Editorial-St Mark's Review-No. 248-June/July 2019

This response to John Swinton's Becoming Friends of Time, written for Syndicate, applauds the central argument of the book: that people with cognitive impairments of all kinds can and should be regarded as disciples of Jesus, and that the difference in the way they inhabit time can be a gift to the whole body of Christ. I first draw out some of the implications of Augustine's account of time (in Book XI of the Confessions) for the proposal. Second, I consider the gift of the paralytic as indicative of one dimension of the contribution that people with disabilities bring to the Church.

Journal of Moral Theology, 2017

The Heythrop Journal, 2017

Journal of Religion, Disability & Health, 2012

Over the past century, theologians and ethicists have expressed unease with the growing problem of competition in human relationships. While most agree that competition dissolves relationships of fidelity and trust between people, many have argued on the basis of the political mythology of social contract theory that competition is a natural, albeit sad, fact of being human. This article examines and aligns three responses to the problem of competition in human relationships from Jean Vanier, Carl Rogers, and James Alison. In contrast to the view that human beings are naturally competitive, Vanier, Rogers, and Alison have each reinterpreted human being as depending on the cultivation of noncompetitive relationships that require interdependence in vulnerability, acceptance of others, and a vision of fully human life compatible with and modeled in the experience of disability. Vanier and Rogers developed their anthropologies in relation to the L'Arche communities and psychotherapy respectively, and did not concentrate specifically on traditional systematic theological topics. Alison, however, has focused on traditional theological topics, particularly redemption. This essay suggests that the noncompetitive anthropology developed in Vanier and Rogers helpfully complements the doctrine of redemption developed by Alison and so assists in changing the focus of Christian discussions of salvation from adversarial,

2018

Throughout its history, the church has done a poor job including persons with disability. This has often been the result of implicit understandings of rationalism or ableism within modern western society. Additionally, within the Christian tradition, there has been a trend to assume a link between disability and sin. In an attempt to reconcile the problem of inclusion and disability, many theologians have recently begun crafting theologies of liberation, access, and inclusion. However, many of these theologies of disability have not been inclusive of persons with profound intellectual disability, as many theologies of liberation and access assume a particular amount of purposive self agency, or the ability of a person to speak and act for themselves. Thus, even within these theologies of disability that attempt to provide a rationale for the inclusion of persons with disability, persons with profound intellectual disability remain actively barred from inclusion and participation. In this thesis, I combat the exclusion of persons with disability, as well as the implicit assumptions of rationalism, ableism, and the perceived link between sin and disability, by attempting to understand persons with disability first through the lens of theological anthropology. I examine the relational theological anthropology of Karl Barth, which understands humanity not through any innate capacities or abilities, but through the person of Jesus Christ, as a way of crafting a framework for disability theology. Additionally, Barth's anthropology is grounded in his doctrine of election, which I also examine. However, in Barth's corpus, he does not explicitly examine some of the questions surrounding persons with disability. Thus, to bridge the gap between disability and Barth's theological anthropology and doctrine of election, I place Barth in conversation with Jean Vanier, identifying similarities between Barth and Vanier that will help us to come to a more holistic understanding of inclusion and disability.

