Issues With The Banner Part 6 - “‘My Body is Not a Prayer Request’: Disability Concerns’ Book of the Year”
Wherein it is suggested that Christians who recognize disabilities as disabilities and hope to see miracles of healing have been discipled into a wrong world-view
As explained in my introductory post, I have been slowly going through the March 2023 issue of the Banner and pointing out articles I have concerns with. I’ve been doing this not because I particularly enjoy criticizing the Banner, but because I’m trying to illustrate what I see as the wide-spread nature of the publication’s failings and the sometimes subtle ways concerning and unorthodox views are expressed in its pages.
In one issue, a total of nine articles quickly jumped out at me as expressing questionable beliefs. Below is the sixth of those articles.
The article is essentially an ad for a book by a woman named Amy Kenny called “My Body is Not a Prayer Request”. In fact, at the time the article was published, the (then) Office of Disability Concerns was “encouraging all CRC members to read Kenny’s book and discuss how we can come together to fight ableism in our churches and instead engage in disability justice.”
First off, a basic definition of what they mean by “ablism” and “disability justice” is warranted, and it is shoddy writing and poor editing to not include that information in the article.
In addition to defining those terms, the writer ought to have provided at least some basic reasoning as to why “fighting ableism” and “engaging in disability justice” are specifically things that a church should be focused on. I would be interested hearing a clearer explanation of what the biblical argument is for Christians to “fight ableism” and “engage in disability justice”.
This is yet another example of The Banner taking as a given things that are not obviously true from a scriptural standpoint and expending no effort to actually make a case as to why what they assume to be true really is true and why, if they are true, the rest of the CRC should follow their specific advice on how to respond to these issues.
Two relevant paragraphs from the middle of the article state:
Instead, those with disabilities are often overlooked, underutilized, and treated as something in need of fixing instead of as equal members of the community. The title of Kenny’s book illustrates this: she said she has frequently been approached by well-meaning Christians who ask if they can pray for her healing.
“They have been discipled into ableism and only see my disabled body as a ‘lack’ in need of a ‘fix’ or a cure,” Kenny said. “The title of my book is a declaration that my body is not a prayer request. It was made in the image of the divine, and it radiates that to the world. It is just that the church hasn’t caught up enough yet to see her shine.”
While I recognize and appreciate that having a disability need not define a person and many people with disabilities live full and productive lives, I really think the writer is overstating things, and I’m unconvinced that her position is particularly grounded in scripture. A large portion of Jesus’ ministry on earth was healing the sick and disabled, and the miracles of healing He performed were one of the indications he was the Son of God. It is no minor thing to look at people who hope to see miracles of healing like the very miracles Jesus performed and castigate them as having been discipled into a false world-view.
It’s not unChristian to look at someone who has a disability and recognize that they are not whole. How one responds to that recognition and whether or not it is appropriate to walk up to a stranger in church and ask to pray for their healing are separate issues from the basic reality that the body of a person with a physical disability has a weakness, frailty, or deficiency of some sort that a body falling within the norm of human development and health does not.
More broadly speaking, one could argue that the Christian position is that we are all disabled because we are all going to die and we are all not as we should be because of the Fall. We are all—disabled or not—made in the image of God, but we are also all sick and fallen, and that is manifested spiritually through our many sins and personal failings and is manifested physically through sickness, disease, disability, and death. And we are all seeking healing whether it comes in this life or the next.
It’s not inherently wrong or immoral or unChristian to look at a person who is disabled and recognize that the state of their body is not as it should be. In fact, recognizing the reality of our fallen condition is part of Christianity 101.