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The introductory chapter gives an introduction to various aspects of religious citizenship. Drawing on an understanding of citizenship based on human rights, we present the UN documents and conventions that promote rights for persons with disabilities. We also present the most basic models of disability theorized within Disability Studies. Turning to the religious aspects of citizenship, we discuss important contributions from disability theology such as diversity as a gift given by God in creation, and images of God as a vulnerable, even disabled God through Christ’s incarnation. The World Council of Churches has contributed to a rights-based theological understanding of disability through the documents A Church of All and for All and The Gift of Being. These documents are introduced. The chapter also discusses diaconal perspectives on disability. We argue that the former diaconal practice of segregation, and the distinction between ‘able-bodied’ helper and disabled recipients of diakonia is gradually being replaced. Instead we see the emergence of a disability diakonia where vulnerability is reconfigured as something that affects all of humanity, and where communities of mutual support and generosity become the norm. Finally we discuss the ethical aspects of religious citizenship, arguing that the various professions involved in securing religious citizenship for all (e.g. health workers, social workers, ministers, deacons and religious educators), need to reflect on their professional praxis in order to have a human rights based approach that secures equality.

Disability theology has been a small but growing field over the past thirty years. This paper reviews the current methods used in the discipline and proposes ways to move the field forward. Two intersections between disability studies and Christian theological ethics are explored in particular: bioethics and critical theory. Bioethics helps to address the material health and wellbeing concerns of people with disabilities and the discriminatory attitudes about disability that stem from the medical field. Critical theory on the other hand, examines disability through cultural productions that shape our ableist imaginary. Critical theory offers resources for countering or “disciplining” our imaginations. Both bioethics and critical theory offer unique entry points into disability, but each also contains limitations that reveal why disability theology must continue to engage multiple methods and discourses.

Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity Timothy J. Basselin. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013.Timothy J. Basselin's Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity is a captivating work which explores Flannery O'Connor's fiction from a perspective of disability studies and a theology of disability. Throughout the book, Basselin presents a compelling argument for the influence O'Connor's illness played in molding her writing and discusses how her perceptions of good, evil, sickness, and limitations enhanced her uniqueness as a writer.The text is structured into four primary chapters covering topics ranging from how the authentic grotesque manifests itself in her fiction to the inherent conflicts that existed between O'Connor's perspectives and that of society's modern Enlightenment-de rived philosophies. Some of the O'Connor works specifically examined include A Good Man is Hard to Find, A Temple of the Holy Ghost, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Good Country People, Habit of Being, Parker's Back, Revelation, The Displaced Person, The Enduring Chill, The Lame Shall Enter First, The River, and The Violent Bear It Away.The book also features a tasteful postscript section in which Basselin elaborates on some of the challenges he encountered when incorporating disability studies language into the text. The attention devoted to expounding on the difficulties of this task alludes to his impressive ability to address sensitive, philosophical issues with the tactfulness and care they require. Flowever, much like O'Connor, Basselin does not shy away from making bold, declarative points to support his theories and does a commendable job of thoroughly supporting his assessments with necessary literature.Aesthetically, the book's cover is quite attractive with an engaging design featuring a picture of a young O'Connor immersed in reading a publication with which she assumes a contemplative, if not disturbed, expression. Fier furrowed brow interestingly emits a discernible tension present in her examination of the publication, which is a visual readers may identify as particularly foretelling to the inquisitorial spirit she was known to have exhibited throughout her life. The book itself seems relatively slight when considering the extensive body of literature available on O'Connor as well as the wealth of information published on disability studies. However, upon delving into the beginning paragraphs, it quickly becomes apparent this resource takes full advantage of its allotted pages by treating readers with clear and purposeful writing.From the opening pages, Basselin intricately sows stories of O'Connor's childhood, life experiences, and family relationships to form a foundation upon which he discusses her struggle with lupus and the substantial impact her limitations had on developing her ideologies and writing. …

