In the context of theological interpretations of disabilities, I am arguing for the concept of “strength in weakness.” So far, a “theology of weakness,” which portrays people with disabilities as pointedly illustrating universal human weakness, has played a very prominent role in the field. I argue that this theological interpretation of disabilities should not be the dominant one. I trace the alternative model of “strength in weakness” in discussing writings by the apostle Paul and describe how it is supported by the anthropological concept of intercorporeality. Yet first, the article discusses Stanley Hauerwas’s theology of disability, which is not only a very pointed theology of weakness but also repeatedly associates disabilities with suffering. Since at least the latter aspect is in contrast with widespread self-perceptions among people with disabilities, a theology of weakness amounts to a “narrative prosthesis” (David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder). By contrast, Paul suggests that weakness can allow for distinct strengths. To flesh out distinctive competences of people with intellectual disabilities, I then discuss Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeality. Intercorporeality denotes a human competence more generally, but I suggest that it is often partly eclipsed by social norms. However, people with intellectual disabilities often pay less attention to social norms, which helps explain a distinctive intercorporeal competence among people with intellectual disabilities. Reduced attention to social norms can imply a distinctive strength.

This essay supports William Cavanaugh's thesis in The Myth of Religious Violence that the distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” is arbitrary. This essay also accepts the claim that this arbitrary distinction can be used to form unhelpful inversely-valued dichotomies for the sake of ideological or sectarian ends. However, the current essay seeks to show that this binary goes in the opposite direction as well. Sectarian outlooks of various kinds also postulate a strict and inversely valued dichotomy between the believing community and the world, where the former is the locus of truth and life and the latter, falsehood and death. Instead of this model of ethics, I commend an approach that upholds the prospect of concord between the believing community and the world, of the religious and the secular, even if these are somewhat inevitably arbitrary categories. In this approach, religious and civil loyalties are not pitted against each other, but rather exist on a continuum of provenance and perfection.

The paper discusses three theological ways of responding to modernity, all of which rely in some way upon the analogy of the church as a culture. First, Friedrich Schleiermacher represents the turn to the subject and the turn to the church. Second, Stanley Hauerwas's rejection of the turn to the subject is shown to require a sharper turn to the church. Third, David Kelsey's recent work is used to present a modification of that turn substantial enough to constitute a third way. Kelsey's analysis of various theological logics and how they are often conflated in modern theology, together with his account of church practices, is used to integrate a more traditional theocentric theological approach with a more contemporary focus on the church's practices. Some conclusions are then drawn for critical congregational study of enactments of church practices.