a space for students to explore interpersonally their relationship between disability and faith communities.
Connected by his work with DivineAbilities, he was hired on as an Accessibility Chaplain for Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School to assess the accessibility of their daily worship services and create anti-ableist resources for achieving long-term accessibility goals as an institution. Ben was also brought on as a contributor for the American Academy of Religion’s (AAR) study on how to improve theological education for disabled students in the United States in collaboration with the members of the Status of People with Disabilities in the Profession Committee (PWD).
While in New Haven he was appointed to the city of New Haven Disability Commission working with fellow commissioners to pass ordinances to protect the rights of disabled citizens in the city of New Haven. During the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, he was hired on as the Outreach Coordinator by the local New Haven non-profit and food organization F.I.S.H, which was dedicated to delivering pantry food to low-income disabled adults and families, along with those who were in COVID-19 isolation who could not get to a food pantry themselves. Ben saw their work at F.I.S.H as a way to directly provide assistance to the disabled community in a time of intense need.
Ben has earned their Master of Divinity Degree from Yale Divinity School along with a certificate from the Institute of Sacred Music and the Arts at Yale. An alumnus of Chapman University, he earned his Bachelor’s degree there in Religious studies. In his free time, Ben loves to nerd out about music, board games, and high-fantasy novels.
