Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science Needs the Church

by John Swinton (Editor), Brian Brock (Editor)

Recent developments in genetic technology promise to eradicate disease and disability. Such promises pose challenging questions with regard to our understanding of what it is to be human. Taking a Christian and theologically informed viewpoint, this book explores and challenges our concept of disability. This book will seek to explore the question: does our current attitude toward the use of genetic technologies in contemporary practice risks a slide into social habits which are implicitly evil and destructive of the humanness of our society?

The central theological question that will be addressed by the book is: Is the image of humanness that underpins the implicit and explicit assumptions of new genetic technology compatible with Christian theological understandings of what it means to be human and to live humanly?

This book aims to explore these questions within a multidisciplinary context with a view to developing an informed practical theological perspective which can guide the theory and practice of the church as it engages with the world around the complex issues that are emerging in response to new genetic technology.

John Swinton, and Brian Brock have drawn together an international team of the top scholars from medicine, ethics and theology to produce a unique text which will lay out the complex problems genetic technology raises, and offer fresh understandings and solutions that are theoretically significant and practically vital.

264 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2007

About the author

John Swinton (born 1957) is a Scottish theologian. He is the Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen. He is founder of the university's Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability. He is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland and Master of Christ’s College, the university's theological college. Swinton is a major figure in the development of disability theology.