During week 8 of this course, we read Baynton’s piece “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History” and had a class discussion about what it means to be human and where social perceptions of disability come from. I brought up something about how the religious, specifically Christian and Catholic, concept of purity and having a spirit seem to play a role in how disability is perceived. We talked about the idea that humans are made in “God’s own image” and how impairments have historically been understood as “monstrous” and ungodly. Ever since that class, I’ve been meaning to spend some more time thinking about that idea. Recently my family was listening to Christmas music and the song “Mary Did You Know” came on, which is a song about the birth of Jesus Christ and all the things he’d do for the world that Mary wasn’t aware of when she became pregnant with him. There’s a part in the song that immediately reminded me of our week 8 discussion that goes:
Mary did you know
The blind will see
The deaf will hear
The dead will live again
The lame will leap
The dumb will speak
The praises of The Lamb
Mary, did you know
That your Baby Boy
Is Lord of all creation?
I was listening and I was also reminded about how one of the most special powers Jesus had was the ability to “heal” and “cure” people with what we now understand to be disabilities. I think there’s something very significant about this idea that what convinced skeptics that Jesus was the son of God was that he can cure impairments like blindness, deafness, and walking and speech impairments. It seems to imply that although all humans are made in God’s image, there is something about disabled people that needs to be “fixed” by Jesus who is an extension of God. This further implies that there is something non-human about being disabled and that disabled people do not become human or God-like until their impairments are cured. I think these are really powerful connections that contribute to the historical oppression and cruel treatment of disabled people. Similar to how racists used the Bible to interpret the mark of Cain as dark skin, Bible stories about Jesus’ healing powers seems to have given justification for believing that disability is a physical manifestation of impurity that makes disabled people subhuman and separate from God.
Since that class discussion, I’ve also become more aware and uncomfortable with the way some Christians tend to speak about the “blessing of good health and a sound mind”. This was something I’ve heard countless times growing up in a Christian household. I think there is probably some critical analysis that can be done about the concept of being blessed in general, but in relation to disability, I find it interesting that being non-disabled is seen as the result of having God’s favor in your life. It again reinforces the notion that disability is an ungodly curse.
I think that moving forward with disability rights and justice, like many other social justice movements, requires people who subscribe to Christianity to dig deep and really think critically about what they learn from the Bible and how it informs their beliefs about other people. When praising Jesus as the savior of humanity, I think it’s important to question what exactly Jesus is saving us from. Maybe part of his mission was to save human kind from disability. Maybe Jesus was a eugenicist even though he was also someone who taught love and acceptance of all people. I don’t know. But as someone who is non-religious and is always very critical of Christianity in general, I would be interested to hear how disabled Christians understand these kinds of Bible stories and if/how they think about the impact of the praise Jesus received for curing disabilities.
Unruly Bodies 
First, I really enjoyed your article title. It made me chuckle. Second, I really like how you broke down your thoughts. I am Jewish, and don’t know much of Christian teachings, but you explained it all so well. I thought you made Such good points of what does it mean to “live in Jesus’s image” and as a “creation of God”. If we are all created in this “perfect” way, doesn’t that mean we are all inherently the way we are supposed to be? Especially in a “Christian country”, why isn’t our society more accepting? Why don’t Christian groups work to make “disabilities” more normalized in our society and work to make our country more equitable for all?
As a jew, this is a very cool analysis and an amazing post! As well as you’re totally right! So many things that are not Cis-het whiteness is seen as ungodly or barbaric. If everyone is made in the image of God, and God doesn’t make mistakes, then why are disabled people or people of different genders, sexualities, and ethnicities impure or not worthy? Why do they need to be fixed to be “pure” if they are perfect?
The title of this post sent me, oh my god. This is one of my mother’s favorite songs and I was always aware in the back of my mind somewhere, of how Jesus being able to “cure” disabled people was weird but I never actually stopped to think about it. You did a really great job at unpacking why it’s problematic and how ableism is woven into Christian texts/culture.
I’m atheist now, but I grew up in a household that was Christian with a twist (the twist is Unificationism) and one thing that was always pressed upon me as an able-bodied person, was how grateful I should be that I was healthy and didn’t “have anything wrong with me”. From childhood, I was taught by example how to be extremely judgemental. Not necessarily in a “you’re going to Hell” way, but softer and grosser than that, just simple pious and condescending pity. My parents would show me videos of “inspiration porn” of disabled people living their lives and react the same way they would when hearing about a middle-aged couple with no children/grandchildren: “it’s so sad.”
At least among the Unificationists I lived with, God was used to justify ableism. If God made our bodies to be perfect (meaning all of our organs are “working perfectly”) then disabled people are further from his image. It was never explicitly titled as sin but it was a reason for them to feel like God had been kind to them. But then they also believed that the inspirational disabled people were chosen by God to struggle and come out victorious because they had stronger spirits… It was like a mirage, none of it made sense to me when I looked closer.
Hello raised Catholic here and I absolutely relate to this. It’s something I’m still unlearning every day because it really was drilled into us whether intentionally or not that disabilities were bad and that if we really believed in Jesus/God, our disabilities would be “cured”. Thanks for putting things I’ve felt and thought into fully formed sentences. How are we simultaneously “made in God’s image” but also some of us need to be “cured” by God’s son? Why does God seem to label people with disabilities as sinners or, as you said, “monstrous”?