Toward a Theology of Care and Disability: Some Preliminary Considerations

Issues of disability and mental health are of increasing social importance, challenging Christian communities to reform widespread but problematic conceptions and practices of “care”. Traditional models of care as charity or service have been critiqued as potentially paternalistic and exploitative. Newer approaches struggle under the pressures of beuracractic professionalization and neo-liberal commodification, where often discussions about quality of life and human bodily differences are marked by ableism and serve to enforce marginalizing social and economic power relations. Interdisciplinary insights from disability studies, feminist ethics of care and political economy of care offer resources for critiquing current care imaginaries and envisioning alternative possibilities of care based in a relational anthropology, opening up generative prospects for theological reflection. This article seeks to outline a vision for a theology of care, proposing that care is itself a theological practice. Care an incarnational emblem of divine energy in the world that resonates with connective and lifegiving power, gesturing toward wholeness, healing and peace in vitalizing ways, reflecting the image of God. Such a theological framework can provide a basis for transforming ableist and exclusionary practices and postures.

Keywords: Ethics of Care, Theology, Disability, Relational Anthropology, Care Imaginary.