Disability in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Sacred Texts, Historical Traditions, and Social Analysis [Hardcover]

This edited collection of essays examines how religions of the world represent, understand, theologize, theorize and respond to disability and chronic illness. Contributors employ a variety of methodological approaches including ethnography, historical, cultural, or textual analysis, personal narrative, and theological/philosophical investigation.PART I: SACRED TEXTS, HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND DISABILITY Reading Talmudic Bodies: Disability, Narrative, and the Gaze in Rabbinic Judaism; J.W.Belser What the Rabbis Heard: Deafness in the Mishnah; B.Gracer Islam and Disability: Broad Outlines; M.Ghaly Leprosy in Early Islam; M.L.Long Vitiliginous (Sk)Inscriptions: Historical Religious Interpretations of Involuntarily Whining Skin; E.R.Sierra-Zarella Resurrecting Deformity: Augustine on Wounded and Scarred Bodies in the Heavenly Realm; K.Upson-Saia PART TWO: SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON RELIGION AND DISABILITY Religious Metaphors as a Justification for Eugenic Control: A Historical Analysis; G.V.O'Brian & A.Molinari Catholicism and Disability: Sacred and Profane; C.James Disability and the Love of Wisdom: De-forming, Re-forming, and Per-forming Philosophy of Religion; A.Yong Beyond Models: Tentative Daoist Contributions to Disability Studies; D.Schumm & M.Stoltzfus

Darla Schumm and Michael Stoltzfus weave together a volume of essays that cover a wide range of voices, disabilities, and historical periods. Their subtext, in fact, is that religious and cultural attitudes about disability are as complex as they are contextual, which leads one to richness rather than confusion. The authors blend and bridge academic research with examples and questions from real lives and practices - not an easy feat, but one that makes the essays accessible to a wide number of people in different roles within and outside of the academy. The essays are consistently clear and well written. I learned something new in each one, enjoyed them all, and look forward to usilƒ