Diversity in Christian spirituality has been the norm since the ancient development of its practices, traditions, and prayer forms. Regretfully individuals and communities – living with or in the shadows of disability – historically have not been included in this diversity and even at times have been willfully rejected from it. This session aims to critically analyze from multiple perspectives the positive contributions of how persons living with disabilities have provided a deeper understanding of, and contributed to, the dynamics of spiritual and human growth.
This paper delves into the distinct spiritual expressions of autistic individuals by examining the life and writings of Julian of Norwich. I consider three elements of Julian’s spiritual life that correspond to key features of autism. Although it is speculative to interpret historical figures through contemporary concepts like autism, Julian as a model illuminates the importance of recognizing diverse ways of experiencing Christian spirituality. Such an exploration is necessary to broaden understandings of autism in theological discourse. First, I examine her life as an anchorite as a divergent social path that nonetheless allowed her to be in community on her own terms. Second, I explore the intensity of her focus as exhibited by her writing. Last, I consider her mystical experience in terms of heightened sensory sensitivity. Reconsidering Julian through the lens of autistic experience provides a fresh perspective on neurodivergent expressions of Christian spirituality.
This paper examines the practices of tracing and praying to crip ancestors among key disabled activist-writers. Through analysis of their essays, poetry, and memoirs, I argue that such practices function in part to resist a curative social imaginary that erases disability from our collective histories and futures. I contend that Christian theologians might learn from disabled activist-writers’ embodied attention to the past as a resource to reimagine the future without disability’s erasure. This paper develops a negative theological hermeneutic in which the search for crip ancestors in the archive and in scripture exposes the violence of the past that prevents the recovery of disabled lives. Ultimately, I argue, following Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, that our stumbling upon and seeking crip ancestors “in the void of not always knowing… what their legacy means” generates desires for liberated futures.
This paper reads Julian of Norwich’s 14-15th-century visionary text A Revelation of Love alongside Alison Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013). Kafer’s notion of “crip-time” provides a lens through which to theorize an “else-when” of disability in the medieval past and elucidate the mode of temporality deployed in mystical writing. Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation ––in its deep engagement with illness, impairment, and paralysis––has been read by scholars in religious/disability studies as a devotional and theological model of a disabled person experiencing God. However, considering the role of time in medieval mystical literature through disability studies exposes a complicated––perhaps theologically necessary––ambiguity between the somatic experience of illness and the curative temporality of Christian soteriology, inviting us to question whether the political goals of disability studies can work in tandem with the “crip” and curative temporalities of medieval mystical traditions.
Within the theological study of disability, prayer has most often been discussed in the context of creating inclusive liturgy, deconstructing harmful approaches (prayer used to “heal” someone with a disability), offering complimentary therapy to manage pain or promote psychological well-being. Prayer, as an individual spiritual practice by disabled people, remains underexplored within the field of disability theology. Prayer as a way to transcend the physical pain and social isolation that often accompanies disability (due to the social construction of disability). My paper explores the liberative aspects of prayer (transcendence) for disabled people. Drawing on her personal experience of disability, Susan Wendell articulates the need for transcendence from the “rejected body.” Simone Weil expands Wendell’s conception of spiritual transcendence, offering prayer as a mode of spiritual transcendence from affliction. I argue that prayer can lead to spiritual transcendence, which alleviates suffering for disabled people through union with God.