Book Review: Art as Witness: A Practical Theology of Arts-Based Research by Helen T. Boursier

Abstract

(good listening, 89–90) to outlandishly complicated and paternalistic (adoption, 90–93; creating long-term homes in community, 98–100), with just a few pages of advice for each. It is never clear, especially given the examples in the next chapter from Jim’s dual role as teacher and father alongside Henri Nouwen’s care of Adam, where specialized services or friendship begin and end, complicating the book’s refrain that these relationships can sufficiently relieve challenges of disabled people and their families’ lives. The empirical data reveals an equally troubling problem in the book’s treatment of disabled people: as the data comes from parents and siblings, the book speaks for disabled people, rather than finding ways to appreciate their contributions and uplift them, something the section on friendship with disabled people ironically emphasizes (121–29). Although the book recognizes the power of language (xvi–xvii) with respect to disability, the language of impairment is never biblically, empirically, or theologically justified, even while it is widely invoked as an alternative to disability throughout the book. Even if this reflects geographic differences, the language used is not grounded in selfidentification or empowerment, two things disabled people’s movements across the world have emphasized for both popular and scholarly communities. Indeed, a far greater problem is that the book also uses impairment as a stand-in for sin, emphasizing throughout that as a result of the fall, “we are all impaired.”Although the book is careful to point out that the lack of friendships with disabled people is yet another sign of human brokenness (72), statements like “God loves every human being simply because they are created in his image—no matter how damaged that image may be” (71) demonstrate the well-established problems with uncritically adopting this language of impairment and brokenness with respect to disabled people. Although the book may mean well, giving hearing to eugenics debates with respect to disability, invoking babies and children as analogies for persons with intellectual disability on numerous occasions, as well as emphasizing families’ hardships over disabled experiences, it broadly eclipses the significant scholarship and activism present in the lives of disabled people, to focus instead on the base question of whether their lives have value. For a book on friendship, there is scarce mention of the theology of friendship despite that being an established topic of scholarly conversation in theology of disability. Indeed, the theology of disability offered in this book, given the above brokenness, infantilization, and ableism in speaking for disabled persons, critically undermines the possibility of friendship McEwan and Good so long for.