Prospects for Neurodivergent Liberation Theology

Theological ethicists Caleb Day and Jonathan Dunn track the emergence of neurodivergent liberation theologies as part of the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference takeover.

When the authors first met, at a Society for the Study of Christian Ethics (SSCE) conference last September, we quickly realised that we had some aspirations and frustrations in common. Being both neurodivergent and theological ethicists working in liberative modes, we felt the pressing need for neurodivergent liberation theologies, albeit with some exceptions (Sommer 2020; Williams 2023). Nine months on from that first meeting, we see grounds for cautious optimism, as we also enter the conversation ourselves. This year’s SSCE conference will include a stream dedicated to neurodivergent liberation theology and ethics. Conceiving neurodivergent liberation theology as a necessarily interdisciplinary and intersectional endeavour, we are also particularly excited to participate in a panel session at the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference dedicated to exploring “Mad, Black and Neurodivergent Theologies”, alongside Jessica Lee and Warda Farah. As we have engaged with other early career scholars deeply committed to neurodivergent liberation we have come to realise that, even as we were expressing frustration at the dearth of neurodivergent liberation theologies, such theologies were emerging, including Rudolph Reyes’s work developing a neurodivergent latinx liberative social ethic (Reyes 2023), and social scientists aligned with liberationist theologies similarly frustrated with Christian theology and church practice regarding neurodiversity (Waldock 2023; Jacobs 2023).

From pathologised humanity to neurodiversity in theology

One way of narrating recent theological engagement with neurodiversity in the Minority world is to begin with the 20^th century “turn to relationality” in theological anthropology (a field concerned with theological conceptions of the human) (Shults 2003). This refers to the increasing theological attention paid to interpersonal relationships as a key human capacity, which occurred in parallel with psychology’s emerging focus on autism as a social impairment (Leidenhag 2021). Relational theological anthropologies, often explicitly, framed “autism as a condition that prevents some humans from bearing the image of God, developing fully into persons, or receiving God’s grace by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit” (Leidenhag 2021, 109). Partly in response, increased critical engagement with autistic experience emerged among theologians concerned by this exclusionary discourse and other exclusionary Christian practices. More recently, the trajectory in autism theologies has been from theologies about autism from non-autistic theologians to theologies by autistics, and from pathologizing to more neurodiversity-affirming perspectives (Macaskill 2018; 2021; Galbraith and Rapley 2023; Jacobs 2023; Ommen et al. 2023). Neurodiversity theology still echoes some patterns highlighted in the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference call for papers: tendencies towards neurodiversity-lite or pathology paradigms, liberal rather than radical political positioning, and focusing primarily on autism ahead of other neurodivergences. However, we think the field is moving in the direction of more critical and radical tendencies, with critiques of damaging theologies (Jacobs 2023), and increased attention to other neurodivergences (Strong and Ommen 2023; Dunn 2025), emerging.

Areas of social life examined by theologies of neurodivergence are also expanding, allowing for more thoroughgoing social critique. While much recent engagement has focused on issues internal to Christian churches such as inclusivity of worship, more recently autism theology has been drawn into wider discussions, grappling with how autistic inclusion/exclusion in churches is enmeshed with socially constructed ideas about normalcy. Leon van Ommen finds that “normalcy” is the (or at least a) root cause of ignoring and/or excluding autistic people in churches (2023), and Grant Macaskill has discussed “the tyranny of normalcy” (2019, 195).

We understand liberative neurodivergent theologies as theologies promoting radical social critique informed by theological and social-scientific insight, grounded in praxis of everyday life and work for liberation. We see several areas where Christian theological traditions can resource such approaches and contest capitalist assumptions of productivism, individualism, and associated constructions of deficit and disorder. Unsurprisingly, given the story narrated above, work in theological anthropology has shown particular promise here. Christian theologies have understood human nature variously as representation of God, rationality, and (recently) relationality (Middleton 2005). All these can be defined in liberating ways, but all have generally been articulated tacitly neuronormatively. Neurodiversity theologians emphasise how human nature necessarily includes all neurocognitive styles (Macaskill 2018; 2020; Williams 2023, 140-208; Leidenhag and King 2023; Sommer and Streib 2020). These theologians often draw on biblical materials offering Jesus Christ as the ultimate model for humanity (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15-19; Hebrews 1:3), acknowledging a Christ-centred social body of diverse members (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Galatians 3:26-29; Ephesians 4:1-16), and showing God promoting diversity over imperialistic conformity (Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-13). We agree: theology and theological ethics should not baptise neuronormativity through exclusively neurotypical accounts of human functioning and flourishing. Theological and ethical accounts of human nature should problematise neuronormativity, not neurodivergence.

The prophetic tradition and negative eschatology

We also offer two theological strands that can fruitfully combine with this emerging theological anthropology: the prophetic tradition and negative eschatology.

We suggest the marginal social position of prophets and “prophetic communities” within Christian/Abrahamic religious-political tradition can be a model for neurodivergent people engaged in liberative praxis (Brueggemann 2018). Prophets engage critically with sociopolitical power, resist dominant ideologies, critique hypocritical religion, expose oppression, point to wider realities, and embody alternative lives and interpretations of their tradition. Brueggemann suggests the Bible records both imperial “royal consciousness”, aligned with dominant power, and “minority report” “prophetic consciousness” (Brueggemann 2018). Prophetic consciousness challenges the dominant order and its eternal present with no alternatives imagined. Prophets grieve for the present order’s past victims, seeing and stating what the dominant system must deny (39-57). They imagine alternative futures in a “realis[m] of a larger reality” (Le Guin and Cardin 2014), without offering concrete social programmes that can be easily co-opted, neutralised, or watered down for easy wins (Brueggemann 2018, 59-79). 