Religious constructs of bodies and bodily experience are particularly influential on theological interpretations of disabled bodies. People with disabilities have long been marginalized in the Christian tradition: disabled people are situated as inspirational tropes and objects of pity and charity, disability is literally demonized, and disabled people are excluded from full religious participation. Theologian Nancy Eiesland is a forerunner in the field of disability theology, providing the image of the risen Christ as the Disabled God after a vision of Christ in a sip-puff wheelchair. Biblical interpretation and preaching are key areas for theology of disability, and a variety of disability perspectives, including from Deaf Christians, illustrate retrieval of otherwise-oppressive biblical texts. Access to worship services and rejection of any connection between sin or demonic forces and disability are important goals of disabled Christian thinkers. Thomas Reynolds in particular argues for a distinct hermeneutic of disability. Disability theology is Influenced by disability studies, but there is some tension between the two disciplines. Among the insights of disability studies that is developed in disability theology is the distinct experience of different kinds of disability; intellectual disability, dementia, mobility impairments, Deafness, and visual impairments, for example, provide different embodied experiences from which to engage in theological reflection.

This article reflects on the relationship between disability and aging. In particular, I explore how insights from disability studies and disability theology can contribute to a richer account of and response to aging and its associated complexities. In the first section, I set the context by overviewing the modern emergence and consolidation of the category of “disability”. Second, I undertake a close reading of two prominent disability theologians, Deborah Creamer and Thomas Reynolds, whose work provides rich insights into the relationship between limits, vulnerability, and relationality. Finally, I return to and reflect on how these insights can assist with attending and responding to lived experiences of aging and decline.

This essay is inspired by a moment at the conclusion of Julia Watts Belser’s Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole (2023). It takes Belser’s stated desire to “know the sacred through a thousand disabled languages” as an invitation to think about the risks and rewards of imagining the divine in and through others’ differences. It places Belser’s insights in conversation with the author’s own research into mid-twentieth century Catholic engagements with cognitive impairment in the United States, what the essay calls “disability theology before disability theology,” and uses that conversation to return to what have been some enduring impasses in disability studies.

El presente artículo da cuenta de los principales resultados de una investigación sobre significaciones que atribuye un grupo de estudiantes universitarios a los derechos humanos en Chile. Entre aquellos, es posible adelantar que los jóvenes manifiestan una postura favorable con respecto a algunos principios referidos a los derechos humanos, como la libertad de creencias, la igualdad, el respeto a la diversidad, el papel del Estado como garante de derechos, entre otros. Junto con ello, se incorporan nuevos elementos a la discusión, a partir de tres categorías centrales que cruzan investigaciones similares en el nivel internacional, agrupadas en prácticas pedagógicas, gestión educativa, justicia social e inclusión. En cada una de ellas, a su vez, se hará referencia a tres variables intervinientes en la educación en derechos humanos: cognitivas, afectivo-conductuales y contextuales.