2015

Reconsidering Intellectual Disability opens with the story of Ashley, a young girl who in 2004 underwent a combination of estrogen therapy to restrict her growth, and surgery to remove her breast buds and uterus. This experimental combination, later known as the Ashley Treatment, were deemed necessary by Ashley's parents and doctors because of her profound disability, and because they feared her growth and development would otherwise make it difficult for them to care for her at home. The hospital's ethics committee approved the procedures, but after the parents took Ashley's case public, significant controversy ensued. Particular criticism came from disability groups, who voiced concerns about Ashley's dignity and physical autonomy, the objectification of her life and body, her parents' unacknowledged conflict of interest, and the use of medicine to address a social problem. Jason Reimer Greig begins with an account of Ashley, her treatment, and the debate surrounding it both to illustrate the relevance of the topics he will address, and to provide a practical and personal impetus for his work. Greig recalls that he first learned about the Ashley Treatment at a meeting of the L'Arche Cape Breton community, who found Ashley's treatment incomprehensible, even horrifying. Since then Greig has continued to be disturbed and curious about the dissonance between the perspective of Ashley's parents, doctors, and ethicists towards the Ashley Treatment, and that of his L'Arche community, to which he dedicates the book. I dwell on how Greig introduces Ashley's story-and his own-because it demonstrates his choice to use a case method for the book. According to Greig, his goal is not to "solve the 'problem' of Ashley" but rather to bring "a particular person into Christian moral thinking about bioethics" (9). As he recognizes, the use of cases carries risks: individual narratives can be exploited to make dry academic prose more exciting, or to attempt to manipulate readers into premature agreement. However, he also contends that careful attention to particular stories-and particular people-can highlight questions about human flourishing, practices, and narratives that are otherwise obscured by the supposedly universal discourses of medicine and bioethics. Considering these neglected questions is the task of Greig's remaining chapters. After reviewing the debate around the Ashley Treatment in the first chapter, chapter 2 connects the medical model of disability assumed by advocates of the treatment to the "Baconian Project" of eliminating suffering described by Gerald McKenny. Here Greig also sketches a brief summary of how Christian narratives and theology can provide an alternative view of medicine and suffering to that of Ashley's parents, who assert that "knowingly allowing avoidable suffering for a helpless and disabled child can't be a good thing in the eyes of God" (70). Here Greig's initial response is clumsy, in that he segues too quickly from the parents' words to the claim that the Baconian project must end up seeking the elimination of those whose suffering cannot be relieved. Even if there may be a wider trend towards euthanasia of people with disabilities, Greig has not presented any evidence of it being discussed in Ashley's case. He is on firmer ground when he questions the conflation of disability and suffering by the non-disabled, including Ashley's parents. As Greig puts it: "the great Other of disabled embodiment can only look pathological when independence and agency characterize authentic human being" (73). This chapter also sees the introduction of a variety of theological voices that will influence Greig's work, including those of Stanley Hauerwas, Therese Lysaught, and Hans Reinders.

The Heythrop Journal, 2019

Reconsidering Intellectual Disability opens with the story of Ashley, a young girl who in 2004 underwent a combination of estrogen therapy to restrict her growth, and surgery to remove her breast buds and uterus. This experimental combination, later known as the Ashley Treatment, were deemed necessary by Ashley's parents and doctors because of her profound disability, and because they feared her growth and development would otherwise make it difficult for them to care for her at home. The hospital's ethics committee approved the procedures, but after the parents took Ashley's case public, significant controversy ensued. Particular criticism came from disability groups, who voiced concerns about Ashley's dignity and physical autonomy, the objectification of her life and body, her parents' unacknowledged conflict of interest, and the use of medicine to address a social problem. Jason Reimer Greig begins with an account of Ashley, her treatment, and the debate surrounding it both to illustrate the relevance of the topics he will address, and to provide a practical and personal impetus for his work. Greig recalls that he first learned about the Ashley Treatment at a meeting of the L'Arche Cape Breton community, who found Ashley's treatment incomprehensible, even horrifying. Since then Greig has continued to be disturbed and curious about the dissonance between the perspective of Ashley's parents, doctors, and ethicists towards the Ashley Treatment, and that of his L'Arche community, to which he dedicates the book. I dwell on how Greig introduces Ashley's story-and his own-because it demonstrates his choice to use a case method for the book. According to Greig, his goal is not to "solve the 'problem' of Ashley" but rather to bring "a particular person into Christian moral thinking about bioethics" (9). As he recognizes, the use of cases carries risks: individual narratives can be exploited to make dry academic prose more exciting, or to attempt to manipulate readers into premature agreement. However, he also contends that careful attention to particular stories-and particular people-can highlight questions about human flourishing, practices, and narratives that are otherwise obscured by the supposedly universal discourses of medicine and bioethics. Considering these neglected questions is the task of Greig's remaining chapters. After reviewing the debate around the Ashley Treatment in the first chapter, chapter 2 connects the medical model of disability assumed by advocates of the treatment to the "Baconian Project" of eliminating suffering described by Gerald McKenny. Here Greig also sketches a brief summary of how Christian narratives and theology can provide an alternative view of medicine and suffering to that of Ashley's parents, who assert that "knowingly allowing avoidable suffering for a helpless and disabled child can't be a good thing in the eyes of God" (70). Here Greig's initial response is clumsy, in that he segues too quickly from the parents' words to the claim that the Baconian project must end up seeking the elimination of those whose suffering cannot be relieved. Even if there may be a wider trend towards euthanasia of people with disabilities, Greig has not presented any evidence of it being discussed in Ashley's case. He is on firmer ground when he questions the conflation of disability and suffering by the non-disabled, including Ashley's parents. As Greig puts it: "the great Other of disabled embodiment can only look pathological when independence and agency characterize authentic human being" (73). This chapter also sees the introduction of a variety of theological voices that will influence Greig's work, including those of Stanley Hauerwas, Therese Lysaught, and Hans Reinders.

