Beyond Saints & Superheroes: Supporting Parents Raising Children W Disabilities

Laura MacGregor is a qualitative researcher and caregiving ethicist whose research focuses on the intersection of faith, disability, and caregiving. Laura’s work emerges from her experiences parenting a son with profound physical and intellectual disabilities. Laura holds a PhD in Human Relations from Martin Luther University College.

 

Allen G. Jorgenson is Assistant Dean and holds the William D. Huras Chair in Ecclesiology at Martin Luther University College at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of Indigenous and Christian Spaces in Dialogue: Kairotic Place and Borders (Lexington, 2021). Allen is especially interested in attending to marginalized voices for the task of theology. The practices of writing poetry and painting sustain and ground him.

 

Wendy Newbery is a visual artist residing in Kitchener, Ontario. She an Expressive Arts Facilitator who helps to reconnect people with creative expression. She brings art-making to people with disabilities, their family members and caregivers to enable them to amplify their voices and share their valuable stories.

Compelling, honest, challenging, and artfully presented, this book is a refreshing must-read for church communities! The stories, poetry, and reflection guides are a clarion call to reimagine what it means to be church, moving beyond myths and stereotypes that silence, demean and exclude, and instead inviting a loving attentiveness to the complexities and messiness of life together, including those with disabilities and their families and caregivers. I heartily commend this powerful and deeply moving book.

 

Tom Reynolds, Professor of Theology, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, author of Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality

 

Finally, a theological resource for families of disabled people that amplifies families’ experiences as a prophetic resource for the church! These images, poems, and insights will linger with readers, complicating the stories we like to tell of parents as saints or superheroes, and offering something more raw, real, and faithful in their place. With further resources and discussion questions following each chapter, I love how this book gives churches so many opportunities to revisit, reevaluate, and reinvigorate their ministry.

 

Erin Raffety, Research Fellow, Centre for Theological Inquiry, author of From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry and Congregational Leadership

 

This book is a much needed challenge to the Christian Church. We’re invited to look beyond the fairy tale suggested in the title, to the lived experience of isolation and exclusion of caregiving families and their beloveds. We’re reminded that disability is a social construct, while personal impairment is accepted as normal. The addition of image and poetry serve to deepen the reflection. May this good work bring the kin-dom of unique and united closer.

 

Roz Vincent-Haven, minister, caregiver, and disability advocate

ISBN 978-1-7387794-0-6

Please email amy@madandcriptheologypress.ca to request a review copy. Be sure to include the following information in your email:

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Exam copies will be made available to instructors at recognized institutions who are considering adopting this title to be used in their courses.  We will also provide an exam copy to ministers who are considering using this book for small groups in their church. Please email amy@madandcriptheologypress.ca and include the following information in your email so we can send you a copy:

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Purchase the e-book version of Beyond Saints and Superheroes here.