Book Reviews

Clifton on virtue and the good life

(This post is part of a series on Shane Clifton’s book Crippled Grace. This posts focuses on chapters 3 and 4. The post on chapter 1 can be found here, and chapter 2 can be found here. In chapter 3, we turn to Clifton's engagement with…
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April 14, 2019
Book Reviews

Clifton on disability and suffering

(This post is part of a series on Shane Clifton's book Crippled Grace. This posts focuses on chapter 2. The post on chapter 1 can be found here.) It is very common for individuals, especially if they do not have personal experience with a disability…
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April 8, 2019
Book Reviews

A new book study on Clifton’s “Crippled Grace.”

I'm teaching a course on theology and disability this semester at Calvin Theological Seminary. We've been exploring a wide range of issues during the first part of the course: some general issues in disability studies, how some influential theologians have thought about disability, disability and…
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April 3, 2019
22 Advocacy

Bonhoeffer, Community, and Disability

I'm teaching a course this semester on the theology of disability. We just wrapped up the part of the course where we look at historical figures (our primary text here was this wonderful collection). Yesterday we discussed the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I did an…
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March 12, 2019
22 Advocacy

The Demands of Time

One of the things I talk about in Disability and Inclusive Communities is the demands on time that can come from disability: Another way that our communities are not welcoming to those with disabilities is time. This is particularly true given the frantic pace that…
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March 5, 2019
22 Advocacy

Injustice and Disability

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about justice and disability lately, both because of my scholarly work and because it is concerns about justice that motivate much of my advocacy work. Justice, most broadly, is the virtue that governs interpersonal interaction in terms of giving…
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February 13, 2019
22 Advocacy

The Church, Belonging, and Shalom

(This past week, I flew down to OKC to, among other things, record some short videos about disability and the Church. Here's the text of one of those videos.)----- Just over 55 years ago, Martin Luther King remarked that “the most segregated hour of Christian…
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February 12, 2019
22 Advocacy

Academic Performance and Placement

Some of the most common questions I’m asked are based versions of the following: I’m told that since our child isn’t on grade level, they can’t be in the general education setting. Is this true? The school equates having an IEP with pull-out instruction. Since…
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December 19, 2018
Philosophy

The Fecundity of Ants and the Goodness of Existing

This post was originally published on The Daily Ant. “Kevin! Get in here!” comes my wife’s voice from the kitchen, brimming with an emotion somewhere between irritation and exasperation. We’d just moved our family of five over 1,500 miles across the country, replete with all…
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September 15, 2017
22 Advocacy

Conflicted About Pity

This post was originally published on Claire Crisp's blog. I confess that I'm conflicted. Now, this isn't a new phenomenon for me; I'm actually conflicted quite a lot. But today I find myself especially conflicted as the parent of a disabled child. In particular, I…
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May 17, 2016
Ethics

Patriotism Run Awry

This post was originally published at The Prindle Post. With the 2016 presidential election looming, we’re inundated with a number of messages from both major political parties. Many of these messages invoke patriotism as a reason to support one particular party or candidate over another.…
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February 2, 2016