In Chile, despite the great coverage achieved, there are still children and adolescents who leave school without being able to complete 12 years of compulsory education (Casen, 2015); moreover, among the countries that make up the OECD, Chile is in the first places of deschooling (TALIS, 2013). This marginalization from the school system is affecting a significant number of children and hindering areas of integration and social development, which accentuates processes of social exclusion and violation of rights in Chile (Casen, 2015; Mide-UC, 2016; Mineduc, 2017). This is reinforced by pedagogical practices that strengthen these probabilities of failure (Román, 2013). The phenomenon of school reintegration has little evidence in relation to the human and technical component in school reintegration processes, either locally (Mide-UC, 2016; UNESCO-UNICEF-Chilean Association of Municipalities, 2012), or internationally (CEPAL, 2010; Contreras et al, 2014; Sucre, 2016), which implies observing and analyzing pedagogical intervention practices in these contexts, in terms of how these dialogical-reflective relational dynamics between teachers and children and adolescents are developed, from the perspective of pedagogical interactions, an area of growing interest in educational sciences, which looks at more than the action itself, at how and what happens in the interaction. (Colomina et al, 2001) This research from a qualitative, transactional approach, oriented from the perspective of descriptive studies (Hernández,et al, 2010) and enriched with the symbolic interactionism of Blumer (1969), whose contributions indicate that the nature of the teaching-learning processes can only be unraveled through direct examination, seeks to understand pedagogical intervention practices from the perspective of pedagogical interactions which are developed between teachers and their students, within the framework of the specialized protection programs in school reintegration implemented in Chile by the National Service for Minors of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, in vulnerable sectors of the communes of Talca, Region of Maule and La Pintana, Metropolitan Region. The analysis through the theoretical and empirical contributions provided by the scientific evidence on pedagogical interactions, in terms of how they are configured, deployed and how these pedagogical intervention practices are perceived by the actors involved, added to the findings obtained, provides an opportunity to innovate by allowing the observation of school reintegration as a scenario of human relations and to deepen around this professional action as a critical element, constituting the improvement of teaching and effectiveness in school reintegration processes.

Introduction: The Formation of Disability Studies - Gary L Albrecht, Katherine D Seelman, and Michael Bury PART ONE: THE SHAPING OF DISABILITIES STUDIES AS A FIELD An Institutional History of Disability - David L Braddock and Susan Parish Counting Disability - Glenn T Fujiura and Violet Rutkowski-Kmitta Disability Definitions, Models, Classification Schemes and Applications - Barbara Altman Theorizing Disability - Gareth Williams Methodological Paradigms That Shape Disability Research - Scott Campbell Brown Disability - Patrick Fougeyrollas and Line Beauregard An Interactive Person-Environment Social Creation Representation and Its Discontents - David T Mitchell and Sharon L Snyder The Uneasy Home of Disability in Literature and Film Philosophical Issues in the Definition and Social Response to Disability - David Wasserman Disability and the Sociology of the Body - Bryan S Turner Intellectual Disabilities- Quo Vadis? - Trevor R Parmenter Disability, Bioethics and Human Rights - Adrienne Asch Disability Studies and Electronic Networking - Ellen Liberti Blasiotti, John D Westbrook, and Iwao Kobayashi PART TWO: EXPERIENCING DISABILITY Divided Understandings - Carol Gill The Social Experience of Disability Mapping the Family - Philip M Ferguson Disability Studies and the Exploration of Parental Response to Disability Disability and Community - Michael P Kelly A Sociological Approach Welfare States and Disabled People - Robert F Drake Advocacy and Political Action - Sharon Barnartt, Kay Schrinerm and Richard Scotch Health Care Professionals and Their Attitudes Towards, and Decisions Affecting Disabled People - Ian Basnett The Role of Social Networks in the Lives of Persons with Disabilities - Bernice A Pescosolido Inclusion/Exclusion - Jean-Francois Ravaud and Henri-Jacques Stiker An Analysis of Historical and Cultural Meanings PART THREE: DISABILITY IN CONTEXT Disability Culture - Colin Barnes and Geoff Mercer Assimilation or Inclusion? Identity Politics, Disability and Culture - Lennard J Davis Making the Difference - Tom Shakespeare and Nick Watson Disability, Politics, and Recognition Disability Human Rights, Law and Policy - Jerome E Bickenbach The Political Economy of the Disability Marketplace - Gary L Albrecht and Michael Bury Disability and Health Policy - Gerben DeJong and Ian Basnett The Role of Markets in the Delivery of Health Services Disability Benefit Programs - Bonnie O'Day and Monroe Berkowitz Can We Improve the Return to Work Record? A Disability Studies Perspective on Employment Issues and Policies for Disabled People - Kay Schriner An International View Science and Technology Policy - Katherine D Seelman Is Disability a Missing Factor? Disability, Education and Inclusion - Len Barton and Felicity Armstrong Cross-Cultural Issues and Dilemmas Support Systems - Simi Litvak and Alexandra Enders The Interface Between Individuals and Environments The Relationship between Disabled People and Health and Welfare Professionals - Sally French and John Swain Public Health Trends in Disability - Don Lollar Past, Present, and Future Disability in the Developing World - Benedicte Ingstad

