Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

By Barbara Brown Taylor

Book Overview

"This beautiful book is rich with wit and humanness and honesty and loving detail....I cannot overstate how liberating and transforming I have found Leaving Church to be." --Frederick Buechner, author of Beyond Words "This is an astonishing book. . . . Taylor is a better writer than LaMott and a better theologian than Norris. In a word, she is the best there is." -- Living Church Barbara Brown Taylor, once hailed as one of America's most effective and beloved preachers, eloquently tells the moving and delightful story of her search to find an authentic way of being Christian--even when it meant giving up her pulpit.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060771747
• ISBN13: 9780060771744
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Sometimes It's Good to Leave Church

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...

Pure spoken honesty

Many scholarly people have written intelligent and poetic reviews of Barbara Brown Taylor's new book, "Leaving Church: a Memoir of Faith. My reading of it was on an emotional level and I was filled with respect and awe for Barbara's strength and honesty. Priests are trained to reserve their emotions, mask their opinions, and set the self aside for the job of ministering to their community. To bare her soul, admit her weaknesses,...

Provocative and Wonderful

Truth tellers are rare, especially if they are telling hard truths from deep love. Taylor's deep love for the church and for the God worshiped there provide the basis for her faithful and critical truth telling. Her truths -- which others whisper -- include the ways in which churches wound their leaders, overly limit the laity's ability to engage God and one another theologically, and need new visions of God and the people...

Straight from the heart

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...