This panel centers disability perspectives as essential to shaping and imagining alternative futures: the first paper analyzes Deligny's theories on non-speaking autistic children and its potentials for worldmaking; the second offers a reading of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower through Black and disability theologies, presenting Laura Olamina as crip Christ figure; the third envisions an “indecent” resurrection that rejects colonial constructs of decency and centers vulnerable, interdependent bodies; the fourth develops "somasarx" as crip-mad theological anthropology emphasizing creation as ongoing process, bodily vulnerability, relation to a body politic, and disruption as salvific demand; the final paper argues that non-speaking autistic people emerge as crucial guides for religious futures, their perspectives demanding liturgical, relational, and spatial transformations in faith communities.
This paper examines the occasional comparisons between non-speaking autism, intellectual disability, and religious states of self-renunciation in the writings of Fernand Deligny, an experimental educator, writer, and social worker who worked in alternative residential programs for autistic children in 1950s-80s France. His careful, unsentimental reflections on the resemblance between physical states associated with mysticism, such as prostration, kneeling, rocking, and gazing, and the autonomous wandering of non-speaking children in safe, adaptive settings allowed Deligny to illustrate with sensitivity what subjectivities not mediated by language might look and feel like, to safeguard disabled and neurodivergent lives, and to provoke an expansion of the concept of the human. Through an analysis of the intertwined histories of religion and disability in modern Europe that make this comparison possible, I explore the constructive potential of his theories for disabled thought and worldmaking, building on his concepts of the “wander line” and the “a-conscious.”
I argue in this paper Piepzna-Samarasinha’s reading of the character Laura Olamina, in Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower, as a Black, genderqueer, disabled person who leads her community with the help of her disablity to a restored community is emblemic of Jesus Christ, when seen through the lens of Black and Disability theologies, as a Black, disabled risen Lord, promises an end to this world and birth of a new creation or a New Heaven and a new Earth.
Using the futural longings of Marcella Althaus-Reid, M. Shawn Copeland, Lisa Powell, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this presentation re-envisions bodily resurrection as “indecent.” Althaus-Reid’s work on “decency” captures how disability is entangled with other harmful colonial ideological constructs. Copeland’s theology creates an account of discipleship that incarnates God’s Reign through solidarity with marginalized bodies. Powell envisions disabled resurrected bodies as vulnerable, rejecting any idea of self-sufficiency. Piepzna-Samarasinha reflects on a future for disabled intimacies for Mad and neurodiverse bodies. The image of an “indecent” resurrected bodies incites the Christian moral imagination to advocate for those marked for harm by empire(s), reject autonomous individuality, and promote an ethos of vulnerability, care, and interdependence for neurodivergent and Mad sexuality.
Naming the human as somasarx attends to the fullness of ourselves, lineages, and future/s, by intervening in the medical, theological, and religious constructions that seek to divide, parse, and make intelligible our enfleshed, messy selves. We contend that available Christian theological anthropology is incomplete at best and harmful at worst, and must be re-oriented towards and grounded in crip-mad studies.
The authors work from self-embodied realities (mad-crip-able-disabled) to produce together an anthropology that is a practice of what it suggests. Somasarx as mad-crip theological anthropology forwards: 1) creation as ongoing process, not event, 2) enfleshed ties of the body to the body politic, 3) deep belovedness within vulnerable future/s, and 4) disruption as salvific, ethical demand. Somasarx as a theological anthropology is co-constitutive with the work of justice. As such, the paper concludes with the potential lived forms of a somasarx inspired by the work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.
As disability becomes increasingly normative, this paper argues that nonspeaking autistic people offer a vital lens for imagining the disabled future of religious communities. Drawing on Leah Lakshmi Piepzna‑Samarasinha, Alice Wong, and Lennard Davis it frames disability as a fluid, shared human reality that will shape the spiritual and demographic landscape of congregations. Engaging the insights of Nancy Eiesland, Grant Macaskill, Erin Raffety, and Phil Letizia, the paper outlines the theological and communal paradigms needed for faith communities to receive nonspeakers as full participants. It highlights the liturgical, relational, sensory, and spatial shifts necessary for an ecclesial future in which nonspeaking and other disabled people fully belong. The paper concludes with John Swinton’s apophatic theology, suggesting that the mystery of both God and disability, mirrored in the often unknown inner worlds of nonspeakers, calls religious communities to humility, a presumption of competence, and deeper forms of belonging.