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New York Times Bestseller
The renowned and beloved New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world's religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.
Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Church of finding out what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar. In Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students' eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques.
Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is.
Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions--even those whose truths are quite different from hers. The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God--a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.
The smaller picture -- Religion 101 -- Vishnu's almonds -- Wave not ocean -- Holy envy -- The nearest neighbors -- Disowning God -- The shadow-bearers -- Failing Christianity -- Born again -- Divine diversity -- In the name of the God you didn't make up -- The final exam -- The church of the common ground.
The renowned and New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world’s religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
According to Taylor (emeritus, religion, Piedmont Coll.; An Altar in the World), holy envy is discovering something in another faith tradition that one's own beliefs cannot quite embody. Here the author takes readers on a composite tour of the Religion 101 courses she's taught over the years and describes how teaching has transformed her interactions with believers of different faiths and enriched her own beliefs. This serves as the conduit for her sojourn and those of her fellow classroom pilgrims. The course of the narrative progresses through a series of field trips, student profiles, exams, and even a baccalaureate service. Through these encounters, Taylor is able to chip away at the particular Christian categories she uses to evaluate religious perspectives other than her own, acknowledging that none of us has a corner on the transcendent, that we each have something to give and receive while remaining true to our own faith. VERDICT Taylor effectively reminds us that religion is more than beliefs, that it involves our deepest selves and is the fabric of our shared lives.-James Wetherbee, Wingate Univ. Libs., NC © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
In simple and sharp prose, Taylor (An Altar in the World), a former Episcopal priest who teaches religion at Piedmont College in Athens, Ga., explores how teaching an introductory religion course has influenced her own views on faith and Christianity. Told as a series of vignettes structured around her course tracing world religions-primarily Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism-through history, the book has an academic tone but also wonderfully imbues the mundane with meaning through descriptions of class field trips to mosques, temples, and shrines that incorporate student reports and anecdotes from class to illustrate the evolution of her students' thinking and the changes brought by physically visiting sacred and holy places. Taylor tells her class that her real subject is "divine diversity"-the attempt to live peaceably and with convictions in a world where differing religions make wildly varying truth claims. Though the lessons and field trips touch on multiple faiths, Taylor's meditations frequently morph into biblical exegesis as she applies the lessons of other religions to her own understanding of Christianity. For example, the openness of Buddhist monks prompts her to consider the similarities they share with Christian ascetics. For Taylor, religious strangers can be the best teachers, as they provide a new perspective on the human relationship with the divine, and, she reasons, a sophisticated theology of comparative religions should always be informed by on-the-ground research. Taylor's fluid book, which includes a small, well-chosen bibliography, is a fine primer on interfaith studies. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Part of my ongoing priesthood is to find the bridge between my faith and the faiths of other people, so that those of us who draw water from wells on different sides of the river can still get together from time to time, making the whole area safer for our children, says Taylor, an acclaimed pastor, educator, and author. While comparative religion's founding educator, Huston Smith, taught by conveying his world travels, Taylor, who approaches world religion as both teacher and explorer, reaches her students with experiential field trips to places of worship closer to home. She nudges them away from spiritual appropriation and comparison, moving them instead toward challenging discernment of their faith and the faith of others. Taylor, like the best faith leaders, is a great storyteller as well. One of the best, here, is her distillation of the biblical account of Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who came to Jesus to learn about being born again. Taylor's novel interpretation of the story, and the way it gave her entrance into understanding the Holy Spirit, will get readers thinking. Progressive and inclusive Christians and nonbelievers who are sensitive to a multifaith, inclusive America will appreciate this, especially so for those who've followed Taylor's own faith journey. Highly recommended.--Joyce McIntosh Copyright 2018 Booklist
TextPublisher: San Francisco : HarperOne, 2019Description: 238 pages cmContent type:
Patron comment on 03/09/2020
It is a joy to read Barbara Brown Taylor. Her writing is fresh, alive, candid and informative. She opens up her heart, her life and reveals her ever-changing understanding of religion and God. Her confession that her Christianity could not contain her understanding of God or the Ultimate Reality leads us to explore with her other faiths. She sees truth and life in other places, other religions, but most important, in other people who believe as deeply as she does but in another world view, another "God" understanding. Highly recommended.