Leaving Church
A Memoir of Faith
by Barbara Brown Taylor
Summary
Barbara Brown Taylor shares the story of her transition from the Episcopalian priesthood back to the role of ordinary human being.
Brown explains the challenges of serving in professional ministry and the way that these ultimately made it impossible for her to live whole and well, while functioning in the role of parish priest. Brown describes the pressure and isolation she felt—being seen as set-apart and somehow holier than other people—as well as the discomfort she experienced when she abruptly found herself freed from all of it.
In the context of telling her story, Brown weaves in burning questions of God and faith and church. Voicing the perplexed thoughts that others of us have surely entertained at times in our own lives.
Author’s Website
Leaving Church - By Barbara Brown Taylor
Favorite Quotes
“I spent a great deal of time trying to be good, but was good the same as whole?”
“…one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we.”
“…human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.”
“The clear promise is that those who rest like God find themselves free like God, no longer slaves to the thousand compulsions that send others rushing toward their graves.”
“By the time I resigned from Grace-Calvary, I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so.”
“Where church growth has eclipsed church depth, it is possible to hear very little about the world except as a rival for the human resources needed by the church for her own survival…If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church's job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?”
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