"I like it much better than ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ — to be a seeker after the sacred or the holy, which ends up for me being the really real."
– Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor
From Krista, about this week's show:
It's fascinating to trace the arc of spiritual searching and religious belonging in my lifetime. The Episcopal priest and public theologian Barbara Brown Taylor was one of the people I started learning about when I left diplomacy to study theology in the early 1990s. At that time, she was leading a small church in Georgia. And she preached the most extraordinary sermons, and turned them into books read far and wide. Then in 2006, she wrote Leaving Church — about her decision to leave her life of congregational ministry, finding other ways to stay, as she's written, "alive and alert to the holy communion of the human condition, which takes place on more altars than anyone can count.”
She's written other books since, with titles like An Altar in the World, Learning to Walk in the Dark, and Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. Being in the presence of Barbara Brown Taylor's wonderfully wise and meandering mind and spirit, after all these years of knowing her voice in the world, is a true joy. I might even use a religious word — it feels like a "blessing." And this is not a conversation about the decline of church or about more and more people being "spiritual but not religious." We both agree that this often-repeated phrase is not an adequate way of seeing the human hunger for holiness. This is as alive as it has ever been in our time — even if it is shape-shifting in ways my Southern Baptist and Barbara's Catholic and Methodist forebears could never have imagined.
Barbara Brown Taylor is the author of many books, including An Altar in the World, Leaving Church, Holy Envy, and Learning to Walk in the Dark. Her 2020 book is Always a Guest, a compilation book of recent sermons. She is the former rector of Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church of Clarkesville, Georgia, and she taught for two decades in the religion department at Piedmont College.
This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Barbara Brown Taylor — ‘This Hunger for Holiness’." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.
___________
Please share On Being with friends, family, book clubs, neighbors, colleagues, and perfect strangers in the checkout line at the grocery store. And if you can take a minute to rate On Being in this podcast app, you'll be bending the arc of algorithms towards this community of conversation and living.
Also: sign up for our Saturday morning ritual of a newsletter, The Pause, for replenishment and invigoration in your inbox — and of course all things On Being — at onbeing.org/newsletter. And delve more across our social channels: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok.
Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem — Towards a Framework for Repair
[Unedited] Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem with Krista Tippett
Kevin Kling — The Losses We Grow Into
Sharon Salzberg — The Healing Is In The Return
[Unedited] Sharon Salzberg with Krista Tippett
Jen Bailey — What We Inherit & What We Send Forth
[Unedited] Jen Bailey with Krista Tippett
Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach — ‘Courage is the presence of fear, and going anyway.’
[Unedited] Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach with Krista Tippett
Brian Greene — This Tiny Slice of Eternity
[Unedited] Brian Greene with Krista Tippett – 2021 Conversation
Esther Perel – The Erotic Is an Antidote to Death
[Unedited] Esther Perel with Krista Tippett
Jason Reynolds — Imagination and Fortitude
[Unedited] Jason Reynolds with Krista Tippett
Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a world you’ve got inside you.’
[Unedited] Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows with Krista Tippett
Alex Elle — Self-Care as Generational Healing
[Unedited] Alex Elle with Liliana Maria Percy Ruiz
Nicholas Christakis — How We’re Wired for Goodness
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney
Selected Shorts
This American Life
Sunday Supplement - Sky Sports
The Frank Skinner Show