Many Minds, One Body: Intellectual Disability, Humanity, and the Church [electronic resource].

9781303297076

1 online resource (296 p.)

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The problem to which this dissertation responds is the exclusion from and discrimination within Christian churches that intellectually disabled people often experience in the United States. I suggest that this problem reflects nondisabled people's doubts about the full humanity of intellectually disabled people, as two dominant theological ways of characterizing human beings, first in terms of capacities and second in terms of relationships, exclude at least some intellectually disabled people whose capacities for rationality and action and for engaging in reciprocal relationships are very limited. While most theological anthropologies look to typically developing human beings to make claims about humanity, this project looks to intellectually disabled people to discern the character of human life in general and proposes that theologically what is distinctive about human creatures is that Jesus Christ became incarnate as the sort of being that we are. After suggesting that what it means to be human is grounded in God's relating to humanity, the dissertation explores the roles of capacities and relationships in human identity development, affirming the importance of those qualities and experiences without making one's membership in the class of human being contingent upon them. In conversation with feminist liberation theologian Letty Russell, I consider God's intentions for humanity in terms of helping relations, proposing a revised view of what constitutes help in which even profoundly intellectually disabled people may be included. Then I turn to ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, evaluating various conceptions of the church for their potential inclusiveness or exclusiveness of intellectually disabled people and suggesting that Russell's ecclesiology, which emphasizes the church as community and servant, has strong potential to facilitate inclusion. The dissertation concludes by examining central practices of the church---worship, including baptism, eucharist, and ministry, and service---and recommending measures for facilitating the inclusion of intellectually disabled people in them. I advance several theoretical and theological supports for these recommendations, and here, as in my discussion of theological anthropology, emphasis falls on divine action and gracious gifts rather than on human capacities or merits.

Books / Online / Dissertations & Theses

English

July 24, 2014

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2013.

Yale University. Religious Studies.