Editor’s Note: This is the second part of our two-part series on the history of disability and its connections to theological reflection. You can find Part 1 here. 

Social
Opposing the medical model, the social model focuses on disability as a construction of our social fabric. Garland-Thomson calls this an “unarticulated ideology” that permeates all “structuring institutions, social identities, cultural practices, political positions, historical communities, and the shared human experience of embodiment” (16). Rather than disability being located within the body as the State-enforced medical community would argue, disability is external to the individual.

The concept of disabilities as outside of the body emerges from the lived history of the disabled in the Western world, especially in light of identity politics. Perhaps no one is more singularly responsible for the advent of the social model than Michel Foucault, given his tracing of the history of madness and the rise of places of confinement. Physical exclusion provided doctors the means of isolating madness, and thus, the constructed world which informed the medical. This turn toward the institutional undermines the more commonly held belief that disability is located in the body, instead finding locating it within the social architecture. Chappell adds to this four factors that helped reconstruct this medical isolation into a social problem: the rise of capitalism, the emergence of disability-care professionalism, State expansion (both economic and social), and the influence of eugenics (211).

Similarly to the deficiency and medical models, the social model takes its cue from economics. Whereas the deficiency model recognized the need for each person to contribute to a social unit, the medical model used the rise of individualism and capitalism to control those who could not contribute their share. As Oliver writes, “disabled people could not meet the demands of individualized wage labour and so became controlled through exclusion” (47). Medicine is not the true seat of disability definition; rather, it is the culmination of socially constructed policy decisions, political motivations, and unspoken ideologies. Oliver notes that it is truly the concept of independence which defines disability, rather than questions of bodily aberration. “Dependency,” he writes, “is created by the institutionalised practices of modern society” (85). In other words, “disabled people [are] uncritically accepted as a problem, for the most part unemployable and incapable of managing much of the activities of daily living solely because we are disabled” (Finkelstein, 37). Disabled people are excluded in groups, and therefore the individualized medical model fails to address a shared communality inherent to the core of what it means to be disabled. 

The implications of this shift are deep and wide, and have in part led to a more cohesive disability rights movement. The outcomes of a social model, much like the deficiency and medical models, are in many ways necessary for the flourishing of disabled lives, and the lived experiences of those who benefit from medical treatment or social change ought not be disregarded. However, the institutions which construct disability within the social model operate out of an ethic of erasure—rehabilitation makes the disabled body like an abled body, technology hides differences, and medicine transforms the disabled into the abled in a reversal of the natural order. To deconstruct these institutions by eliminating the differences between abled and disabled is to effectively erase disability at all. 

The disabled God, God in a sip/puff, God as Crip
What does this mean theologically? Certainly, the increased capacity for leadership, the retrofitting of inaccessible church spaces, and the acknowledgements of social, political, interpersonal, and theological trauma are all reflections of a model of disability which posits that the disabled are oppressed by the social reality around them, rather than their own bodies. Nancy Eiesland argued that a heaven without her disability would be a heaven with a God who did not know her, just as Alison Kafer notes that the conception of disability as tragedy means a future containing disability ought to be avoided. Eiesland later notes that in the resurrection, Christ continued to bear the marks of his injuries on the cross, making clear that the Christ is not disembodied or medically whole even in new life. In fact, she makes a claim that given the essential nature of disability as an identity marker, and also given that God has the capacity to be understood as both divine and disabled, Eiesland can locate her own experiences in a rehabilitation center as an encounter with the incarnational God in Christ. For those in her rehab Bible study, the vision of God using a sip/puff wheelchair is expressly biblical and of great importance for theology/pastoral care.

The concept of finding God in one’s own embodiment, even as one is discomforted by notions of disability, is echoed by Judith Snow as she claims “maybe God is quadriplegic, and we are the personal assistants for God… for me it’s very powerful. [But] generally speaking, I don’t like the idea of disability and I don’t spend much time talking about it.” While God may share in the experience of being disabled, for Snow it is a categorization that allows her to be controlled. What the world deems to be a disability is a negation of Snow’s unique gifts, whereas the identification of God as quadriplegic allows her to comment on how we all might be good personal assistants. These positive visions of disability by Snow and Eiesland (among other disabled academics) are ironically made possible only through the work of the social model, which allowed access to traditionally abled structures like the academy. Yet here there is a divergence, given that many of the claims of disability as a positive identity and the goals of institutions formed by capitalism (including the academy) are incompatible.

In the discourse surrounding the social model of disabilities, liberation theology, and essential embodiment, new definitions of “healing” and “resurrection” emerge. The works of John Hull, Darla Schumm, Monica Coleman, Sharon Betcher, Kendrick Kemp, and countless other disabled theologians have undoubtedly helped improve the lived realities for many with disabilities and their families alongside Eiesland and Snow. However, this definition is often critically dependent on excluding from the center those with intellectual, developmental, or learning disabilities—an admission most are quick to name.

Brock notes that this theological turn follows the social activism of disability rights groups. Following the dramatic “Capitol Crawl,” in which activists (including young children) climbed the 83 steps of the U.S. Capitol building as a demonstration against inaccessible architecture, both political and physical, the United States passed legislation guaranteeing equal rights to those identified as disabled. The Capital Crawl was a significant public event, but it was merely one piece to a much larger political movement. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) came as a result of many years of hard work and lobbying by a multitude of activists. In the wake of the ADA and the rise of self-advocacy groups, disability liberation theology began to coalesce around the desire to reshape policy in more egalitarian terms. The move allows for theologians to critique the social structure as restricting the lives of those with disabilities, as well as connect the disabled experience to the experiences of those under the oppressive weight of a socially constructed, and unequally weighted, binaries (e.g., White/Black, male/female, or citizen/noncitizen). The centering of disability as an essential core identity, however, risks forcing those who lack the intellectual capacity to engage politically, or those who feel at odds with their disabled bodies, to center their experience without consent.

Simplican notes the limitations of identity politics for the disabled, claiming “people with disability jeopardize a fictive regime that idealizes our capacity of control” (115). Making disability one identity among many, while helpful for many immediate political and social needs, ultimately fails to acknowledge the neoliberal roots of individualism running counter to the experience of dependence on which many with disabilities rely in their daily lives. Creamer (2008) also critiques this model, noting that claiming disability as a minority identity in order to uplift or normalize those currently marginalized only “changes which side of the equation we are on without actually challenging the equation” (p. 95). Though critical theory might understand the sociological impact of the abled gaze on disabled bodies, and while social architecture might force embodiments to contend with inflexible and unwelcome spaces, there still exists a dearth of theological answers for a disabled body in pain. What if the redefinition of one’s body as a “holy space” is not enough for those who have bodies in pain? What if, when the institutions and barriers which construct social disabilities pass away, the body still hurts?

Although there are several other conceptions of disability (see Disability World’s helpful compilation), these three major models permeate our world and  hold significant sway over our collective imagination. It is imperative that we understand this history, not for the sake of knowledge itself but because it is a continued, living history which greatly impacts each one of us - disabled or not. While this article is certainly reductive, this historical overview shows us that while we’ve come a considerable way, our theology and churches still have plenty of work left to do. [1498]

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