Disability scholarship has long grappled with the instability of the future. Feminist disability scholar Alison Kafer describes dominant cultural narratives of disability as structured by a temporal imaginary in which disability forecloses the possibility of flourishing unless medical intervention restores normative function. When cure is unavailable or ineffective, disabled futures are suspended within what Kafer calls “curative time,” a framework that renders the present merely a waiting period for medical resolution.
This paper engages disability studies, particularly the concept of “crip time,” alongside eschatology to challenge these impoverished temporal imaginaries. Crip time foregrounds unpredictability, contingency, and alternative rhythms of life. This paper argues that crip time offers theology crucial resources for inhabiting uncertain futurity. Read alongside apocalyptic theology, crip time interrupts assumptions of linear progress and invites forms of hope grounded not in control of the future but in presence, solidarity, and collective action.