“Flawed by Design”: Archbishop Sarah Mullally on Dyslexia, Faith and Why Different Minds Are a Gift

Somewhere in England in the late 1970s, a teenage girl sat in an exam hall with a pen, a question paper and a problem nobody had named yet. Spelling did not come easily. Handwriting was a fight. Then a diagnosis arrived around the time of her O-levels, and with it, she later said, came an explanation. That girl was Sarah Mullally. Today she is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman ever to hold the office, and this week she is telling that story out loud.

In an interview with the Church Times timed to Dyslexia Awareness Week, Mullally described how dyslexia shaped her path through nursing, through priesthood and into the most senior post in the Church of England. Her message to anyone who thinks differently is short and hopeful: it is not the end.

A Diagnosis That Explained Something

Mullally told the Church Times that her diagnosis “explained something” about her struggles, particularly with spelling. As an accommodation, she was given 15 extra minutes per hour during exams to review material and check her spelling, which she noted was not really enough for someone with dyslexia.

That detail will sound familiar to a lot of parents. Extra time helps, but it does not change how the brain processes written language. The British Dyslexia Association describes dyslexia as a specific learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and writing, but stresses it is really about information processing, including how people take in and retain what they see and hear. The association also points out something that often gets lost: many dyslexic people show strengths in reasoning and in visual and creative fields.

In her early years, Mullally said, she did not spend much time making sense of the condition. She simply got on with the work. And there was a lot of work.

From Hospital Wards to the Top of English Nursing

Mullally trained as a nurse at South Bank Polytechnic, qualifying in 1984, and worked clinical posts at St Thomas’ Hospital and the Royal Marsden Hospital in London before moving into leadership roles. In 1999 she became Chief Nursing Officer for England, the youngest person ever appointed to the role. She held it until 2004.

Think about that for a moment. A young woman who struggled with spelling became England’s most senior nurse, advising government at the highest level, a job that runs on reports, policy papers and briefings. She did not get there by pretending the difficulty away. She got there by building strategies around it, which is exactly what she is now encouraging others to do.

While still in nursing leadership, she trained for ordained ministry, was ordained a deacon in 2001 and a priest in 2002, and left the health service in 2004 to serve the church full time. She became Bishop of Crediton in 2015, then in 2018 the first woman to serve as Bishop of London. In January 2026 her election as Archbishop of Canterbury was confirmed, and she was installed at Canterbury Cathedral on March 25.

“Flawed by Design”: A Theology of Difference

The heart of the interview is not the career. It is the way Mullally has come to see her own mind through faith. Later in life, she said, she came to recognize herself as “made in the image of God,” dyslexia included. Instead of treating it as a defect to hide, she began to see it as part of who she is.

She put it in striking language. “There’s something about recognizing that we may be fragile and flawed by design,” she told the Church Times, “so that the light of Christ may shine out.”

The image comes from the Apostle Paul. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:7, King James Version). Mullally draws on the picture of clay pots cracked on purpose so the light inside can spill out. It is an old idea with a modern application: the place where you are weakest may be the very place others see grace.

That framing will not land the same way for everyone. Some disability advocates are wary of language that makes a hardship sound like a blessing, because it can be used to excuse a lack of real support. Mullally’s own record suggests she is not doing that. She pairs the theology with a demand for practical change, and she is blunt that the support she got as a student was not enough.

The Practical Playbook

For anyone who learns differently, the most useful part of the interview may be the most ordinary. Mullally described the habits that help her preach and write:

• She uses different vocabulary when writing than when speaking, playing to the strengths of each.
• She keeps text from running to the bottom of the page or across its full width.
• She pays attention to spacing in her sermon notes so the words are easier to track.
• She prefers the Mangal typeface for preaching notes.

She also said she enjoys public speaking, something she did a lot of in secondary school. That is a familiar pattern. Many people with dyslexia become strong speakers and storytellers precisely because the spoken word is where they feel free.

Taking It to the General Synod

Mullally has not kept this private. On July 10, 2026, she addressed the General Synod, the Church of England’s national assembly, on a motion titled Affirming Neurodiversity in the Church. The motion passed.

“Neurodiversity is not a problem to be solved within the church, but it is a gift,” she told members, according to the published text of her address. She went further, describing her own calling: “I am called as somebody who is dyslexic, not despite dyslexia, and sometimes because of dyslexia.” And she closed the circle with the conviction that runs through all of it: “Everybody is made in the image of God and called by name.”

The motion was backed by research. A study led by Dr. Brian Irvine of the Centre for Research in Autism and Education at the UCL Institute of Education, published by UCL, gathered the experiences of 26 neurodivergent church members. Many described masking their traits to fit in, and some neurodivergent clergy said they felt pressure to adopt a loud and showy persona. “Masking is not a choice but a survival strategy,” one participant said.

The research also found good news. Some church communities already value neurodivergent strengths and build real belonging. A neurodiversity training pilot in the Diocese of London in 2023, during Mullally’s time as bishop there, drew more than 500 clergy and lay ministers. The recommendations include rolling out training led by neurodivergent church members and creating a network of neurodiversity champions, modeled on existing diocesan disability advisers.

What Congregations and Families Can Take From This

The lessons here are simple enough to start this Sunday. Print the bulletin with more white space. Send readings to volunteer lectors a few days early instead of handing them a page at the door. Let people serve in the ways they shine, whether that is speaking, building, organizing or welcoming, rather than assuming everyone must read aloud or write well to lead. None of that costs much. All of it tells someone they belong.

For parents, the archbishop’s story offers a different kind of comfort. A diagnosis is not a ceiling. It is information. Mullally did not become Chief Nursing Officer or Archbishop of Canterbury by waiting for the struggle to disappear. She learned how her mind worked, built tools around it and kept going. That is a lesson worth passing on at the kitchen table.

Why This Matters Beyond the Church of England

You do not have to be Anglican, or even religious, to see the value here. A woman at the very top of one of the world’s best-known institutions is saying, in public, that the thing that made school hard for her is part of why she can do the job. For a kid staring at a red-inked spelling test tonight, that is a powerful message.

It also fits a wider moment in Christian leadership. Pope Leo XIV’s recent visit to France, which drew some 800,000 people to the Place de la Concorde, showed how much hunger there is for faith leaders who speak to ordinary struggles. And stories of people pushing through doubt, like the veteran who almost walked out of his first Wheelchair Games and became a Paralympian, remind us that the hardest part is often just staying in the room.

Mullally’s own words say it best. “If they’re neurodivergent, or if they’ve got dyslexia, actually, that doesn’t mean to say it’s the end,” she said. “People have different ways of thinking, we need people with different ways of thinking.”

That is not a slogan. It is a résumé. Nurse, Chief Nursing Officer, priest, bishop, archbishop. Not despite the way her mind works. Sometimes because of it.