SOME CHURCHES HAVE fought to be exempted from the Americans with Disabilities Act, have interpreted scripture in ways that cause violence against disabled people, and are often rife with ableist microaggressions unique to religious communities. Amy Kenny’s My Body Is Not a Prayer Request—part memoir and part disability justice hermeneutic—is a book the church desperately needs.
Kenny encounters strangers, many of them Christians, who comment on her body. They describe their ableist version of heaven, pray over her without consent (she refers to these people as “prayerful perpetrators”), ask for personal medical information, and give pitying glances. “I wish I was whole in their minds,” writes Kenny, “enough to exist without needing a prayerful remedy to cast out my ‘demons,’ a full human who has something to offer other than a miraculous narrative.”
While many fetishize Kenny’s disability and medical history, her needs are ignored, as physical spaces, including churches, are often inaccessible. The disregard for people with disabilities can take many forms. A recent example: In a New York Times op-ed published in January amid the omicron surge, Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren urged churches to drop their online services. Access to virtual services is vital for immunocompromised people and others for whom in-person services can have deadly consequences.
Kenny, who is white, mentions how skin color and education affect her story and acknowledges the limits of her perspective: “Disability is a broad constellation of experience, and I don’t represent the entire community.” But the book could have benefited from more acknowledgement that people who hold multiple marginalized identities contend with additional barriers and mistreatment.
Similarly, Kenny might have brought in other voices when she wrote about individuals with intellectual disabilities in the chapter “Disabled God.” Kenny compares inclusive communication practices (acknowledging that speech is one form of communication, as well as ASL, vocalizations, gestures, and augmentative and alternative communication devices and systems) to the Holy Spirit communicating through “groanings.” I found that passage and the application slightly problematic, since not all nonspeaking people have intellectual disabilities, and many people with intellectual disabilities do use speech. Still, as a disabled person, I find power in Kenny’s larger concept of a disabled God: I am not a deficient image of the Creator but rather emanate God in all that I am.
This contrasts with the prevalent ableist language in our society. As Kenny writes, “disability metaphors allow everyone to agree my body is bad. I am not your metaphor.” Kenny lists ableist things people have called her or told her; these examples demonstrate how medical and religious models of disability are toxic and harmful.
Ultimately, Kenny challenges the church to instead take up a theology of a disabled God—from the wheels on the fiery throne of heaven (Daniel 7:9) to the resurrected Jesus’ stigmata. May Christians, both laypeople and clergy, approach this text with a soft heart and emerge from their reading to pursue disability justice.
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