Organised in conjunction with the British Paralympic Association and the English Federation of Disability Sport, “Courage and Faith: The opening service for the London 2012 Paralympic Games”, was not part of the official programme, but was billed as an “act of worship”, “part of the Christian response” to the Games. Lord Coe was unable to attend, and most of the current Paralympic athletes were too immersed in training to appear….
The wheelchair athlete Anne Wufula-Strike contributed to a sense of living faith, giving her personal testimony to sport as a means of witness: “God sees me as perfect. . . He uses me and has a purpose for me.” She went on to describe how sport could also educate and empower people, especially in the developing world, to fight the stigmatisation of disability and “to be included in their communities”.
In this, she echoed the address by Baroness Grey-Thompson, the Paralympic gold medallist, who described how the Games could “challenge the accepted view of what disabled people can do. . . Paralym-pic sport has the power to change the world.”