Barbara Brown Taylor — “This Hunger for Holiness”

On Being with Krista Tippett

On Being Studios

Society, Spirituality, Society & Culture, Sociology, Culture, Science, Religion & Spirituality, Krista Tippett, Social Sciences, On Being, Arts

4.7 • 10.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2023

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for on-being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute.
0:03.9	Fetzer supports a movement of organizations that are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems.
0:10.5	Learn more at Fetzer.org.
0:14.0	It's fascinating to trace the arc of spiritual searching and religious belonging in my lifetime.
0:21.0	And in the work I've done very intently since the turn of this momentous century.
0:27.0	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.
0:38.0	At that time, she was leading a small church in Georgia and she preached the most extraordinary sermons and turned them into books red, far and white.
0:49.0	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,
0:59.0	a live and alert to the holy communion of the human condition which takes place on more altars than anyone can count.
1:08.0	She's written other books since, with titles like An Alter in the World, Learning to Walk in the Dark and Holy Envy, Finding God in the Faith of Others.
1:19.0	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.
1:35.0	And it's not a conversation about the decline of church or about more and more people being spiritual but not religious.
1:43.0	We both agree that this often repeated phrase is not an adequate way of seeing the human hunger for holiness.
1:51.0	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.
2:04.0	I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being.
2:16.0	Barbara Brown Taylor came of age in an earlier era of shifting religiosity. Her parents encouraged her to go to the library instead of to church.
2:26.0	And Time Magazine was asking on its cover whether God was dead. She studied at Emory University as one of its theologians helped make that case.
2:37.0	I was in the on-bearing studios and she traveled to Georgia Public Broadcasting to speak with me.
2:44.0	Hello.
2:46.0	Hello.
2:47.0	Hi, it's Christa.
2:48.0	Christa Tippett, it's Barbara Taylor.
	...

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