ONLINE FIRST
published on November 21, 2024
Joshua St. Pierre
https://doi.org/10.5840/jpd2024112027
Curative Eschatology
Christian Ableism and Religious Cripistemology
Mobilizing a ¡°cripistemological¡± approach that ¡°think[s] from the critical, social, and personal position of disability,¡± (Johnson and McRuer 2014, 134), this paper engages a fundamental site of Christian ableism: the expected cure of disability in the afterlife. I offer the term ¡°curative eschatology¡± to describe the visceral attachment to the belief that bodies and minds will be remade without disability, madness, or illness in the eschatological (final) future. Examining the affective charge in the promise of a perfect and final Other World, I argue that curative eschatology shapes present-day religious thought and practice by circulating preconscious affects like dread and resentment against conditions of existence that necessitate pain and suffering. The paper concludes by gesturing towards a Crip nontheistic religious practice that nurtures ¡°belief in this world¡± and affirms a world of becoming and the tragic view of life it entails.