Take a photo of a barcode or cover
pat_walsh_19 's review for:
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
by Barbara Brown Taylor
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Barbara Brown Taylor certainly needs neither introduction nor accolades from the likes of me. Her writing ability and perspicacity are to be envied, if I can invoke the title of her new book, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, as license to indulge in that vice.
Leaving Church was published twenty years ago. It has aged well. It still speaks volumes to the Christian community that is going through an identity crisis arising in part as a reaction to the extremes of White Christian Nationalism and patriarchal authority structures, in part from an inadequate theodicy, and in part from a widespread decline in church membership and participation.
As I write this I am hoping to disengage from some of my numerous commitments and responsibilities as a layperson. I haven’t “enjoyed” worship fully in many years. I seldom attend a service without bearing some responsibility for what goes on before, during, or after that service. Unlike Rev. Brown Taylor, though, who left pastoral ministry as her pastoral star was rising, I know that most or all of what I do as a volunteer could be done better by someone else currently attending our church. So much for confession, and sorry for the self-pity. Back to the book.
I was troubled when Rev. Brown Taylor picked up the thread of “being human” or “becoming fully human.” She quotes one former parishioner with whom she discussed the topic.
Leaving Church was published twenty years ago. It has aged well. It still speaks volumes to the Christian community that is going through an identity crisis arising in part as a reaction to the extremes of White Christian Nationalism and patriarchal authority structures, in part from an inadequate theodicy, and in part from a widespread decline in church membership and participation.
As I write this I am hoping to disengage from some of my numerous commitments and responsibilities as a layperson. I haven’t “enjoyed” worship fully in many years. I seldom attend a service without bearing some responsibility for what goes on before, during, or after that service. Unlike Rev. Brown Taylor, though, who left pastoral ministry as her pastoral star was rising, I know that most or all of what I do as a volunteer could be done better by someone else currently attending our church. So much for confession, and sorry for the self-pity. Back to the book.
I was troubled when Rev. Brown Taylor picked up the thread of “being human” or “becoming fully human.” She quotes one former parishioner with whom she discussed the topic.
After a lot of listening, . . . I think I finally heard the [G]ospel. The good news of God in Christ is “You have everything you need to be human.” There is nothing outside of you that you still need—no approval from the authorities, no attendance at temple, no key truth hidden in the tenth chapter of some sacred book. In your life right now, God has given you everything that you need to be human. (Chapter 17)*
There is some truth in that statement, but it only goes so far and it ignores the need for believers to maintain relationships with God in Christ and with one another. Rev. Brown Taylor’s expansion later in the chapter is more in keeping with our understanding of the Gospel.
Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now. This is not the same as the job of being human, which came with my birth certificate. To become fully human is something extra, a conscious choice that not everyone makes. Based on my limited wisdom and experience, there is more than one way to do this. If I were a Buddhist, I might do it by taking the bodhisattva vow, and if I were a Jew, I might do it by following Torah. Because I am a Christian, I do it by imitating Christ, although I would be the first to admit that I want to stop about a day short of following him all the way.
In Luke’s [G]ospel, there comes a point where he turns around and says to the large crowd of those trailing after him, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (14:26). Make of that what you will, but I think it was his way of telling them to go home. He did not need people to go to Jerusalem to die with him. He needed people to go back where they came from and live the kinds of lives that he had risked his own life to show them: lives of resisting the powers of death, of standing up for the little and the least, of turning cheeks and washing feet, of praying for enemies and loving the unlovable. That would be plenty hard for most of them. (Chapter 17)*
If they could ignore the title, readers might expect Rev. Brown Taylor to have spent twenty or thirty years in fruitful parish ministry at Grace-Calvary Episcopal, as I expected, but she left after five and one-half. The average tenure of an installed pastor (a Presbyterian term, I believe) is now between five and seven years. That is understandable, if discouraging, given the forces at work in and around organized Christianity. Those of us laypeople who are still actively involved in our congregations, and indeed members of the community at large outside of organized religion might also want to add one thing to the tasks that Jesus risked his life to show us: take care of one another.
Maybe now I need to read some Oswald Chambers. But I will come back to Barbara Brown Taylor.
*I give chapter references instead of page references because I read an ebook and the page numbers will be different for other readers.