1 of 2
I struck the board, and cry'd, No more," begins George Herbert's famous poem on religious rebellion, "The Collar" (1633). The title does not refer to clerical collars, which were not in use in the 17th century, though it has often been taken that way and perhaps might as well be since the trials of Herbert's own priesthood are probably what inspired the poem. At its close, after the speaker tells how he "rav'd and grew more fierce and wilde," he hears a voice calling, "Child!" and he replies, "My Lord."
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
|
Herbert served a parish for all of three years and died at the age of 39. Had he lived longer, or had he lived in our century instead of his, he might not have been subdued so easily. He might have lived to tell a different tale. It could not have been much lovelier, more revealing, or more poignant than Barbara Brown Taylor's latest book, Leaving Church.
Her "memoir of faith," as it is subtitled, focuses on the fifteen-plus years she spent in ordained ministry and especially on her decision to leave the church in Georgia where she served as rector for the final five and a half. It recounts how she did "everything I knew how to do to draw as near to the heart of God as I could, only to find myself out of gas on a lonely road, filled with bitterness and self-pity," and how she has "never found a church where I felt at home again." We're a long way from Mitford.
But never in the Slough of Despond. Leaving Church is also about Taylor's new ministry as a college teacher and her developing sense that "the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human." Not least of all, it is about what Taylor has managed to preserve and rediscover in her vocation and religious tradition. Appropriately, the book's three sections are called "Finding," "Losing," and "Keeping"—one kept thing being a deep respect for what Jesus had to say about the relationship between those three.
Notable among the many strengths of this book is Taylor's refusal to load her story. Hers is no Psycho with a church sexton in the role of Norman Bates; nor is it a tale of her own ever-unfolding inner wonderfulness. There are parts of this story that make one sad; I found nothing in it that made me sick. I found more than a little that made me cheer.
Though I served a church under very different circumstances and left it for reasons very different from Taylor's, a good deal of the pleasure I took in her book came from the reassuring familiarity of her observations. Is it hot in here or is it me? Taylor says it may be her, but it's also pretty hot. Remarking on the baptismal promise to "serve Christ in all persons," she declares, "Did the author of that response have any idea how many hungry, needy, angry, manipulative, deeply ill people I saw in the course of a week?"
It would be a shame, however, if the only readers of this book were clergy in the process of "leaving church." I would recommend Taylor's story to anyone who attends church more than twice a year, if only to advance this question: "What if they [the members of a congregation] were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastised for not doing more at church?" And I would heartily recommend it to anyone considering ordination.
Finally, I would recommend it to those who ask, "Why do people leave church?" That is not to say Taylor gives us the definitive answer—even for her own disaffection. "Because this is a love story," she writes, "it is difficult to say what went wrong between the church and me."
share this page
RSS Feed
