Barbara Brown Taylor: Leaving Church

by Jana Riess, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 2/22/2006

RBL: Leaving Church (Harper San Francisco, June) is a memoir about running out of steam, of being so harried in your work as an Episcopal priest that you eventually left the clergy. Why did you need to tell that story?

Taylor: I entered ordained ministry believing it would be what I spent the rest of my life doing. It was a surprise to leave in mid-career. That happened eight years ago now. I feel very much engaged in ordained ministry in the classroom [at Piedmont College in rural Georgia], but that didn't fit any of the stereotypes of ministry. So I have had a personal struggle with believing that I am still a priest, and still engaged in God's work. The book both offered me an opportunity to work through that struggle and to speak to many members of the clergy who are also engaged in it.

RBL: What kinds of demands did you experience as a priest?

Taylor: The untenable nature of the experience for me was being designated the holiest member of the congregation, who could be in all places at all times and require no time for sermon preparation. Those aren't symptomatic of a mean congregation; those are normal expectations of 24/7 availability. I spent so many years learning to be holy that it took me just as many years to learn to be human again. I suppose the book traces the journey from one to the other, and also announces my revelation that my humanity might be more precious and useful to God than my holiness.

RBL: After leaving parish ministry, how did you reformulate your identity and your life?

Taylor: If you become ordained, you identity is largely handed to you. To take off my collar, to leave my set role, and to say "What does priesthood look like when I have no one defining it for me?" was both alarming and freeing. My ordination vows are lifelong. I ended up spending a lot of time reading them, and parsing them in terms of my present situation, teaching undergraduate religion to a broad range of students to whom I am passionately devoted.

RBL: How did you wind up with Harper San Francisco?

Taylor: My previous books were always with religious houses, mostly Cowley Publications. When my editor left Cowley, I took the opportunity to look around. To help me make this transition, I found an agent. Tom Grady not only educated me in the publishing business but also brought the book to Harper [where he was previously v-p and executive editor]. In fact, it was on his advice that I pursued this topic out of a long list of ideas I gave him.

RBL: Who is your expected audience?

Taylor: I have some very faithful readers now, not only clergy, laity and seminarians, but also people I describe as "edge dwellers." They have one foot in the church and one foot out. Some have left institutional religion altogether, but not left the search for God. I see myself as a boundary person. I've flourished in the institutional side of religion, but I've also felt boxed in by it and short of air. So I feel I can be a bridge to the people who call themselves "spiritual but not religious," as well as those who are religious.

This interview is excerpted from one that will appear in the March 13 issue of Publishers Weekly.