Breaking, not Broken
Ableism and the Church after Constantine
Breaking, not Broken
Ableism and the Church after Constantine
This item is in stock and will be dispatched within 48 hours.
More than 50 units in stock.
Publisher: SCM Press
ISBN: 9780334063162
Number of Pages: 256
Published: 30/01/2026
Width: 15.6 cm
Height: 23.4 cm
How have inherited and contemporary notions of perfection distorted our theology and the way in which we have expressed and lived out our faith?
Breaking, not Broken exposes how Western Christianity, post-Constantine, assimilated a Greco-Roman ideal of the flawless body as its anthropology and built its theology, architecture, and memory around it. Against this ableist inheritance, Timothy Goode offers a radical alternative: a return to a risen body anthropology grounded in the wounded yet glorified body of Christ. Drawing deeply on disability and liberation theology, critical heritage studies, and his own lived experience of disability, Timothy Goode reframes how the Church understands the body, healing, time and space. Here, disabled lives are not marginal but central: living archives of God’s story, prophetic voices that disrupt and renew, and bearers of hope for a more just ecclesiology. Written with theological depth and human honesty, this book bridges scholarship and practice, inviting the Church to rediscover its true heritage not in monuments of stone or ideals of perfection, but in the scars of resurrection and the grace of embodied diversity.
Foreword by Archbishop Steven Cottrell
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Reclaiming the Sacred Image – Ableism, Heritage
and the Re-membering of the Church
1 Framing the Argument
2 Christianity as Virus: A Theological Metaphor of
Contagion and Contestation
3 Scripture and the Pursuit of Perfection
4 God with a Body Like Mine? Anthropomorphism, Ableism
and the Disabled Reader of Scripture
5 Theoretical Frameworks: Theology, Ableism and Heritage
6 The Legacy of Exclusion: Ableism in Sacred Heritage Spaces
7 Sacred Space and Theological Vision: How Theology Shapes
the Design and Layout of Our Sacred Buildings
8 Power, Priesthood and the Performance of the Ideal: Ableism
in the Liturgies of Empire and Ecclesial Authority
9 Embodied Heritage: Disabled Bodies as Living Archives
10 Breath Disrupted: Pneumatology, Normativity and the Spirit
of the Risen Body
11 Cracked Chalices, Overflowing Grace: Disability, Sacrament
and the Neurodivergent Body of Christ
12 Wounds That Remain: Eschatology, Narrative Bodies and
the Kingdom of the Risen Flesh
13 Heritage as Contestation: Crip Interventions and the
Reconfiguration of Sacred Memory
14 The Disruptive Grace of Disabled Witness
15 Toward a Crip Ecclesiology and Heritage Practice
16 Re-membering the Body
Postscript: Other Wounds, Same Body: Gender, Sexuality,
Race, Identity and Class in the Shadow of Ideal Flesh
A Final Blessing: For Those who Would Re-member the Body
Index of Bible References
Index of Names and Subjects
Breaking, not Broken issues a strong and at times uncomfortable challenge, shining a light on an important area of our shared life that we should not ignore. Tim Goode is opening up a long overdue conversation and inviting us into deeper understanding. This is a book born of pain but full of hope for the possibility of transformation, not just for disabled people but for the whole church.
-- Guli Francis-Dehqani
This is a fascinating book and a must read for anyone interested in reflecting in more depth about the place that bodies have in Christian faith. Tim Goode reflects powerfully on the way in which Greco-Roman ideals of perfection still affect our understanding of embodiment and argues that the Body of Christ, shaped as it is by the scarred, glorious resurrection body of the risen Jesus, should think again about our relationship to our bodies. Challenging, thought-provoking and rich in every way, this book comes highly recommended!
- Paula Gooder, theologian, author and Canon Chancellor at St Paul's Cathedral, London,
