Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability

Human beings are relationally dependent, regardless of race, gender, or functionality, and while persons with disability may seem to epitomize dependency, they are neither more nor less dependent than...

At a Texas Hill Country ranch, Melody V. Escobar and her young son meet Bo, the retired racehorse that becomes his "go-to" sage in a remarkable equine program for children with disabilities. The weekly...

Throughout its history, evangelicalism has neglected to consider the spiritual lives of people with profound intellectual disabilities and how their experiences might contribute to a fuller understanding...

Human disability raises the hardest questions of human existence and leads directly to the problem of causality--the underlying intuition that someone, divine or human, must have been at fault.Christian...

Madness is a sin. Those with emotional disabilities are shunned. Mental illness is not the church’s problem.All three claims are wrong.In Madness, Heather H. Vacek traces the history of Protestant...

One of the central and novel convictions of the early Christian movement compared to the existing Greco-Roman beliefs was the dogma of bodily resurrection. The Stoics esteemed temperance, disciplining...

Baptism offers the distinctive practice of Christian initiation, rooted in Jesus' own baptism, ministry, death, and resurrection. Too often, however, people with intellectual disabilities are excluded...

Religion plays a critical role in determining how disability is understood and how persons with disabilities are treated. Examining the world’s religions through the lens of disability studies not...

At first glance it may seem that the Hebrew prophets offer little resolution on contemporary concerns of inclusivity and defense for persons deemed "other." Bound by their time and culture, the prophets'...

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...

Flannery O'Connor is one of America's most unique Southern authors. Shortly after she began her writing career she was diagnosed with lupus. Despite her illness, O'Connor authored more than two dozen...

While the struggle for disability rights has transformed secular ethics and public policy, traditional Christian teaching has been slow to account for disability in its theological imagination. Amos...

Depression is difficult to define. It is commonly described as a chemical imbalance, a subjective experience of despondency, or even a semiotic construct. The various theories of depression--biochemical,...

Time is central to all that humans do. Time structures days, provides goals, shapes dreams--and limits lives. Time appears to be tangible, real, and progressive, but, in the end, time proves illusory. Though...

Crippled Grace combines disability studies, Christian theology, philosophy, and psychology to explore what constitutes happiness and how it is achieved. The virtue tradition construes happiness as whole-of-life...

The atonement--where God in Jesus Christ addresses sin and the whole of the human predicament--lies at the heart of the Christian faith and life. Its saving power is for all people, and yet a deep hesitancy...