Disability and Christian

Theology
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Introduction

Chances are very good that you know someone with a disability.
Chances are also good that you have experienced—or will
experience—some degree of disability yourself. In the United States,
the Census Bureau estimates that approximately 18 percent of the
population experience some degree of disability, and 12 percent
experience a disability requiring assistance from a person or device.1
Two in seven families are directly affected by disability.2 Nationwide,
2.7 million people use a wheelchair, 1.8 million are reported as being
unable to see, 1 million are reported as being unable to hear, and
14.3 million are reported to have limitations in cognitive functioning
or a mental or emotional illness that interferes with their daily activi-
ties. Overall, 11 percent of children aged six to fourteen have a disabil-
ity; 72 percent of people eighty and older have a disability.3 The World
Health Organization estimates that about 600 million people world-
wide live with disabilities of various types.4 Because disability is an
“open minority” that any of us might join at any time, and which we
are much more likely to join as we age, it has been suggested that it
makes little sense to try to distinguish between able and disabled, but
rather that any difference is simply between disabled and temporarily
able-bodied. It is clear that disability is a common and ever-present
experience that is worthy of theoretical and theological reflection.
To write about disability is to reconsider our understandings of
human embodiment. In recent years, there has been an explosion of
writing on the body—as Robyn Longhurst observes, the academy