Within postcolonial literature, “Midnight’s Children” (Rushdie)--their births laden not only with supernatural expectation, but traumatically marked with cultural upheaval--appear as symbols of hope in an unreliable future. Given the presence of disability in postcolonial literature, this essay pushes Christian theology to think with our own “midnight’s child”—one born “uncomely,” disfigured (Isaiah 53). “Disability”—never without some material signature, but always a cultural representation—names the ply of rhetoric batted back and forth between colonial and anti-colonial, these volleys shifting aesthetics and bending arcs of affect. Through the optics of modern realism, Jesus appeared as healer for the regime of “ablenationalism.” This essay, however, dares to think the figure of Jesus as volleyed back at Empire by anti-colonials. Reading with the Global South—namely, with the biblical scholar Simon Samuel and the constructive theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid--makes the figure of Jesus as postcolonial crip not wholly unprecedented.

Modern Theology, 2016

Reconsidering Intellectual Disability opens with the story of Ashley, a young girl who in 2004 underwent a combination of estrogen therapy to restrict her growth, and surgery to remove her breast buds and uterus. This experimental combination, later known as the Ashley Treatment, were deemed necessary by Ashley's parents and doctors because of her profound disability, and because they feared her growth and development would otherwise make it difficult for them to care for her at home. The hospital's ethics committee approved the procedures, but after the parents took Ashley's case public, significant controversy ensued. Particular criticism came from disability groups, who voiced concerns about Ashley's dignity and physical autonomy, the objectification of her life and body, her parents' unacknowledged conflict of interest, and the use of medicine to address a social problem. Jason Reimer Greig begins with an account of Ashley, her treatment, and the debate surrounding it both to illustrate the relevance of the topics he will address, and to provide a practical and personal impetus for his work. Greig recalls that he first learned about the Ashley Treatment at a meeting of the L'Arche Cape Breton community, who found Ashley's treatment incomprehensible, even horrifying. Since then Greig has continued to be disturbed and curious about the dissonance between the perspective of Ashley's parents, doctors, and ethicists towards the Ashley Treatment, and that of his L'Arche community, to which he dedicates the book. I dwell on how Greig introduces Ashley's story-and his own-because it demonstrates his choice to use a case method for the book. According to Greig, his goal is not to "solve the 'problem' of Ashley" but rather to bring "a particular person into Christian moral thinking about bioethics" (9). As he recognizes, the use of cases carries risks: individual narratives can be exploited to make dry academic prose more exciting, or to attempt to manipulate readers into premature agreement. However, he also contends that careful attention to particular stories-and particular people-can highlight questions about human flourishing, practices, and narratives that are otherwise obscured by the supposedly universal discourses of medicine and bioethics. Considering these neglected questions is the task of Greig's remaining chapters. After reviewing the debate around the Ashley Treatment in the first chapter, chapter 2 connects the medical model of disability assumed by advocates of the treatment to the "Baconian Project" of eliminating suffering described by Gerald McKenny. Here Greig also sketches a brief summary of how Christian narratives and theology can provide an alternative view of medicine and suffering to that of Ashley's parents, who assert that "knowingly allowing avoidable suffering for a helpless and disabled child can't be a good thing in the eyes of God" (70). Here Greig's initial response is clumsy, in that he segues too quickly from the parents' words to the claim that the Baconian project must end up seeking the elimination of those whose suffering cannot be relieved. Even if there may be a wider trend towards euthanasia of people with disabilities, Greig has not presented any evidence of it being discussed in Ashley's case. He is on firmer ground when he questions the conflation of disability and suffering by the non-disabled, including Ashley's parents. As Greig puts it: "the great Other of disabled embodiment can only look pathological when independence and agency characterize authentic human being" (73). This chapter also sees the introduction of a variety of theological voices that will influence Greig's work, including those of Stanley Hauerwas, Therese Lysaught, and Hans Reinders.