New Creation Conversations Episode 060 - Dr. Amy Kenny on Disability Justice in the Church

Welcome to episode sixty of New Creation Conversations. It’s a privilege in today’s conversation to be joined by Dr. Amy Kenny. Amy has a PhD from the University of Sussex in Early Modern Literature and Culture. From 2009-2012, she was Research Coordinator at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, where she was the chief dramaturge for 15 productions, and taught courses on theatrical practice and Shakespearean drama. Currently she is a lecturer on Shakespeare at the University of California Riverside.

Amy is also a disabled scholar who has written frequently about her experiences in publications like Teen Vogue, The Mighty, The Audacity, and Sojourners. Amy is a scribe for Freedom Road institute for Leadership and Justice; she serves on the mayor’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Taskforce in California; coordinates support for people experiencing homelessness in her neighborhood; and is currently co-launching Jubilee Homes OC, a permanent supportive housing initiative in her local community. 

Amy has a new book, being released from Brazos Press in May, entitled My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church. In it, Amy not only reflects on her own journey, but she also argues that much of the church has forgotten that we worship a disabled Lord whose wounds survived resurrection. Therefore, it is time for the church to start treating disabled people as full members of the body of Christ who have much more to offer than a miraculous cure narrative and to learn from their unique embodied experiences. She prophetically reflects on her experiences inside the church to expose unintentional ableism and cast a new vision for Christian communities to engage in disability justice.

I had a chance to read a pre-publication edition of the book, and even though I have been involved for several years in churches working intentionally to make space for people with various disabilities, I still found much in Amy’s book challenging and unsettling, not in a bad way, but in a way that is helping me to imagine my own church as a more inclusive community. It is beautifully written – as one would expect from a Shakespeare scholar – and it is also richly theological and pragmatically helpful. I’m excited and grateful to get to bring this conversation to you.