ABSTRACT
This chapter examines religious perceptions of blindness I experienced while growing up as a partially sighted child in the Seventh-day Adventist church. One cultural station is the teachings by the church’s nineteenth-century founder. Ellen G. White (1827–1915) presented blindness and disability as a consequence of sinful behaviour. However, as she herself experienced a traumatic assault, White suggested an alternative reading of blindness as spiritual calling or object lesson. This duelling view of blindness persisted into the twentieth century, when health evangelism drew Adventists to establish clinics and hospitals internationally. The church continued to teach that blindness and other physical maladies could be eliminated or resolved through adherence to rigorous spiritual practices and health behaviours. This teaching manifested in the chapter’s second cultural station – a children’s book authored in 1951. Written for a predominately white audience, Jungle Thorn suggested that blindness could be mitigated through proper devotion to a white Protestant ethos. The blind character in the book was effectively cured by converting to Adventism and, further, by adopting white American customs of dress, diet, and lifestyle. The chapter concludes by examining the impact of Adventist teachings on my understanding of my possible future as a blind adult.
