Disavowing Disability: Richard Baxter and the Conditions of Salvation

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 26; pp. 124 - 130
• Main Author: Breen, Margaret Sönser
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Christianity; Disability discrimination; People with disabilities; Salvation; Social justice; Spirituality; Theology
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Part of Cambridge University Press's Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections series, it offers a concise study of the divine's writings at the intersection of soteriology and disability. For this reason, as McKendry explains, 'Disavowing Disability examines the notions of "natural ability," human nature, and personal culpability', whose role in salvation gained ascendancy in the second half of the seventeenth century; these concepts 'underlie [such] later developments' as 'the ascendancy of medical authority and the dominion of industrial capitalism' which 'usually signal a modern paradigm of disability' (2). Baxter recognized 'ideots' as fully human but differing in degree from rational adults. Because they were unable to consciously participate in worship, however, they existed at the margins of church life.