Re-reading Calvin and Disability

Abstract

As a contributor to Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, this author reflects on challenges and possibilities of historical review as it relates to disability. Noting that our understandings of disability have changed, that historical figures rarely talked about disability in uncomplicated ways, and that any historical reconstruction is always partial, she argues that it is still crucial to explore and interrogate the resources of the past. Reflection on history gives us a space to ask new questions, an opening to observe things differently, a prompt for conversation, a place to examine our assumptions, and the possibility of new visions.

KEYWORDS:

• Calvin
• disability
• theology
• history