When Chantal Noseworthy was young, her family attended a Salvation Army church. But without access to an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter during services, she struggled to connect with the experience.

“I never understood what church was about, really,” she says. “I didn’t feel a connection to it.”

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Rev. Phil Wilson, whose parents were also Deaf and whose first language was ASL, recalls a similar story about his mother’s childhood: when she was a little girl, “church” meant sitting in the sanctuary and counting the lights. Without an interpreter, she was cut off not only from what was being said during the service, but also from fellowship with the congregation.

Before his ordination in the United Church of Canada in 2018, Wilson had been Noseworthy’s interpreter at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ont. So when she and her wife, Teisha, decided to get married in 2021 shortly before the birth of their first child, Noseworthy immediately thought of........

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