Religious guest playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJbQwP9mIn8kI3XM5EmGD81OFTZSOVOmOrder his book here https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780334063162/breaking-not-broken#yorkminster Blog excerpt for Tims book.Would you introduce yourself and tell us about your background? What brought you to this point in your life and your current focus?I am the Revd Canon Timothy Goode, currently Canon for Congregational Discipleship and Nurture at York Minster. I am a priest, theologian, and disability justice advocate, and I have lived with permanent disability for over thirty years. My theological work is inseparable from my lived experience. Diagnosed in childhood with a rare hereditary bone condition and later left permanently disabled following a cancerous spinal tumour, I have spent much of my life navigating churches, institutions, and sacred spaces, drawing attention to the reality that they were not designed with bodies like mine in mind.What brought me to this point is a long journey of wrestling with faith, suffering, vocation, and belonging. Though I love the Church deeply, I also know, painfully and personally, how often it has failed disabled people, not simply through thoughtlessness but through theology, architecture, and inherited assumptions about what a “proper” Christian body looks like. My current focus is on helping the Church reimagine itself theologically and practically around what I call a risen-body anthropology: a vision of humanity shaped not by ideals of perfection or self-sufficiency, but by the wounded, risen body of Christ.Tell us about your new book,Breaking, not BrokenWhat is it about? What inspired you to decide to write this?Breaking, not Broken is a theological critique of ableism in the Church and a constructive vision for how Christian theology, heritage, worship, and memory might be re-formed through the lens of disability. It argues that ableism is not a marginal pastoral issue but a deep theological distortion that has shaped how the Church imagines God, holiness, leadership, healing, and the human body.I was inspired to write this book because I realised that many conversations about disability in churches stop far too early. We talk about inclusion or access, but rarely ask what kind of God our buildings, liturgies, and doctrines proclaim. Over years of ministry, and particularly since becoming a Residentiary Canon at York Minster, I have seen how sacred heritage can both proclaim the gospel and quietly contradict it. This book is my attempt to draw attention to that tension, and to offer hope that the Church can be re-membered, put back together differently, more faithfully, around the wounded and risen Christ.You write about accessibility and heritage in churches but go beyond the idea of “a ramp or a hearing loop”. What do these concepts mean to you, and how might your vision look different from current practice?Ramps and hearing loops matter. They are essential, and I would never wish to minimise them. But on their own, they risk treating disabled people as a logistical problem rather than as a theological presence. Accessibility, as I understand it, is not just about entry; it is about belonging, authority, visibility, and memory.Heritage is especially important here. Churches often treat heritage as something neutral to be preserved, when in fact it is a theological act of remembering that shapes who is seen as holy, central, or authoritative. My vision seeks answers to deeper questions: Who were our buildings designed for? Whose bodies do our liturgies assume?
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