Provoking Disability Theology: The Disabled Body as Site of Revelation

Disability theology has long addressed the theological and social implications of disability, yet disabled perspectives often remain secondary to nondisabled analyses. This paper reclaims the disabled body as a privileged site of divine revelation, drawing from M. Shawn Copeland’s liberative framework in Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Copeland argues that bodies provoke theology, contesting its hypotheses and resisting its margins. Expanding this methodology, I center the disabled woman’s experience as a locus theologicus, revealing how the disabled body unsettles ableist theological constructs and redefines spirituality through survival, resistance, and flourishing. This paper ultimately argues that disability theology must center disabled voices, not merely for inclusion but for liberation—freedom from societal and theological frameworks that diminish disabled personhood. By foregrounding embodied disabled experience, this work deepens theological anthropology, challenges systemic ableism, and affirms disability as a revelatory source of divine presence.