Disability theology wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card. But maybe it should have been.

I didn’t even realize this was a theology book until I’d already grabbed it and noticed its subtitle: “Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church”.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved the theology in here. I found the Bible references nostalgic (I grew up Catholic), the hermeneutics philosophy-adjacent (and therefore lovely), the moral ontology refreshingly deep, and anytime I see progressive minds reclaiming theological ground ceded to conservative jerks I just want to cheer them on.

I love own-voices nonfiction (our author is a Black pastor with a disability). And there were some really interesting points in here about ableism’s role in the legacy of slavery and the early American Christian churches.

That said, there is a suuuper specific form I’m looking for in a book like this, and this didn’t really have it. I want Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Frantz Fanon (and dare I say, Hegel?)—a thinker who successfully marries the theology/philosophy of moral arguments and text-focussed hermeneutics with social and political info and current events. And in this book, those two elements stayed too disconnected, imo.

But I’m happy I got out of my comfort zone with this one, randomly picking it to fulfill a prompt for The Diverse Baseline challenge.