Yeah there’s a thing where Christians like for their texts to be in every language. It’s probably a lot more of that than anything. ASL was developed by nuns IIRC. It’s definitely not like Plains Sign Language which began as a trade language and eventually developed for the deaf. For as long as modern people of European descent have had sign language we’ve had access to Jesus in it.

I’d give more context but my asl is shit. I don’t really sign beyond insulting the hearing. I’m third generation mainstreamed. (Yeah my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents were all convinced not to teach their children sign language by the experts of the time). And yeah that more or less answers two paragraphs. I’ve been wearing hearing aids since childhood and my mom, grandma, and sister all also have my degenerative hearing loss.

I grew up with captions on the tv in the 90s except when my father was watching with us (he hates captions, and I’ll acknowledge they did suck 25 years ago, just less than not hearing sucked). And in early adulthood I went on a journey of self discovery and community discovery of embracing my deafness but I still need to find the time and energy to commit to asl learning