Critically important and advancing disability research with concrete examples of the ethnographic turn, Barton’s participatory research methods and conclusions witness persons with intellectual disability as ‘people inextricably caught up in one another’ in the communion of the faithful, as the image of God, and by a baptismal hermeneutic of inclusion as members of the Body of Christ/the Church. Practical, insightful, and liberating, Barton’s work is welcome to the corpus of Baylor’s commitment to disability studies. Barton here confirms the value and power of this commitment.
~Mary Jo Iozzio, Professor of Moral Theology, School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College
What is baptism? What is it for? To read this book is to receive, with its author, the baptismal witness of Christians with intellectual disabilities. That witness illumines, inter alia, the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ baptism, the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal choreography, and the practice of pastoral care. Sarah Barton’s inquiries traverse ecclesiology, pneumatology, and hamartiology. Finally, with her co-researchers, Barton is after nothing less than what baptism shows us about being human.
~Lauren F. Winner, Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality, Duke Divinity School
Sarah Barton has provided disability theology and the church a consequential vision for and instantiation of collaborative theology alongside people with intellectual disabilities. Barton and her conversation partners demonstrate how the lived experience of intellectual disability can serve as a hermeneutical lens through which congregations can be challenged to rethink disablement, identity, and community. The baptismal font is presented as the orienting site for developing an inclusive theology of personhood in a way that contests dominant theological evaluations and articulations of personhood. In its method and its message, this book is profound.
~Benjamin T. Conner, Professor of Practical Theology and Director of the Center for Disability and Ministry, Western Theological Seminary
Dr. Barton’s scholarly yet accessible book about our baptismal theology and the reality of disabilities is a timely work that needs to be read and discussed by clergy and lay leaders, and indeed all who take seriously Jesus’ Way of Love.
~Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and author of Love Is the Way and The Power of Love
…the insights into baptismal practices and embodied theology are well worth the read. This research helps expand the field of disability theology into more specific questions on baptism, but given the centrality of this within the life of the Christian this book will offer broader insight to clergy, congregational leaders, and theologians alike.
~Topher Endress, Earth & Altar
Academic and erudite yet compulsively readable, Becoming the Baptized Body is an engaging qualitative study that practices inclusion and provides a megaphone to the voices and witness of Christians with intellectual disabilities.
~Josh Olds, Life is Story
Barton’s exploration of scripture, liturgy, and practice makes this study of baptism truly well rounded. She explores various traditions while managing to be specific and detailed. The nuances of individual traditions are attended to well, which ultimately shows that the argument for participatory baptism carries through no matter the tradition.
~Jaime Konerman-Sease, Reflective Practice
Barton has written a though-provoking book at the intersection of liturgical and disability theology, looking at a core practice of the church and taking seriously the perspectives of people with intellectual disabilities. This is breaking new ground. Anyone working in disability and liturgical theology, whether academically or practically, would do well by letting Barton and her research partners speak into their thinking and praxis.
~Armand Léon van Ommen, Worship
