Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A widely acclaimed preacher, Taylor draws on her homiletical skills in this finely crafted memoir with a simple plot: an Episcopal priest exhausts her inner resources, first in an urban church and then in a small country parish; she changes jobs, struggles and finds renewal. Such a synopsis, however, does not do justice to Taylor's literary style in this rich evocation of her lifelong love affair with God. "When I think of my first cathedral," she writes, "I am back in a field behind my parents' house in Kansas, with every stalk of prairie grass lit up from within." Drawn to the church, she compulsively overworks: "I had such a strong instinct for rescue that my breasts fairly leaked when I came across those in need of rescuing." Though she has found new employment, she realizes she is still a priest: "I miss being a lightning rod, conducting all that heat and light not only from heaven to earth but also from person to person." Current and former clergy will relate to her comical and sometimes touching descriptions of parish life, while memoir buffs will savor her journey as she identifies her core beliefs, sets boundaries and learns to relish her "blessed swath" of the world. (May)
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From Booklist

Episcopal priest Taylor, a respected and beloved preacher, ended a 20-year career when, after much reflection, she left the church. She had expected to spend the rest of her life writing sermons and leading worship. Instead, she now teaches full time at a college in Georgia. With its three indicatively titled sections--"Finding," "Losing," "Keeping"--Leaving Church aims to explain her compulsion to leave the familiar behind. When she was first ordained and for years thereafter, she felt certain about the fundamentals of her own faith and what it meant to be Christian. But she slowly realized that she was conflicted, internally and with the church, in large part because of church-inclusiveness controversies, including gay and lesbian issues. She laments that while ostensibly protecting the integrity of scripture and church doctrine, people can trample the rights of others. She discovered that change isn't easy. Sometimes, even getting dressed in the morning seems an insurmountable challenge. Ultimately, Taylor's is a luminous portrait of faith not lost but questioned, refound, and regained. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060771747
• ISBN-13: 978-0060771744
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #165,409 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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219 of 236 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes It's Good to Leave Church, June 19, 2006

By	Jon M. Sweeney (Vermont, USA) - See all my reviews

To thousands of readers, Barbara Brown Taylor is best known as a writer of resources for the ordained (Home By Another Way; The Seeds of Heaven; etc.). Her books have become a staple in the mainline Protestant clergy diet, like casseroles or Frederick Buechner. Clergy will find multitudes in this new book, as well. Just as Buechner's memoirs helped clergy twenty years ago, Barbara Brown Taylor's will, today. Clergy will understand when she tells what she's thinking and how she's scrutinizing while administering communion (p. 34), or as she movingly describes what it felt like to be ordained a priest (p. 43). Her descriptions of unease and insecurity in the role will speak most profoundly to fellow clergy, but also to anyone who has counted a priest, pastor, or deacon, a friend.

On the other hand, Leaving Church is too limiting of a title for Taylor's new memoir. I hope that the phrase will not keep those in the pews, or even those who left the church long ago, from reading it. A quote from William Faulkner opens Part One of the book, and would do well to open every memoir: "The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself."

The simple facts are these: Baptized Catholic, she wanders in and out of a few Protestant denominations. Drawn to a life of divine importance during high school in the sixties, she attends Yale Divinity School in the seventies on a scholarship; is among the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church USA a few years later; serves a large church in Atlanta (All Saints') for a decade as one of several clergy; seeks and finds a rural parish to lead on her own (Grace-Calvary in Clarkesville, GA); and after several years, quits, exhausted, taking a job teaching religion to college undergraduates.

Part One, "Finding," begins with Taylor's desire (at age 40) to leave the large staff of that Atlanta congregation in search of a country life and parish. "The idea was to skip right over the suburbs and head for the countryside," she explains, as she and her husband take day-trips around northeast Georgia searching for a new life. Eventually, upon arriving in Clarkesville and finding the small Episcopal church there, she yearns so deeply for this new life that her yearning becomes a series of physical reactions to touching the church building itself: "I could feel the clenched muscle of my mind relax. My shoulders came down from around my ears. I shook out my arms and put my hands flat on the side of the church." (p. 11) And that was before she ever stepped inside.

