Offering prayer for physical healing can leave disabled people feeling judged as faulty and in need of repair. Now a new generation of biblical scholars is carving out a ‘theology of disability’

If you’re disabled, you probably know this already. But since I’m not, I was surprised to learn that disabled people often have a story to tell about a Christian who approached them and offered to pray for them to be healed. Sometimes the approaches are gentle and tactful. Sometimes they are very public and intrusive. Always they raise challenging theological questions about how God and the Church view disability. Are disabled people made in the divine image? Or are they faulty and in need of repair?

I’ve spent the past few months exploring these questions with my colleague Damon Rose, a journalist who lost his sight as a teenager and who has spent the past 20 years reporting on disability for the BBC. Damon’s own encounters with would-be healers have sometimes been bruising – one stalked him, trying to force prayer upon him in front of his young son; another approached him on a packed Tube during rush hour.