Spirit and the politics of disablement / Sharon V. Betcher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Betcher, Sharon V., 1956-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church work with people with disabilities.

Physical Description:

xiii, 250 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : Fortress Press, [2007]

Summary:

A promising young theologian here analyzes our world and God's embodied presence in the light of her own disability and the insight it affords. In this remarkable and incisive work, Sharon Betcher claims disablement as a site of powerful social and religious critique and reflection, as, well as fruitful theological understanding. With searing honesty, she reveals how our culture, only recently tolerant and supportive of disabled people, still fears them. The presence of disabled persons, she argues, stands as a rebuke to our images of body and health, to the distorted values of our consumerist culture, and to the globalized economy that embodies those values in unjust structures. Yet, Betcher claims, when released from the "ideology of normalcy," disablement has also revealed powerful alternative understandings of the body and body politic, in Scripture, in the actions of Jesus, in the healing work of the Spirit at work in a broken world. A theology that "stares back," Betcher's highly original work brims with ideas and is itself a revelation and a bracing challenge to all Christians.

Contents:

Preface

Introduction: telling it slant

The fear of falling

Monstrosity, miracle, and mission : religion and the politics of disablement

Medicine shows : humanitarianism, healing, and the physics of spirit

Putting my foot (prosthesis, crutches, phantom) down : technology as transcendence

Conspicuous compassion : race, "disability," and salvific imperialism

A Crip nation

Rumor mills : spiritual practice in the Crip nation

"A cripple on this bridge" : thinking difference, thinking differently

Never quite herself again : Frida Kahlo's doctrine of creation

Wisdom to make the world go on.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 206-246) and index.

ISBN:

9780800662196

0800662199

OCLC:

148895234