Healing Ableism: Stories About Disability and Religious Life

by Darla Schumm

Overview

Most people encounter disability at some point in their lives, either in their own bodies or through a friend or loved one. Faith leaders, sacred texts, and members of religious communities frequently offer religious teachings and metaphors as explanation for the presence of disability, but rarely do we hear the voices of people living with disabilities reflecting on their experiences of God, faith, or religious life. In Healing Ableism: Stories about Disability and Religious Life, Darla Schumm explores the extraordinary stories of people with disabilities who struggle with the ordinary human challenges of faith and doubt, exclusion and inclusion, and injustice and justice. Blending candid story-telling, cultural critique, and theory, Schumm invites readers to reflect on the experiences of people with disabilities in religious communities and organizations. Schumm argues that it’s not disability that needs healing, it’s ableism that needs healing. In the final chapter, Schumm offers accessible love as one avenue for healing ableism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978842229
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	11/11/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	202

About the Author

DARLA SCHUMM is a disabled author and educator. She is the associate provost for curriculum and faculty engagement at Hollins University, Virginia. Schumm has co-edited four books exploring intersections of disability and the world’s religions, most recently, Disability and World Religions: An Introduction.

Table of Contents

 
1          Introduction                                                               
2          Let’s Talk About Disability                           
3          Sinners, Saints, Super Crips, and Misfits      
4          Challenging Normalcy                                  
5          Crip Tests                                                      
6          Slow Futures, Crip Time                                 
7          Healing Ableism                                            
Acknowledgements                                       
Notes
Bibliography                                     

Editorial Reviews

"In Healing Ableism, Schumm invites us into a fascinating conversation about the complex interaction between disability and religion. Schumm, acting as alternatively memoirist, teacher, and social scientist, provides an enlightened insider's look at disability and blindness. The book both entertains and informs, providing a needed adjunct to more dryly academic works."

distinguished professor emeritus, University of Illinois Chicago - Lennard J. Davis

"Healing Ableism is a vital contribution to the changing conversation on disability in religious contexts. Through in-depth qualitative research with disabled people from a range of religious traditions, Schumm reflects on ableism and disability (in)justice in religious communities, weaving interviewees' voices together with illuminating perspectives from critical disability theory. The book is a powerful call to religious practitioners—and all of us—to rage against ableism in our communities, transforming them together through love."

coauthor of At the Gates: Disability, Justice and the Churches - Naomi Lawson Jacobs

"'Accessible love' is Darla Schumm's brilliant proposal for dismantling ableism. Religious people commonly construct monumental barriers to access, inclusion, and equity in their teachings and architecture. Careful, candid, comprehensive analysis grounded in interviews with disabled people opens new paths. This deftly written book is theology at its most useful."

cofounder and codirector, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) - Mary E. Hunt Mary E. Hunt