Barbara Brown Taylor

"Sin" and "repentance" are words that have fallen out of favor in our postmodern and secularizing age, perhaps understandably so given how they've often been deployed in ways that have actually upheld social structures marked by injustice and iniquity, but Episcopal priest Brown Taylor says that there is no adequate replacement language for the reality they describe, and we are inevitably the poorer for our attempts to avoid them.

Separation from God, "missing the mark" in our relationships with others, is a common struggle of our daily lives. To successfully work at transforming ourselves we need to be able to recognize and confess our sin and accept God's grace, but that in itself does not get the job done. Brown Taylor notes that it seems easier to accept living with guilt and punishment for our sins that put us out of right relationship than it is to do the work of repentance that would bring us into right relationship (nodding head time in self-aware agreement with that point). Our churches should function as places of transformation, with a community that assists us in the work of real, actual life change, but Brown Taylor worries that this sort of church is hard to find.

Pull out quotes for me:

"I am not sure what the word repentance means anymore. Words without actions do not seem very meaningful to me, and individual good intentions without community support to back them up seem doomed to fail. There is something powerful about kneeling with other people and saying true things about our failure to live up to God's high call, but if all we do when it is over is climb in our cars and go our separate ways, then I wonder if God really cares."

"To use Hall's language, the church exists so that God has a community in which to save people from meaninglessness, by reminding them who they are and what they are for. The church exists so that God has a place to point people toward a purpose as big as their capabilities, and to help them identify all the ways they flee from that high call. The church exists so that people have a community in which they may confess their sin - their own turning away from life, whatever form that destructiveness may take for them - as well as a community that will support them to turn back again. The church exists so that people have a place where they may repent of their fear, their hardness of heart, their isolation and loss of vision, and where - having repented - they may be restored to fullness of life.

In a life of faith so conceived, God's grace is not simply the infinite supply of divine forgiveness upon which hopeless sinners depend. Grace is also the mysterious strength God lends human beings who commit themselves to the work of transformation. To repent is both to act from that grace and to ask for more of it, in order to follow Christ into the startling freedom of new life."

"I do not believe that there is any adequate substitute for this language. But in order to keep it alive, each of us must do our work - not only the work of diving down deep into human experience to find the realities the words describe, but also the work of bringing these words to life by clothing them in our own flesh. There is no reason why anyone should ever believe our talk of God's transforming power unless they can also see that transformation taking place in us - and through us, in the world. We are the people God has chosen to embody the gospel. Our lives are God's sign language in a sin-sick world, and God has promised us the grace we need to point the way home."… (mere)

Reading Taylor's work continues to be a pleasure. As she outlines her experience teaching Religion 101 at a small private college in the south, she also shares her very personal response—something like a spiritual crush—on aspects of orthodoxy and orthopraxy as she keeps company with different faith traditions.

Once upon a time I may have found such "holy envy" disorienting, even distressing; however, right now, Taylor's curiosity, respect, and engagement felt refreshing and delightful. Timing is everything.

Thoughtful and thought-provoking.… (mere)