Peculiar Discipleship: An Autistic Liberation Theology
Claire Williams
SCM Press, 2023, 272pp, pbk. £19.99
Over the past 20-or-so years strides have been made in developing
a rich theology that highlights the experiences of disabled people.
Theologians such as Nancy L. Eiesland in The Disabled God have
questioned how normative ideals about ability inform how disabled
people are approached as theological and charitable ‘projects’ for
abled bodied people to imprint their ‘fully formed’ humanity upon.
In disability, difference is highlighted too clearly and the aim of the
abled-bodied majority is to disguise or remove the disabled body
from view. Eiesland rejects this response and instead suggests
a liberation theology of disability. Here, the marginalisation
that Christian theology has attributed towards disabled people
is put under the microscope in a similar vein to how black and
feminist theologians undertook examinations of race and gender
inequalities.
Peculiar Discipleship looks to uncover what a specifically
autistic liberation theology looks like, often drawing from firsthand
experiences of being autistic herself. In the first chapter,
titled ‘Trauma, Crisis and Ecclesiology’, Williams examines her
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