Disability Pride Month Reading

Some Suggested Titles from AAR's Reading Religion

Reading Religion is an openly accessible book review website published by the American Academy of Religion. The site provides up-to-date coverage of scholarly publishing in religious studies, reviewed by scholars with special interest and/or expertise in the relevant subfields. Reviews aim to be concise, comprehensive, and timely.

Below, the editors of Reading Religion have selected some books and reviews from the site and have shared some titles available to review. If you’re interested in reviewing books for Reading Religion, take a look at the guidelines. If there are any books missing from the Reading Religion site that you think should be there, email [email protected].

Reviews to Read

The Disabled God Revisited: Trinity, Christology, and Liberation

By Lisa D. Powell

From the review:

"The book’s strongest contribution is its sophisticated exploration of the doctrine of God in relation to diverse experiences of disability. . . .Powell paints a compelling picture of God as constituted for relationship with the bodies God “fearfully, wonderfully made” and defends embodiment’s goodness and the communal nature of liberation.” – Aaron Klink

The Work of Inclusion: An Ethnography of Grace, Sin, and Intellectual Disabilities

By Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon

From the review:

“Cuddeback-Gedeon urges scholars to not merely discuss people with IDD from a distance but to, instead, generate and enhance disability discourse alongside IDD communities as prominent and essential conversation partners.” – Maci Sepp

My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

By Amy Kenny

From the review:

“But for churches that remain oblivious to the ongoing harm of their inaccessible sanctuaries and unexamined theologies, [this book] is a powerful wake-up call. The playful and exuberant voice in which Kenny issues it should make it not merely a duty but a delight to heed. In the meantime . . . Kenny offers disabled Christians a liberating spirituality that links spoon theory to sabbath rest, neuroplasticity to new creation, and disability to biodiversity.” – Olivia Bustion

Becoming the Baptized Body: Disability and the Practice of Christian Community

By Sarah Jean Barton

From the review:

“Barton’s volume is a strong contribution to disability theology, and it offers valuable insights to multiple audiences, including religious practitioners, theologians, and Bible scholars. That the church so often excludes people with intellectual disabilities from baptism was surprising to me. Thus, her attention to the issue is itself a significant contribution.” - Frederick David Carr

Prophetic Disability: Divine Sovereignty and Human Bodies in the Hebrew Bible

By Sarah J. Melcher

From the review:

“Melcher’s exploration of disability and God’s sovereignty highlights the complex and multi-faceted use of disability imagery in the prophets. Her work is an important step forward for the larger study of disability and biblical literature. . . . Her work will help modern readers of biblical texts better engage with texts critically and empathetically, especially those who do so within a faith-based context.” – Kevin Scott

Available for Review

Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole

By Julia Watts Belser

From the publisher:
“‘What’s wrong with you?’

Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What’s wrong isn’t her wheelchair, though—it’s exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain.

Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible and disability is everywhere. Moses believes his stutter renders him unable to answer God’s call. Jacob’s encounter with an angel leaves him changed not just spiritually but physically: he gains a limp. For centuries, these stories have been told and retold in ways that treat disability as a metaphor for spiritual incapacity or as a challenge to be overcome.

Through fresh and unexpected readings of the Bible, Loving Our Own Bones instead paints a luminous portrait of what it means to be disabled and one of God’s beloved. Belser delves deep into sacred literature, braiding the insights of disabled, feminist, Black, and queer thinkers with her own experiences as a queer disabled Jewish feminist. She talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame. What unfolds is a profound gift of disability wisdom, a radical act of spiritual imagination that can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with each other and with our bodies.”

Disciples and Friends: Investigations in Disability, Dementia, and Mental Health

Edited by Armand Léon van Ommen and Brian R. Brock

From the publisher:
“John Swinton has indelibly shaped the discipline of practical theology not only in the United Kingdom but globally, and has been especially influential in the areas of disability theology, dementia, health care, and chaplaincy. Swinton presses one question with a special intensity: What does it mean to be human? The chapters in this volume display why this question unifies his wide-ranging corpus of work and show how Swinton has answered it in the various domains he has explored. The chapters range as widely as his work, from "Swintonian" practical theological methodology, to specific themes like friendship, peace, and belonging. Several chapters offer concrete testimonies of how Swinton’s work has influenced scholars and practitioners alike. Contributors identify the pivotal moves in Swinton’s work and draw together into a single volume an account of how these themes have been developed in different material discussions.

Disciples and Friends, as a survey of John’s key methodological and theological stances, will become an indispensable resource for students and scholars of practical theology, disability theology, mental health, dementia, and cognate fields. The volume brings together renowned scholars who know not only John Swinton’s work but also him as a person. This knowledge enables contributors to insightfully link Swinton’s work to the life he has lived and to suggest promising avenues for further development of his signature ideas. In compiling for the first time an accessible survey of and introduction to one of the most important voices to emerge in disability theology for many decades, Disciples and Friends represents a seminal scholarly undertaking and a fitting tribute to Swinton’s legacy.”

From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership

By Erin Raffety

From the publisher:
“American Christianity tends to view disabled persons as problems to be solved rather than people with experiences and gifts that enrich the church. Churches have generated policies, programs, and curricula geared toward "including" disabled people while still maintaining "able-bodied" theologies, ministries, care, and leadership. Ableism—not lack of ramps, of finances, or of accessible worship—is the biggest obstacle for disabled ministry in America. In From Inclusion to Justice, Erin Raffety argues that what our churches need is not more programs for disabled people but rather the pastoral tools to repent of able-bodied theologies and practices, listen to people with disabilities, lament ableism and injustice, and be transformed by God's ministry through disabled leadership. Without a paradigm shift from ministries of inclusion to ministries of justice, our practical theology falls short.

Drawing on ethnographic research with congregations and families, pastoral experience with disabled people, teaching in theological education, and parenting a disabled child, Raffety, an able-bodied Christian writing to able-bodied churches, confesses her struggle to repent from ableism in hopes of convincing others to do the same. At the same time, Raffety draws on her interactions with disabled Christian leaders to testify to what God is still doing in the pews and the pulpit, uplifting and amplifying the ministry and leadership of people with disabilities as a vision toward justice in the kingdom of God.”

Disability in Medieval Christian Philosophy and Theology

Edited by Scott M. Williams

From the publisher:
“This book uses the tools of analytic philosophy and close readings of medieval Christian philosophical and theological texts in order to survey what these thinkers said about what today we call ‘disability.’ The chapters also compare what these medieval authors say with modern and contemporary philosophers and theologians of disability. This dual approach enriches our understanding of the history of disability in medieval Christian philosophy and theology and opens up new avenues of research for contemporary scholars working on disability.

This volume surveys disability across a wide range of medieval Christian writers from the time of Augustine up to Francisco Suarez. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in medieval philosophy and theology, or disability studies.”

Reconceptualising Disability for the Contemporary Church

By Frances Mackenny-Jeffs

From the publisher:
“Even today, there is still an inherent conflict between the way the Gospels speak about disability, and the attitude of the Church. This book seeks to challenge the assumptions which still exist about disability, assumptions which are reflected within the Church.

Blending theory, anthropology, theology, pastoral concerns and the lived experience of people with disabilities, Reconceptualising Disability for the Contemporary Church offers an important and thoughtful challenge to the contemporary Church.”