We suggest there are illuminating commonalities between prophets and neurodivergent people navigating neurocognitive/value dissonance with oppressive systems, unwilling/unable to tolerate falsehood and oppression, and unable/unwilling to be ‘productive’ in normative ways. Many neurodivergent people tend to complain, resist, name unpleasant realities, organise for change, or leave rather than participate in oppression (Le Guin 1973). Neuronormative systems, routinely, attack them in response (Ahmed 2021). Those not deemed ‘productive’ for capitalism or the nation are also attacked (Curtis 2025). The experience of prophets suggests these dynamics are not new. Prophets are not productive members of society. Their gifts are not easily incorporated into dominant oppressive projects. The very point of their gifts is undermining dominant oppressive projects. Prophets neuroqueer (Walker 2021, 119-144) dominant systems with bizarre behaviours and subject dominant systems to blistering critiques—the eponymous jeremiads. Unsurprisingly, prophetic praxis carries significant cost. While the tradition recognises prophets as central, this recognition is often after they have already been killed, when they are sanitised and co-opted by those acting consistently with those who killed them—a hypocrisy Jesus noted (Luke 11:47). Jesus himself sided with the prophetic consciousness (Brueggemann 2018, 81-113) and was executed by the empire.

Thus, neurodivergent people seeking to avoid neurodiversity affirmation that only harnesses (some) neurodivergent people’s gifts for capitalist and nationalist projects, like “how to exploit autistic people” (Bamford 2025), can learn from prophets’ untameable praxis and consciousness. Prophetic consciousness and praxis is more like Yergeau’s “countersocial” queering of neuronormativity than liberal-conservative expressions of the social model and neurodiversity paradigm that incorporate (some) neurodivergents into dominant social systems (Yergeau 2018, 102-12). Christians can additionally understand and motivate neurodivergent liberative praxis through considering the Way of Jesus, Christianity’s central prophet, from crucifixion by the empire to vindication and ultimate victory through resurrection, with God intervening to overturn the present order and bring the larger reality the prophets dared to imagine (Isaiah 2:1-4; Mark 8:31-38; Luke 1:46-55; 1 Corinthians 15; Revelation 21).

Additionally, we suggest Leith et al’s (2024) reading of Vincent Lloyd’s (2022) negative eschatology (eschatology is a field about, and in view of, end times)  illuminates how prophetic praxis can be framed as eschatological praxis of a type conducive to radical neurodivergent liberation. Mindful of the dangers often arising in eschatologically informed political theology, with tendencies towards hubris (“blueprint model”) or pessimism (“ejector seat model”), negative eschatology seeks not to transform the world according to some utopian blueprint, nor to wait on an escape from the world, but, rather, to “learn what the eschaton or the kingdom of God does not look like” and struggle against what it is not (Leith et al 2024, 809). This implies radical reorientation of agency and insight, centring oppressed persons as those best placed to identify forms of oppression and to imagine what their own flourishing might look like (Leith et al 2024, 822). Neurodivergent people’s refusal to tolerate falsehood and oppression—even when such refusal takes antisocial forms like meltdowns and disengagement, not normally considered political action—may be revealed to have eschatological significance, as praxis by, and for, the marginalised.

We also find compelling Miguel de la Torre’s warning (2017) that ostensibly liberative political eschatologies tend to undermine the very liberation they claim to motivate, instead reinforcing oppressive structures and frustrating disruptive praxis as theological metanarratives are universalised and lived realities of marginalised experiences are erased. Applied to neurodiversity, this may look like sanitising neurodivergence and blunting its disruptive challenge to narratives seeking to harmoniously incorporate neurodivergence into normalcy. We believe there is potential to avoid this danger in a negative eschatological orientation towards praxis which unsettles and reimagines established ways of being, “without imposing values or teleologies of flourishing and perfection on others” (Leith et al 2024, 818). 

Thus, we believe the prophetic tradition and negative eschatology can nurture and challenge emerging neurodivergent liberation theology, suggesting our cautious optimism about its prospects is well-placed. 

About the authors

Caleb Day is a neurodivergent theological ethicist in the latter stages of his doctoral research at Durham University. He also works as a union organiser for UCU and teaches theological ethics and political theology at Lindisfarne College of Theology. He has published in Christian theological ethics and political theology.

Dr Jonathan Dunn is a Critical Neurodiversity Studies Fellow at the IMH, Durham. He was Lecturer in Theological Ethics at the University of Chester (2018-2021), and co-edited the volume, Multiple Faiths in Postcolonial Cities: Living Together after Empire (Palgrave MacMillan 2020). He managed a service supporting disabled students at Leeds Arts University (2021-24). Jonathan’s contribution was supported by the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University which has been funded by Wellcome under grant reference 226798/Z/22/Z.

About the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference

Critical Neurodiversity Studies: Directions/Intersections/Contradictions is a free fully-hybrid international conference taking place from 24-26 June 2025 at Durham University and online. It is believed to be the first formal research event in the field undertaken at this scale, responding to a gathering energy and engagement with neurodiversity across disciplines and methodologies. The conference takeover of The Polyphony runs from 23-30 June, with the full collection of articles available under the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference 2025 tag.

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