Spirit and the Politics of Disablement
- Ethics, Culture & Social Issues
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 2007
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Publisher's Description
In this remarkable and incisive work, Sharon Betcher analyzes our world and God's embodied presence in the light of her own disability and the insight it affords. She claims disablement as a site of powerful social and religious critique and reflection. With searing honesty, she reveals how our culture, only recently tolerant and supportive of disabled people, still fears them. The presence of disabled persons stands as a rebuke to our images of body and health, to the distorted values of our consumerist culture, and the globalized economy that embodies those values in unjust structures. Yet, Betcher claims, 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 the world. Brimming with insight, Betcher's work is a revelation and a bracing challenge to all Christians.
Endorsements (5)
“Spirit and the Obligation of Social Flesh makes a unique, creative, and timely contribution to an area of great interest in the study of religion and theology.”
“A powerful, poignant witness from an author who lives with and works through the lens of disability, Professor Betcher finds through such a perspective hopeful practices for 21st century urban living. This rich, poetic text pleading for “corporeal generosity” is profoundly within the Christian incarnational tradition while commending a radical practice of obligation stemming from Spirit as “prosthesis,” as an aid to neighbor love. I recommend this book as an outstanding example of constructive theology to move us from merely global to planetary citizens, supporting all of life in its diversity, deviancy, and limitation, as well as rejoicing in its joys and delights.”
“In this creative book, Sharon Betcher presents a strong case that theology does not have to end as dominant notions of the divine shatter in the life-or-death struggles of our increasingly intertwined lives. In fact,theology begins again where people of various faiths and of little faith begin to identify the work of the Spirit in their midst. That Spirit emerges from the complex intersections of our vulnerable lives, rather than descending from above, is good news to all those of us who are “weary and are carrying heavy burdens” (Matt 11:28).”
“. . . A trend setter. This book is a path to help us find a new theology of hopefulness, a spirituality of resilience.”
“Sharon Betcher’s cosmopolis of 'corporeal generosity' emits an eerie beauty. Its theopoetics for seculars does not exclude any theology worth practicing but reads Spirit in the cracks of bodies, cities, politics, wisdoms. In the brilliance of this “crip/tography” the sites of our acute vulnerability signal possibilities that we do not want to miss—whatever our discipline or art, our religion or irreligion.”
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