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Episode details

World Service,26 Apr 2019,26 mins

Pick up your stretcher and walk!

Heart and Soul

Available for over a year

Like many disabled people, Damon Rose is regularly approached by Christians who want to pray for him to be healed. Would-be healers claim they’re simply doing what Jesus himself did and what he instructed his followers to do. They may mean well, but the experience can leave disabled people feeling judged as ‘faulty’ and in need of repair. Is this really what Christianity teaches about disability? In this programme, Damon (a blind journalist and open-minded non-believer) investigates different Christian approaches to disability, combining cutting-edge theology with personal stories of faith, hope and human frailty. He joins a group of Christians as they offer healing on the street, attends a healing service and meets the disabled Christians carving out a new ‘theology of disability’. Interviewees include: Lyndall Bywater, a Christian writer and prayer leader in the United Kingdom Jonathan Conrathe, founder of Mission 24 – a Christian ministry that works with churches all over the world Becky Tyler, who preached at the Greenbelt Christian festival Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham Rev Zoe Hemming, vicar of St Andrews Church in the village of Aston in Shropshire, England. If you would like to contact BBC Ouch please email [email protected] (Image: Damon on the tube, Credit: Sarah Dousse)

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