Through books, videos, podcasts, and webinars, the Henri Nouwen Society’s Caregiving Initiative aims to provide “practical and spiritual encouragement” to professional and family caregivers by sharing Nouwen’s “unique perspective on caregiving.” A Dutch Catholic priest, pastoral theologian, and popular author on Christian spirituality, Nouwen left his academic position at Harvard Divinity School in 1985 to live at L’Arche—a Christian intentional community centered around adults with intellectual disabilities—where he lived until his death in 1996. During Nouwen’s eleven years living in L’Arche communities, he wrote extensively out of his experience as a friend, pastor, and caregiver for people with intellectual disabilities. Across his writings, Nouwen testified to a profound spiritual transformation at L’Arche and published these reflections in an effort to impart such transformation to others. Since his death, Nouwen’s life and writings have inspired the proliferation of books, podcasts, and devotional materials aimed at helping caregivers integrate their spirituality and practice of care. Nearly all promotional materials for these resources emphasize the potential for care to be “more transformative for the caregiver than the one being cared for”:
“We often experience caregiving as tiresome and burdensome, but Henri offers another vision that is lived more from the heart.”
“Whether you have chosen to be a caregiver or were thrust into the role by circumstances, you'll see how important and life-changing your work is. You'll also be encouraged by this beloved author who has been called one of the most influential spiritual writers of our time.”
“Readers are invited to find meaning in their work as a vocation, and to foster an ethos of self-care so as to build resilience and a firm foundation for a healthy fulfilling work life.”
This paper analyzes the proliferation of caregiving resources through Nouwen’s legacy in light of two critical concerns: 1) the instrumentalization of intellectual disability for the spiritual transformation of nondisabled caregivers and 2) the valorization of sacrificial care labor under racial capitalism. Ultimately, by examining Nouwen’s account of spiritual transformation through care, I argue that these caregiving resources reinforce capitalist logics that reduce disabled people to the value they produce for nondisabled caregivers while simultaneously masking the exploitation of care labor (most often carried out by women of color) as a form of virtuous suffering.
Informed by insights in disability studies, my concern about the instrumentalization of intellectual disability emerges from Nouwen’s portrayal of disabled people as an “instrument of God’s grace.” In hopes of finding freedom from the illusion of self-justification and reassurance of God’s unconditional love, Nouwen invests healing power into disabled bodies as material sites of divine revelation. Thinking with Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell, I contend that intellectual disability functions for Nouwen as a narrative prosthesis: “a crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality, and analytical insight.” In doing so, I call attention to the pernicious logics undergirding Nouwen’s theology of spiritual transformation through care. While Nouwen represents an early attempt to think theologically about disability beyond the dominant categories of sin or charity, his writings echo a colonizing logic that portrays disabled people as opportunities for nondisabled Christians’ reenchantment (Rosemarie Garland-Thomson). This reflects a broader pattern within American Catholic devotional culture in which bodies marked by difference become “vehicles for the materialization of the sacred,” displacing the complex emotions, desires, and hopes of disabled people (Robert Orsi, Andrew Walker-Cornetta). Ultimately, I argue that by imbuing disabled bodies with grace, Nouwen’s theology transforms the disabled body into a commodity, reinscribing the link between human worth and productivity (Callie Micale).
Informed by insights in care ethics and critical theory, my second critical concern emerges from the gendered and racialized dynamics of care labor. Given that direct support professionals in the United States are predominantly women (over 80%) and majority people of color (over 60%), I argue that Nouwen’s sacralization of care risks implicitly encouraging caregivers—most often women of color—to endure violence and exploitation in hopes of spiritual transformation. While aspects of Nouwen’s story may resonate with the experiences of many caregivers, elevating Nouwen’s story as a model of Christian care, particularly across racial and gender difference, risks silencing dissonant experiences of exhaustion, confusion, violence and abuse. Moreover, Nouwen explicitly rejects a view of care as labor, obscuring care’s commodification and exploitation under capitalism (Nancy Fraser). Thinking with Theodor Adorno, I contend that Nouwen’s depiction of the caregiver as a model of Christ’s sacrificial love unintentionally glorifies the capitalist system that demands their sacrifice in the first place. In conversation with Black feminist and womanist scholars on the imbrications of care, violence, and sacrifice, I reflect on whether and how care might be spiritually transformative, even as a site of ongoing violence and exploitation (Delores Williams, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe).
In leveraging these lines of critique, I am not suggesting that Nouwen’s legacy is silent on the challenges of care. Nearly all of these caregiving resources attest to the dark side of care: care is complicated and complex; difficult to give and to receive; seemingly inseparable from suffering. Thus, my concern lies not primarily in their failure to catalogue the countless complexities surrounding care. Rather, I take issue with Nouwen’s insistence that mutuality always lies at the heart of care. Caregiving may be difficult, painful, and unwanted, but if you look hard enough, from the right angle of vision, care contains a gift—for both giver and receiver. This hope that care might be transformative, even redemptive, is enticing—and for good reason. For many caregivers, this hope is a vital source of spiritual encouragement in the midst of suffering. Yet under capitalism, this hope inevitably seems to place another demand on caregivers: if you just look harder, read one more book, listen to another podcast, pray this centering prayer, attend this caregivers’ retreat, care will be transformative. In short, this paper challenges the idealization of care through Christian theological discourse and reflects on the limits and possibilities of spiritual transformation through care under capitalism.
Through books, videos, podcasts, and webinars, the Henri Nouwen Society’s Caregiving Initiative aims to provide “practical and spiritual encouragement” to professional and family caregivers by sharing Nouwen’s “unique perspective on caregiving.” This paper analyzes the proliferation of caregiving resources through Nouwen’s legacy in light of two critical concerns: 1) the instrumentalization of intellectual disability for the spiritual transformation of nondisabled caregivers and 2) the valorization of sacrificial care labor under racial capitalism. By examining Nouwen’s account of spiritual transformation through care, I argue that these caregiving resources reinforce capitalist logics that reduce disabled people to the value they produce for nondisabled caregivers while simultaneously masking the exploitation of care labor (most often carried out by women of color) as a form of virtuous suffering. Ultimately, I reflect on whether and how care might be spiritually transformative, even as a site of ongoing violence and exploitation.