Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

Author - Barbara Brown Taylor ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from HarperOne was reviewed on 9-Dec-2008.

Search ISBN:0060872632 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith Reference Book. Classifications : General AAS Qualifying Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books Religious Leaders & Notable People Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books Memoirs Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books Women Specifi . Click the following link to view the cover of Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.

Related topics: General AAS. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. Religious. Subjects. Books. Memoirs. Subjects. Books.

1) Paperback Book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by HarperOne. Barbara Brown Taylor´s "Leaving Church" is a vivid memoir describing her journey from being an Episcopal priest to living in Nature. Taylor, ironically, is still teaching about religion, though she is no longer a religious. She has been laicized. Her departure from the ordained ministry reflects the current divisions within the Episcopal Church (USA).

Taylor´s "Leaving Church" illuminates,like a medieval manuscript,the life of an ordained woman within ECUSA,as well as in a part of the country where female pastors aren´t that much accepted. ECUSA has ordained women for three decades, but there are still dioceses--and people--that resist. It´s fascinating to see the women´s ordination issue from a woman´s firsthand perspective. The description of her ordination is powerful. She briefly mentions the LGBT issues within ECUSA as well, reflecting that the pastors who mentored her might very well have been gay. Unfortunately,she is far too brief in describing the debates within her parish.

"Leaving Church" ends with Taylor,no longer an ordained priest,living as a priestess within Nature. No longer governed by the liturgical cycle, she lives by Nature´s cycles. "Leaving Faith" leaves the reader hungry for more.¤

2) Paperback Book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by HarperOne. I´m one of those "great generation" representatives who fell away from the organized Christian church in my young adulthood after an excellent religious and theological grounding in my youth. I never found a way or reason to return, although I remained very spiritual. This book, which I have read twice now, was very much like being with a fellow traveler although our needs and experiences were different. I strongly recommend that anyone on the religious spectrum read it for an honest spiritual path that is not quite the norm but still on the path.¤

3) Paperback Book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by HarperOne. This gracefully written narrative tells the story of Taylor´s journey toward ordained ministry, her years as an Episcopal priest, and her departure from that life into a new vocation as a college professor. She decides that the most important calling is not to be ordained or to be religious, but to be fully human and to live a life of love. This is a touching autobiography, an eloquent memoir of faith.¤

4) Paperback Book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by HarperOne. I read a lot of memoirs these days. In fact they are probably my favorite literary genre. Maybe I should have been warned by Taylor´s subtitle - not simply "a memoir," but "a memoir of faith." Because this is not a memoir in the usual sense. There is precious little of Taylor´s childhood, youth or young adulthood - no real concrete stories and examples from her life. Too much of this book remains caught in the abstraction of ideas and beliefs, with not nearly enough examples. The people who show up in the book remain undeveloped vague outlines. And I have a hard time identifying with Brown´s spiritual "quest," if that is what it is. I don´t think it´s because she´s a woman either. What few facts that do emerge about her life outside this "quest" do not really serve to make her a sympathetic character. Daughter of a psychotherapist, sister of a lawyer, wife of an engineer - all these tidbits add up to what appears to have been a life of privilege and ease, and continued to be even after her ordination, as she speaks of her Saab and Audi and how they didn´t fit into her rural community, and goes on at some length about everything she "wanted" in her custom-built home outside of town (in lieu of a parsonage near her church). What comes through in Barbara Brown Taylor´s book is a story of a driven overachiever, who in fact drives herself into a near nervous breakdown, which finally causes her to leave her church and the active priesthood. While I do not doubt the sincerity of her quest for her true vocation and place in God´s world, I do wonder about her motives. She became more likeable - more human - in the final section of the book, after she had left the priesthood, when she talks about her crisis of faith and things like her fears of inadequacy and the death of her father. Having said all of this, I still have to say that I´m glad I read the book, which has left me with much to think about in regard to my own role in the Church (Catholic in my case)and my relationship with God and my place in His world. I also think that Taylor is a person I´d like to know, but these 200-plus pages have not given me that opportunity. A memoir of faith? Perhaps. A "memoir"? No. - Tim Bazzett, author of Reed City Boy¤

5) Paperback Book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by HarperOne. This book would have been more accurately described in the subtitle as a "Memoir of Personal Experience".

She dismisses orthodox Christian Theology and doctrine as something that the Apostles and Early Church had to "come up with" to explain this or that.

Ultimately it is a story of how the narrow Christian path and Church "didn´t work" for her, and many of her thoughts and experiences confirm the fact that women were never meant to be "priests" in the first place (though this fact enrages those who hold to the political language of "equal rights" versus sound apostolic theology).

I found the book pleasant and very readable, but at the same time it was a sad story of how Christ just "wasn´t enough". While most in our culture will find it "affirming" or down right "spiritual", it is a disappointment for the orthodox Christian who may wish to read a story about how Christ and the scriptures contain "all things necessary for salvation".

Barbara´s approach in later life is gnostic and universalist. In the words of her Presiding Bishopess, "saying Christ is the only way is to put God in too small of a box". Emotions, feelings, and cravings rule the day in the final analysis of her relationship to Christ, and it seems that "leaving" orthodoxy is freeing to her, though I question she was ever there in the first place. Ultimately, God is the final judge of what she has done and what she now teaches.

Her elevation of Native American theology and her fondness of "other paths" leads the committed Christian looking elsewhere for a story of knowing Christ and Him crucified, and following Him in a culture that values personal choice and heterodoxy over all other things.

In the end it is a volume that will find great company with the writings of Spong, Borg, Ehrman, and others who deny the reality of John 14:6 and the authority of Holy Sripture in the name of being on "an authentic journey".

If I have to "put my eggs in one basket" I am going to have to stick with the Apostles and the Church Fathers and leave "other ways" up to Barbara, fine preacher though she is.¤

6) Paperback Book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by HarperOne.

By now I expected to be a seasoned parish minister, wearing black clergy shirts grown gray from frequent washing. I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.

Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Some-times I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering at an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine, and the central revelation in it for me -- that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human -- seems important enough to witness to on paper. This book is my attempt to do that.

After nine years serving on the staff of a big urban church in Atlanta, Barbara Brown Taylor arrives in rural Clarkesville, Georgia (population 1,500), following her dream to become the pastor of her own small congregation. The adjustment from city life to country dweller is something of a shock -- Taylor is one of the only professional women in the community -- but small-town life offers many of its own unique joys. Taylor has five successful years that see significant growth in the church she serves, but ultimately she finds herself experiencing "compassion fatigue" and wonders what exactly God has called her to do. She realizes that in order to keep her faith she may have to leave.

Taylor describes a rich spiritual journey in which God has given her more questions than answers. As she becomes part of the flock instead of the shepherd, she describes her poignant and sincere struggle to regain her footing in the world without her defining collar. Taylor´s realization that this may in fact be God´s surprising path for her leads her to a refreshing search to find Him in new places. Leaving Church will remind even the most skeptical among us that life is about both disappointment and hope -- and ultimately, renewal.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 6-Jan-2009, 00608726329780060872632, 900-320-170-600-120-731-7X1-WGB-8

Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, Book, Image © HarperOne

Search: HarperOne, Book Posters, Book Art