Breaking not Broken | Timothy Goode and the Dean of Southwark

In Breaking not Broken: Ableism and the Church after Constantine, Timothy Goode offers a searching and hopeful theological challenge to the Church’s inherited assumptions about bodies, healing, leadership, and belonging. Weaving together autobiography, biblical theology, liturgical reflection, and engagement with disability and liberation theology, the book exposes how ableism has become embedded in Christian theology, architecture, worship, and imagination - often unnoticed, yet profoundly harmful.

Grounded in a theology of the risen and wounded Christ, Breaking not Broken calls the Church to repentance and renewal. It rejects narratives of defect, cure, and conformity, and instead reclaims a Christian anthropology shaped by vulnerability, interdependence, and grace. Written for theologians, clergy, church leaders, and all who care about the future of the Church, the book insists that disabled bodies are not problems to be solved, but sacred gifts through which the Church may rediscover what it truly means to be whole.

The Revd Canon Timothy Goode is Canon for Congregational Discipleship and Nurture at York Minster. Prior to his move to York, the whole of his ordained ministry was spent within the Diocese of Southwark, serving at Croydon Minster in Whyteleafe, Chaldon and finally at Rector at St Margaret's Lee. He was made an honorary canon of Southwark Cathedral in 2020 and was Disability Advisor for the Southwark Diocese from 2013-2021. He served as a member of the General Synod from 2015-2023 and in 2022 he led the first full Synod debate on disability. He was a member of the Archbishops' Council from 2020 to 2023. A theologian, priest, and writer, his work focuses on disability theology, Christian anthropology, and the transformation of ecclesial life, worship, and heritage. Having lived with disability for over thirty years, he brings lived experience into sustained theological engagement with ableism in the Church, particularly as it has been shaped by post-Constantinian assumptions about power, perfection, and the idealised body.

The Very Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley is Dean of Southwark. Formerly Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, and Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, he is an author of several books on poetry and theology. He was awarded the international Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing for his book The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry, and the Lanfranc Award by the Archbishop of Canterbury for education and scholarship. He has worked at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden as Rector and has a strong interest in theatre. He is also Patron of Tell MAMA, monitoring Islamophobic hate crime, and Ambassador for Stop Hate UK. In 2025 he was appointed Whitelands Professorial Fellow in Christian Theology and Contemporary Issues by Roehampton University.

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