Who is my Neighbor: Considering Disability and Prenatal Screening

Q & I Question: Who is a Virtuous Citizen?

This session will examine current practices of prenatal screening do highlight what these practices say about the appropriate behavior of good citizens in modern society. Looking at the topic of disability brings into view the ways in which what is today considered good citizenship undermines the right of people with disabilities.

Brian Brock is a Scottish/American theologian. He holds a Personal Chair in Christian Ethics at the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy, University of Aberdeen.[Dr. Brock was born in the US and moved to the United Kingdom, where he studied Theology at the University of Oxford, before completing his doctoral studies in Christian Ethics in 2003 at King's College London. He conducted postdoctoral studies (2003-2004) at the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen–Nuremberg under Hans Ulrich.

Currently, Dr. Brock is Professor of Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He is also a husband and father of three children, including Adam, who is 13, a delightful human being, and has Down’s Syndrome and autism. He has written a wide range of scholarly essays on themes related to disability and is a Managing Editor of the Journal of Religion and Disability. Dr. Brock has published two books that approaches theological questions through interviews, most recently one that extensively cross examines the theology of the internationally famous American theologian and ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas (Beginnings, 2016; Captive to Christ, Open to the World, 2014). In 2017 he was appointed to the executive committee of Archway, a multi-million-pound annual budget charitable foundation that runs homes for special needs adults as well a respite service for children and families with special needs. Baylor University Press has recently released his first full-length monograph on the theology of disability, Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability, and the Body of Christ, in which he sets his own story with Adam within the historical sweep of Christian thinking about what it means to be human, drawing on the riches of traditional Christian theology to find life-giving ways forward in a modern technological west, routinely screens out lives like Adam’s.

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