But things did not go as planned. Having originally given a commitment of a decade, she is burned out within a few years. The demands of being priest to all people at all times get to be too great. Ultimately, Taylor's leaving the church and the priesthood put her in a jeopardy that is easily understood by anyone who has questioned or struggled to find their vocation: "By leaving church, I was about to leave everything I knew how to do and be." (p. 122)

In the movie version of Leaving Church (not such a crazy idea, actually; Susan Sarandon as BBT?), a director might return dramatically via flashback again and again, as Taylor herself does, to the emotion of opening the box that contained her first clergy shirts, and readying herself to wear a clerical collar. "Who did I think I was? More to the point, who would other people think I was once I put these things on?" (p. 21) She confesses to great doubt in the midst of pastoral work, and she also confesses to levels of certainty that are somehow unfair when presented to people in the pews, and do not carry through into her life after the collar. Other occasions--of confessed naiveté--come from wisdom sadly won only after her professional ministry had ended: "When it came time to decide what to do with my life, I decided to go to seminary. What else do you do when you are in love with God?" (pp. 27-8)

It can be a joy to be there with Taylor as she remembers a scene, painting a picture with simple lines like, "Since the man was intent on what he was doing, I did not introduce myself right away. Instead I leaned against the counter and watched him work." At other times, she writes like a poet and the rhythms of her most introspective prose remind me of Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Sometimes 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." (p. x)

Most poignant in Leaving Church are the revelations of an ironic fulfillment of her ordained ministry after her priestly work has ended. This priest has found not just solace, but intense meaning, in the change from parish priest to full-time college professor and spiritual explorer. "I have never felt more engaged in what I was ordained to do," she explains. In fact, I would not be surprised if many parishioners in churches may want to screen their pastors and priests from reading such an honest account of clergy troubles that are ultimately solved by "leaving church."

Gone from her pulpit, Taylor revels in being a religious amateur once again. Her first Sunday after leaving her post seems perfect. She sits on her front porch and reads the Book of Common Prayer in solitude. "No one complained about the hymns. I did not sweat the sermon. The best part was the silence." (p. 138)

But the climax to her story comes on page 120, just past the midway point in the book and after she has given notice at the church. She is playfully pushed into a swimming pool during an outdoor party. Others had already gone in, both kids and adults, and Taylor wished that she, too, would be shoved in as one of the gang. "Whatever changes were occurring inside of me, I still looked waterproof to them," she worries, while standing there as an observer. But then, she feels two hands on her shoulder, and in she goes with the others.

Her revelation at that moment reminds me of the monk, Thomas Merton, standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets in downtown Louisville, realizing for the first time that he is connected to every stranger he passes on the street. In The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton wrote: "I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people. . . . even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness." Taylor reflects: "I looked around at all of those shining people with makeup running down their cheeks, with hair plastered to their heads, and I was so happy to be one of them. If being ordained meant being set apart from them, then I did not want to be ordained anymore. I simply wanted to be human. I wanted to spit food and let snot run down my chin. I wanted to confess being as lost and found as anyone else without caring that my underwear showed through my wet clothes. Bobbing in that healing pool with all those other flawed being of light, I looked around and saw them as I had never seen them before, while some of them looked at me the same way. Why had it taken me so long to get into the pool?"

In the final section of the book, Taylor really gets humming (p. 218 and beyond) about what it means to be human, and church, and Christian--reflecting as one who has deliberately left the priesthood--and every reader will be underlining passages, as I did.

