The Disabled God

By Nancy Eiesland

 
Reviewed by David McLachlan

If you are looking for a first or well-known book to read on disability theology, this is a good place to start. Nancy Eiesland was a great campaigner for disability rights and her book is often regarded as laying a foundation stone for the subject. It is certainly one of the most referenced books in articles that explore questions of disability and God.
 
Eiesland provides some excellent background as she builds her case for wanting a theology of disability that is not oppressive or degrading, but instead is liberating for people with disabilities. This is done through personal stories and the history of disability rights, highlighting theological errors and presumptions along the way. Eiesland then explores two provocative questions. The first is how we would respond to a God who is disabled. She pictures God in a sip-puff wheelchair! The second asks about the meaning of the wounds of the cross in Jesus’ resurrection body. For Eiesland, there is no sense that disabilities as a whole are to be eradicated by God, but rather that non-conventional physicality is affirmed.
 

Details: 

Author: Eiesland, Nancy L
Title: The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
Publisher: Nashville: Abingdon Press (1994)