The Disabled God by Nancy Eiesland is the mother of all disability theology texts. The first of its kind, this book is required reading for anyone interested in God and bodies.
Eiesland situates her revolutionary project within the history of liberation theology, which focuses on “oppressive structures and beliefs, an on fashioning new images and practices.” This construction on new images underscores the entirety of Eiesland’s proposal: that Christ’s retention of his wounds after death reveals the centrality of disability to God’s selfhood, rendering God himself disabled.
Eiesland says any theologies of disability must center embodiment and corporeality first before philosophical rationalizing. Eiesland notes that the subject of cognitive disability complicates this notion for her, because disabilities and mental illnesses of this kind are not always uniquely physical. Here it must be recognized that Eiesland is writing in 1994; “retardation” is still used as a medical term and crops up in this text. Still, she leans on this medical notion precisely because she rejects the notion that all people are just “differently-abled.”
The social rejection of disability, says Eiesland, starts with familial rejection of the anticipated “American dream” of domestic dynamics. The family’s response to disability patterns social perspectives: Do you attempt a “cure?” Do you embrace prosthesis? Do you choose “special education”? Eiesland insists that only by engaging directly with a disabled individual and witnessing their preferences and abilities can you successfully distinguish between “actual physical contingency and socially constructed barriers,” since so many of these are informed by these familial/social assumptions. These assumptions extend into our churches through “pervasive paternalism and social aversion.”
Additionally, disability comes to function as a Christian symbol of everything from sin to minority to special relationship with the divine. Because disability often literally restricts ecclesial opportunity – whether it be ordination or sacramental participation – churches come to view charity towards disability as equating inclusion, which it does not. Changing how disabled persons show up within Christian environments necessarily requires changing the messaging around disability – reminiscent of Clifford Geertz’s assertion that symbols create moods – and increasing visibility, which Eiesland proposes through the re-symbolizing of the crucified Christ, one of the most notorious visual symbols of Christianity itself.
Then, Eiesland walks us through what it could mean for Jesus to be the disabled God: Wounded but resurrected with those wounds. Not only does Jesus repeatedly interact throughout scripture with disabled persons but, in his final incarnate act, he himself takes on disability.
Again, this text is the crux of the contemporary field of disability theology. For those with personal, academic, or ministerial investment in the topic, it’s a must. For those with caregiving or communal responsibilities, particularly of those with cognitive disabilities, there are more contemporary and generalized texts that may invite more thorough reflection on the disabled God.