Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality by Thomas E. Reynolds

Chris Reynolds, the author’s 17-year-old son, has been diagnosed with a host of problems including Tourette’s syndrome, Asperger’s syndrome, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The author, who teaches systematic theology at the University of Toronto, writes movingly of his deep love for his son: living with a child with disabilities has opened him “to a surplus of grace that can only be called divine.” This book, however, is neither memoir nor practical advice; it is a heavily footnoted scholarly treatise written in a largely academic style, arguing that disability is the norm; the image of God means not rationality but relationality; redemption is a result of God’s own vulnerability; and the proper Christian response to otherness is hospitality. Reasoning from experience and from the Bible, Reynolds develops a theology of creation, sin, redemption and the church designed to produce a “metaphorical reversal” that challenges our culture’s “cult of normalcy” by “privileging disability.” Despite an occasional tangle of postmodern jargon, Reynolds’s insights are often compelling: “The basic question of human existence is whether there is welcome at the heart of things, whether we can find a home with others who recognize us, value us, and empower us to become ourselves.”

Read a review of this book at http://theologyforum.wordpress.com

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