Disability Theology Resources
Welp, this is one day late to be in Disability Pride Month, but exploring disability is well worth doing all year long anyway. Here's a new masterpost of my favorite books, podcasts, and YouTube vids on disability theology and praxis. I'm also always happy to offer recs if there's something specific you're looking for!
You can also find stuff in my #disability theology tag.
Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole by Rabbi Julia Watts Belser. Fantastic exploration of the Torah / first five books of the Bible through a disability lens, by a queer disabled feminist rabbi. I particularly adore the chapters on Moses!
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My Body Is Not a Prayer Request by Amy Kenny. This was really fun to read concurrently with Rabbi Belser's book because they bring up a lot of the same scripture but of course come at it from different faith perspectives; the book also offers lots of practical changes and stuff churches can make to fight ableism / increase belonging
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How Ableism Fuels Racism by Lamar Hardwick (he also goes by the Autism Pastor on social media)
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Disability: The Inclusive Church Resource by John Hull offers essays by various disabled (Protestant) ministers on the ableism they face and how they experience ministry, if you're interested in that!
Top Podcasts, YouTube, etc.
The Autistic Liberation Theology Podcast hosted by Laura Sommer — I may be biased because they're one of my best friends and I often guest on the show but genuinely some of the best theology around chronic pain and being Autistic I know of; bonus points for mixing in lots of trans stuff!
For instance they talk a ton about Jesus being Autistic, and reading him through a trans lens; and three of the eps are me and Laura going on and on about Joseph of Genesis being neuroqueer hehe
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Another podcast I sometimes guest on is The Word in Black and Red, which offers leftist takes on every book of the Bible! (eventually. We're only into Leviticus right now lmao). Anyway I don't rec the whole podcast, but there is one episode where Laura and I offer an introduction to disability theology!
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The Mad and Crip Theology Podcast interviews folks about their academic papers on disability theology, very neat. A good starter episode: this one “on Queer and Crip Sexuality and the Disabled Christ”
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Everything Happens is a podcast that explores faith in the midst of suffering, from chronic illness to sudden accidents to disability and more
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Sorry to toot my own horn so much lmao but uhhh I also have a YouTube series called Disabled AND Blessed where I explore disability theology!!
First vid is about being Autistic and stimming in church hehe
I also once did a livestream discussing the Gospels' endlessly complex healing narratives
“Secular” books that helped shape my own theology
Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer. Ahhhh I wish I could get everybody to read this one haha — but it is an academic work so probably not fully accessible to every average person. Lots on queer-and-crip time, one of my favorite concepts, and the importance of being able to imagine a better world.
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What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren (2020). Fantastic book digging into recent disability history, present, and future with focus on the “misfit” theory of disability where body and world interact with each other disharmoniously, and the creativity disabled people employ to make them more harmonious
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Exile and Pride, Eli Clare (1999). One of my favorite books of all time. Connects disability, queerness, rural life, trauma, and more. Clare is one of the originators of the concept of the “bodymind” (though he talks about that more in one of his later books)
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Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Real practical ways to do disability justice. Lots on the intersections of race and gender and class etc.
Other good (theological) stuff:
I love Unbound's series on Disabling Lent, lots of fantastic, varied disabled perspectives
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The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God by Amos Yong. Written by an abled person with a son with Down Syndrome soooo it's got that flavor to it, not my fave — but the couple of chapters on Paul and on heaven are absolutely worth a read!
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My Body and Other Crumbling Empires byLyndsey Medford (2023) This memoir connects faith, chronic illness (especially autoimmune disorders), and the sickness at the heart of Western Empire / the Protestant work ethic.
How can we learn to work with instead of against our bodies? How can we rebuild our world to treat all bodies with the love and gentleness they deserve?
This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley (2022). An incredibly beautiful book, poetic and searing…explores the goodness of embodied life and intersections between disability (particularly chronic illness), Blackness, queerness, womanhood, and more.
Each chapter focuses on a different emotion (anger, joy, lament, love…) to teach us how to honor and listen to what we feel in our bodies.
CW for accounts of sexual assault and other forms of and abuse and trauma, as well as accounts of antiblack racism.
Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved, Kate Bowler (2018).
If you’ve been steeped in any kind of prosperity gospel, “if you pray hard enough you’ll be healed” type Christianity, I highly recommend this book.
Bowler writes with gentle honesty about how her chronic pain and then cancer compelled her to move away from that kind of harmful Christianity into a faith with room for doubt, grief, and a God that holds her in her suffering.
My podcast Blessed Are the Binary Breakers focuses mostly on trans experiences of faith, but I do bring up disability a lot; these are some of the disability-focused episodes:
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- "Holy Pride in Disabled Experiences and Insights"
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- "Our Pride Is Not a Sin: A queer & disabled Christian lens"
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- "Marginalized Bodies as Spectacle and the Good News in Jesus's Disabling Wounds"
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- Ep on my reading of Acts 8 through a trans & Autistic lens (the eunuch is very trans-resonant, while I playfully imagine Philip as autistic)
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- "Goodness Embodied: An intersex, nonbinary first human and a disabled risen Christ"
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- “No End to Transphobia without Uprooting Ableism — exploring embedded forms of oppression”