Theory Meets Practice in an Introduction to Disability Studies Course Joanne Woiak (bio) and Dennis Lang (bio) "Why have I never heard about disability rights issues before in my classes?" "The information I have gained is not only educational but also applicable to my everyday life and I am looking at the world with a very different perspective." These comments from two of our students in "Introduction to Disability Studies" are typical of responses to the undergraduate disability studies curriculum at the University of Washington (uw). Since 2003, the Disability Studies Program has offered courses that explore disability as an issue of social justice and human diversity. The students come from disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The largest numbers are interested in disability studies as preparation for their careers in applied fields such as law, psychology, education, social work, and public health. For some the courses fulfill a major requirement, while others take disability studies in pursuit of the Human Rights or Diversity minors. Most students come into the introductory survey class with little prior knowledge of the history of the disability rights movement or the perspective that disability is a category of oppression, since disability and the voices of disabled people are rarely included in the rest of the university curriculum. The mission of our interdisciplinary program is to problematize society's predominant understandings of disability, and to examine the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical factors that define and frame disability as a marker of difference. Four undergraduate courses are core requirements for the minor and major degrees in Disability Studies at uw. Typically five to ten students complete the minor each year, while a total of nineteen have graduated with the major. Our curriculum increases the depth and breadth of critical thinking around disability issues within the university as well as the community at large, enhancing the connections between relevant scholarship and informed social action. In this article we analyze and share insights from some of our collective experiences teaching an introductory survey course in disability studies. "Introduction to Disability Studies" provides a foundational understanding of the field and its relationship to the ongoing struggle for disability [End Page 96] rights in the United States. The course was co-created in 2002 by Sharan Brown, a research professor in Education and Associate Director of the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, and Dennis Lang, who after retiring from a career in nursing and public health came to uw as a disability activist and affiliate instructor in Rehabilitation Medicine and in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. Brown and Lang taught the survey quarterly for many years in a small lecture and discussion format, with an enrollment of 30–40 upper-level undergraduates and an occasional graduate student. For the last four years, it has been taught annually by Joanne Woiak, whose background is in the history of science and who is now a full-time lecturer in disability studies, as a 200-level lecture for 80–90 students with twice-weekly discussion sections of 20–25 students each. We have hired one or two teaching assistants each quarter, with funding provided by the uw Diversity minor. The tas have been graduate students from a wide range of disciplines, including public health genetics, political science, anthropology, rehabilitation, social work, English, and gender studies. Collaboration across disciplines and perspectives helps balance disability studies' broad abstract concepts against its controversial and intimate topics and the profoundly personal reactions to this material. The instructors and teaching assistants who co-teach "Introduction to Disability Studies" work together not only to revise the syllabus and devise inclusive instructional methods, but also to debrief after each class session and discuss what the students are saying (and not saying) in their assignments and class participation. The syllabus and pedagogy are continually evolving because of the instructors' divergent experiences and approaches to the material. We expect our students to be active and critical participants, to provide constructive feedback on the topics and approaches, and to collaborate with us on ways to make the time and spaces we share together as welcoming and accessible as possible. When we began offering the course as...

Disability researchers have voiced the criticism that the concept of care, together with research based on it, consists of the view that disabled people are dependent non-autonomous second-class citizens. The perspectives of disability studies and care research certainly are different from each other. Disability studies analyse the oppression and exclusion of disabled people and emphasize that disabled people need human rights and control over their own lives. Care research focuses rather on care relationships, informal and formal care, care-giving work and `an ethics of care'. Nevertheless, it is suggested here that the two perspectives are not mutually exclusive and that the two groups could learn from each other's approaches. For example, the relationship between disabled people and their personal assistants has much the same characteristics as the care relationship and requires a balancing of the needs and interests of the two parties. On the other hand, access to adequate care could be perceived as a basic civil and human right.

