Disability Theology Despite Itself

Abstract

This article examines the biography, literature, and religious thought of Shi Tiesheng (1951–2010), arguably the most influential author with a disability in contemporary China. Using the definition of “theology” in its broad sense, it argues that Shi has developed a kind of disability theology through his non-fiction and fictional works, though he never claimed to be a theologian or saw his works as theological. This theology borrows terms and ideas from Christianity, but also follows the syncretic tradition of Chinese religions. In contemporary China, where religions have been marginalized, religious vocabulary and contemplation helped Shi break free of the narrative assigned to people with disabilities by the atheist state.

Keywords:

• Disability
• disability studies
• Buddhism
• eastern religions

Acknowledgements

I thank Ms. Chen Ximi for all the help she provided me over years for my research on her late husband Shi Tiesheng, and Mr. Zhu Lühe, Shi Tiesheng’s nephew, for pointing out inaccuracies in my account of Shi’s biography. I thank my long-time mentor Dr. Chloë Starr, whose seminar inspired me to explore Shi’s unique theology, Dr. Sarah Dauncey, who I have not met in person, and my friend Dr. Chen Luying for generously sharing their articles even before they were published.

Notes

1 Here the term “theology” is used in the broad, non-traditional sense, which includes self-reflections of both theistic and nontheistic traditions, and need not be systematic (Tracy, 1987, p. 9126). In recent works, scholars have been advocating for and discussing new notions like “Buddhist theology” (Jackson and Makransky, 2000) and “Pagan theology” (York, 2003).

2 I use the word “syncretic” in a general sense, without any of the negative connotations it carried in its European usage. I am also aware of its lack of precision, disclosed in Brook’s article (1993), for describing certain prevailing and long-lasting religious attitudes in China. Borrowing Brook’s terminology, “compartmentalism” may better characterize Shi’s religious stance, but is perhaps too obscure for readers from other fields. For a detailed discussion of Shi’s syncretism in Chinese, see Chen (2018).

3 When I mentioned the term “disability theology” to Chen Ximi, Shi’s widowed wife, who had been extremely close to Shi spiritually and intellectually and was familiar with nearly all the books Shi had read, she seemed quite surprised to hear it (personal communication, 2014). No works of disability theology had been translated and published – perhaps not even introduced – in Mainland China; given that Shi only reads Chinese, it is safe to make this inference.

4 In one short story (Shi, 1984a), the protagonist is a crippled young man who wants to be a writer. When his work is finally published, he is not pleased because he suspects that his disability predisposed the editor to accept his work out of pity.

5 Because of the highly syncretic nature of Shi’s spirituality, which, to be discussed in Section IV, included traditional Chinese religions and Christianity, I borrow the word “G*d” from feminist theology to translate the Chinese terms (shangdi or shen) Shi uses. These Chinese words may refer to God of the Abrahamic religions, but they are indigenous terms in use long before any of the Abrahamic religions were introduced to China. These terms, especially the word shen, can also refer to a god or gods of Buddhism, Daoism, or Chinese folk religions. In Shi’s writings, it is often difficult to tell whether he, when using these terms, was writing about an Abrahamic God or a god/goddess in charge of a specific aspect of life, as is common for gods in Chinese religion.

6 I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this.

7 According to an unpublished memoire by Shi Tiesheng’s uncle Shi Yaozeng (2016), Tiesheng’s father and uncles went to the secondary school affiliated with Fu Jen Catholic University, but none of them converted to Catholicism.

8 Focusing on the worship of one of these gods, Kenneth Dean, a renowned scholar of Daoism, made a documentary film titled Bored in Heaven (2010).

9 For another example of religious innovations made by individuals, see Fisher (2012), which documents the activities of lay Buddhist preachers in contemporary Beijing. Starr (2018, p. 114) has noticed that the Chinese religious thinkers of the generation after Shi Tiesheng tended to be more dogmatic and less syncretic.

10 This piece of reportage (Gao, 1989) was originally published in Baogao wenxue, June 1989, but the journal was soon closed after the crackdown on the Tian’anmen Movement. The author had worked for the campaign in 1983; having emigrated to the United States in 1990, he claimed to still have a rapport with Zhang despite his candid—even sarcastic—depiction in this article of the ideological campaign that promoted Zhang as a national role model. This article is now accessible on a website sponsored by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

11 A cadre of the government in Communist China may not have fared much better financially than the average Chinese, especially when he had to pay for his child’s medical treatment. Some journalists even speculated that Zhang’s disease, which she contracted in 1960, was the result of the great famine that tormented China that year. Zhang (1999, p. 23) recalls in her writing that her mother, left penniless, could not afford to buy her any snacks on their way home from the hospital.