Disability and Martyrdom, Reconsidered

In recent years, the language of Christian “witness” in disability has become more prominent with figures in disability theology like Frances Young and John Swinton developing the concept of witness as it relates to people with profound intellectual disabilities. My aim in this paper is to add to these accounts by considering in what way we can speak of people with profound intellectual disability not simply as witnesses but as martyrs. The language of martyrdom may be unappealing for some, yet when we dig into the history of martyrdom in Christianity, we see that there is more than one way to understand martyrdom. Recovering these abandoned understandings of martyrdom as a kind of ressourcement will open ways to conceptualize disability as a kind of martyrdom. Moreover, it will be a martyrdom that is a protest against ableism that does not necessarily entail the suffering and death of people with profound intellectual disabilities.