Crippling Christian Theology as I Power My Wheelchair Out the Door

Abstract

This article draws on the author’s experience of spinal cord injury to reflect on theological method and central elements of Christian theology. It uses disability theory to unmask the ablest ideology that too often frames church hierarchies and that marginalizes and excludes people with disability and others who are different, notably LGBTQI people of faith. From this perspective, it provides a critical reading of the traditional threefold Christian gospel of perfect creation, fall, and redemption as renewed perfection, arguing that vulnerability, pain, and disability are not a consequence of the fall, but the product of the creative generativity of nature. It tentatively reimagines atonement theory and redemption as a reversal of unjust marginalization (transformative grace for those who experience and perpetrate evil). Finally it considers the transformation of the soul by reference to a disability aesthetic and the truth, goodness, and beauty of God and the diverse creation. It elevates disability as beautiful and desirable, a creative gift of infinite difference.