"The 'body'—of individuals and the body of populations—appears as the bearer of new variables, not merely as between the scarce and the numerous and the submissive and the restive, rich and poor, healthy and sick, strong and weak, but also as between the more or less utilisable, more or less amenable to profitable investment, those with greater or lesser prospects of survival, death and illness, and with more or less capacity for being usefully trained." - Michael Foucault ; The Disabled God, Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
"The Nation's proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency." - Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ; Quoted in The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
"The bodies we inhabit and the lives those bodies carry on need not be perfect to have value. Bad things do happen, we know—to bad and good people alike—but so do good things. Life's curses, like life's blessings, are always mixed." - Nancy Mairs ; Quoted in The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
"We have seen signs which shall not be cut off. The branches shall not be cut off from the vine. Our power will not be diminished or rendered ineffective. The sacrament of life shall not be withheld—the body, the blood, the sensuality of God's presence on earth." - Carter Heyward ; Quoted by Nancy Eiesland in The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability
"What word does Christianity have to offer for those of us who live with our backs constantly against the walls of white supremacist heterosexist patriarchal ableist capitalism?" - CHANEQUA WALKER-BARNES ; Why I Gave Up Church; Bearings Online. October 12, 2017
"For persons with disabilities, the body is the center of political struggle. In challenging society's definitions of our bodies as flawed, dangerous, and dependent, people with disabilities initiated a social movement that stressed positive self-image and self-help." - Nancy L. Eiesland ; The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability, p. 49
"The place which my body occupies within the world, my actual Here is the starting point from which I take my bearings in space. It is, so to speak, the center 0 in my system of coordination." - Alfred Schutz ; Quoted in The Disabled God: Toward a Theology of Liberation
"There are many today who simply to not believe that their liberation is dependent upon being able to talk or walk. They insist on their right to live fully human and 'whole' lives in a society that continues to define them as 'handicapped' only because they are different. Nonphysically disabled readers must be aware of the biases we unconsciously bring to the biblical narratives of 'healing.' Obviously any interpretation that stresses the biomedical definition of 'wholeness' excludes the physically disabled from the good news. If, however, we focus on the broader socio-symbolic meaning of illness and healing, the stories address us all equally. After all, in Mark the true impediments to discipleship have nothing to do with physical impairment, but with spiritual and ideological disorders." - Ched Myers ; Binding the Strong Man: a political reading of Mark's story of Jesus