Now, I have looked closely at the author photo on Leaving Church. It is cleverly done, perhaps by Taylor's publisher. She wears a solid black shirt--seemingly identical in fabric and design to a clergy shirt--only without the white clerical collar at the top. Her clerical readers will immediately recognize her, but many newcomers will also feel invited to her writing. Even without the collar, Barbara Brown Taylor is one of our most important spiritual writers today. And without that piece of plastic, like it or not, her wisdom will undoubtedly reach that broader audience to which her ordination had originally pledged her.

--Jon M. Sweeney (Sweeney is a writer living in Vermont. His memoir, Born Again and Again: Surprising Gifts of a Fundamentalist Childhood, published last year, has just received an Award of Merit in the Spirituality category from Christianity Today magazine.

77 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Straight from the heart , June 10, 2006

By	A reader from Washington DC (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

I was fascinated by Barbara Brown Taylor's searchingly honest story of her struggle between wanting to serve God as an Episcopal priest and wanting to love God as one of God's beloved children. Doesn't sound as if the two desires conflict, does it? But in fact they do, and this is her story of that profoundly wrenching conflict and how she has tried to resolve it.

Taylor, who as a child fell in love with God as first revealed in the beauty of nature, became a famous preacher and famous writer in the Episcopal Church. She describes how much she loved the people both in and out of church that she served. She also describes how much she loved God, and how the busy-ness of her ministry came between her heart and God. Finally she got to a breaking point, and she chose: she ceased her "professional" ministry and became a college professor of religion. And after a dark night of the soul she found herself where she believes she needs to be -- back in "right relationship" with the Divine. But this all came at a high price. She is quite unsparing in her description of what she's lost as well as what she's gained.

She's also eloquent about the pressures on the Episcopal Church, and sounds a prophetic warning about its future if it continues in the hierarchical way it currently follows.

If you yourself are involved in ministry, or if you know someone who is, this is a vitally important book. Read it!

70 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Missing a Sense of Call, September 26, 2006

By	Bob Kaylor (Park City, UT United States) - See all my reviews

I have enjoyed Barbara Brown Taylor's essays in The Christian Century and there is no question that she is a talented and descriptive writer. This book is a pleasant (and quick) read largely because her prose flows so beautifully.

On the other hand, I had some issues with this book. As someone who is also ordained (United Methodist), I know firsthand the pressures that one faces in parish ministry. There's never enough time, there's always a need, and "compassion fatigue," as Taylor puts it, is a real-world possibility. For me, however, ministry is first and foremost about calling--that God is somehow involved in choosing us for this work. That doesn't make us special or spiritually pedestal-worthy (as one of my seminary professors once put it, "When God calls you to ministry, he isn't doing you a favor."). Taylor's story as I read it seems to involve more of a drift toward ministry as a helping profession where baby birds and wounded souls can be healed by clergy touch. I'm not always sure that that's a healthy vision of ministry, especially when its the only one. The call to lead, to be prophetic, to teach, to handle the tough stuff, and to be the called out representative of God is hard work and being faithful to the task is less about being a "helper" and more about being an "equipper." Setting healthy boundaries and revisiting our call frequently are two of the essential tasks of clergy if we're going to stick with God's call on us for the long haul. Ultimately, ministry isn't about us--it's about what God does through us.

The other thing that I had in the back of mind as I read was the fact that Barbara could leave parish ministry with minimal disruption to her life. She was able to stay in the house that she and her husband built, live in the same community, take a job teaching at a nearby college, etc. For most clergy who are thinking about "leaving church," the decision carries far greater consequences. That's not to justify staying in a position that is draining life from you, but it does mean that when most of us are called it's a full commitment of our resources and lives to a particular place for a particular time. Simply stopping work for a time is not a live option. If you're called, though, you tend to not be looking at other options anyway and learn to work through the rough stuff.

On the positive side, her embracing of Sabbath is something I want to pursue for myself and her reflections on what she misses about serving a parish (offering the sacraments, for example) remind me of what I like best about what I do.

This would be a great book for a clergy group or parish council to read together and discuss. The issues of what ministry is today and how clergy might best fulfill their calling is worth some serious discussion.