Aiming to place disability studies in conversation with other antioppressive educational frameworks, this article “crips” human rights education (HRE), a field that, by definition, teaches people about equality, dignity, and respect. A theoretical sampling of HRE journals and an online library database uncovers that human rights scholarship largely overlooks disability outside a medical or legal framework, though disability scholars consistently reference human rights in their work. We argue that these absences exemplify the active erasure of disability at the ontological level, and in response we urge scholars to reconceptualize where and how politics, activism, and social change take place. This “visibilizing” project follows Baxi's dictum that HRE must constantly adapt to people’s localized experiences and the needs of future generations. We offer a reading list to begin this “visibilizing” project in undergraduate university settings, proposing that teachers use “Disability and Human Rights Praxis: Intersectional, Interdisciplinary Readings for Educators” to conceptualize how they might pair disability studies in education and HRE texts to facilitate interdisciplinary class discussions and student projects.

Undersection 11.1 of The Alberta Human Rights Act (2009), teachers are now required to give prior written notice to parents when subject matter of religion, human sexuality, and sexual orientation are primarily and explicitly addressed in class. In light of this new legislation, the main intent of this initial one year research project was to examine the policies and procedures of one particular school district to investigate compliance with section 11.1 of the Alberta Human Rights Act. Specifically, we examined: To what extent has section 11.1 changed teachers’ pedagogical practices? As such, this paper has two primary objectives. First, we provide an overview of the background in the lead up to the legislation. Second, we report on the impact of this legislation on teachers’ pedagogical practices. We argue that the ways in which teachers have internalized the legislation has had varying effects on their teaching practice and their professional autonomy. This study will be expanded to consider the effects on curricular practice across the province.

This article examines the paradox of religious inclusion and silent exclusion experienced by deaf congregants in a South African township Catholic church. Drawing on a qualitative case study involving a hearing priest, a South African Sign Language (SASL) interpreter, and three deaf parishioners, the study analyzes how access to worship is mediated, uneven, and structurally fragile. Whereas the provision of sign language interpretation signals institutional recognition, inconsistent availability, linguistic variation, and the auditory orientation of Catholic liturgy constrain full participation. Deaf congregants employ adaptive strategies—including situational awareness, visual cueing, and mobile technologies—that demonstrate agency but impose unequal cognitive and spiritual labor compared to hearing congregants. Integrating insights from Deaf studies, disability studies, and disability theology, the article argues that genuine religious inclusion requires more than interpretation; it demands the reconfiguration of liturgy in SASL and the promotion of deaf leadership within ecclesial life. The findings highlight the need for institutional transformation beyond accommodation to realize full spiritual belonging.

Despite the inter-disciplinary inclusivity of Disability Studies in the globe over time, the religious organization’s systems are still repulsive to accept the physical and psychosocial realities of people living with Disabilities. The growing literature that should be influencing religious perspectives about people with disabilities has not been able to extricate the dogmatic stereotypes and myths associated with Disability. As such, the prevalence of the diverse responses Disability from different contexts has compromised the ideological and material investment in Disability Studies. We used the combination of phenomenological observation and informal conversation qualitative methodologies to establish the experiences, feelings and behaviors of the Apostolic Faith Mission of Zimbabwe (AFMZ) congregants in Harare on the impact of the liberation praxis of Disability Theology. The findings showed that people with disabilities are most often marginalized, excluded and discriminated against and perpetually subjugated within the religious circles. This complexity of disabilities is exacerbated by the fluidity of policies, culture and religious ideologies when dealing with issues of disabilities. In conclusion, this study emphasized that Disability Theology within Christian tradition should function as a liberating praxis when dealing with issues of disabilities and being effectively used to enhance the participation of people with disabilities in all the religious liturgical activities.