“(In terms of looking at the bible from a different angle)…I think a few ways to do that with disability in Scripture is to think about God as disabled. Both Daniel and Ezekiel describe God’s throne as a chair with wheels, and that sounds a lot like a wheelchair to me. Jesus’s body after resurrection is the only example that we have of that imperishable form and it’s disabled. It has horrific scars. And then the Spirit, Paul tells us, in a sense, groans too deep to utter, which, you know, might be similar to the way that folks who are non-speaking communicate. So really inviting people to think about not just God as disabled, but what some of these passages with our imagination and fueled by the creativity that we have been given, might mean for the disability community.” Dr. Amy Kenny. A recent interview:“
In a recent episode of the Holy Post Podcast, guest Dr. Amy Kenny proffered up a novel interpretation of the relationship between deity and disability, claiming that Jesus’s resurrected body is ‘disabled.’
Kenny, whose she/her personal pronouns are in her bio, is a Shakespeare scholar and lecturer at the University of California. She is also the author of the book My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church, whose thesis is that disabilities are a reflection of God’s image and, therefore, should be celebrated and shepherded. They are not something that requires prayer or healing but rather instead need gracious accommodation.
This view of disability creates more than a few idiosyncratic beliefs. Throughout her writings and interviews, she repeatedly declares that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are disabled in some manner. Kenny further speculates that disabilities may very likely still exist in heaven: such as lameness, blindness, and deafness.
In her book, she offers the possibility that God may communicate with mute people in heaven with ASL (American Sign Language) and that the disabled may be navigating heaven in their wheelchairs, never able to walk. She doesn’t say to what degree this theology translates to mental disabilities compared to physical ones, and whether or not we ought to pray for those disabled by traumatic brain injuries or schizophrenia, or whether or not persons with Down Syndrome or severe mental impairment will likewise remain that way in heaven, or whether they will be healed.
Speaking to Kaitlyn Sheiss, she elaborates on why she claims that Jesus was disabled:
I get a lot of pushback on this because it makes people very uncomfortable and as you say, and to me that reveals that discomfort with disability more than anything else.
Jesus’ resurrected body is disabled. He says to Thomas, ‘put your hand in my side, touch my scars’ see them, blessed are you who have seen but blessed are those who have not seen and believed. And as disabled people, we know that all too well; people touching us without our consent, people poking and prodding us, people wanting to examine our bodies for proof, and not believing and gaslighting when a story is told, as it is here with the women sharing that they have seen the resurrected Christ and Thomas saying ‘nope’.
And this, I think it’s also really important, because we say that we believe that Jesus has defeated the dominions of darkness and defeated death itself, and that death has no sting, but it was a whoopsie that he came back disabled? I mean, that doesn’t make sense.
So I think that what we are uncomfortable with is the idea that the risen Christ would choose a disabled form. And what that reveals to me is that it gives me the freedom and hopefully it liberates us all, because it makes me realize yet again that my redemption and the marks of my healing are not things to be hidden or erased or eradicated. My disability isn’t something to be ashamed of, because it emulates the risen Christ.
And that disabled body is the mark of all of our healing.
Why did Jesus’ risen body still have the marks of disability? @DrAmyKenny offered some provocative thoughts to @KaitlynSchiess on the latest @HolyPostPodcast: https://t.co/7tYqOfg7hw pic.twitter.com/lFy0YWrVjG
— Skye Jethani (@SkyeJethani) July 25, 2022
Bonus. Kenny has previous said that the church must become a ‘crip space’ where it “puts those who are most marginalized at the center and follows their lead. So folks who are queer, Black, disabled people.” This includes things from making the washroom wheelchair accessible to “noticing that the language of the songs or the sermon is ableist and changing those words.” such as “Hear ye, ye dumb, ye deaf, crazy, ye dumb, I once was blind, but now I see.” She further notes:
There’s that Hillsong song that says there’s no darkness, no sick, no lame in heaven because streets are made of gold and will finally be healed and whole. You know, all of those are assuming this eradication of disabled people, which is eugenics, and saying that that’s holy, or that that is heaven somehow.
We discuss this ridiculousness on a recent episode of Protestia Tonight:
