The renowned Christian preacher and New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching world religions to undergraduates in Baptist-saturated rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.
Christians are taught that God is everywhere–a tenet that is central to Barbara Brown Taylor’s life and faith. In Holy Envy, she continues her spiritual journey, contemplating the myriad ways she encountered God while exploring other faiths with her students in the classroom, and on field trips to diverse places of worship.
Both she and her students ponder how the knowledge and insights they have gained raise important questions about belief, and explore how different practices relate to their own faith. Inspired by this intellectual and spiritual quest, Barbara turns once again to the Bible for guidance, to see what secrets lay buried there.
Throughout Holy Envy, Barbara weaves together stories from her classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been challenged and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions–and by meeting God in them. At the heart of her odyssey is her trust that it is God who pushes her beyond her comfortable boundaries and calls us to “disown” our privatised versions of the divine–a change that ultimately deepens her relationship with both the world and with God, and ours.
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Summary
Holy Envy was our latest book club pick. It’s part memoir as Barbara Brown Taylor details, to some extent, her time as a professor of world religions at Piedmont College. But really, as the sub-title says, it’s more of a discussion about how we can find God in the faith of others. The author has an interesting background, having grown up in a secular environment and not regularly attending church until she was a teen. Yet she ended up becoming an Episcopal priest. That later dovetailed into her becoming a professor of world religions which took her on yet another spiritual journey. During this time, she found much to appreciate in other religions, but still kept coming back to Christianity as her foundation. But along the way, she also discovered a healthy case of holy envy.
What is holy envy, you may ask? Well, it’s all about finding those things in the religions of others to which you can relate to and appreciate, things that perhaps you wish your own faith did better, and then allowing those things to help transform your own beliefs. If you think this sounds like cultural appropriation, it really isn’t. It’s more about finding common ground with those of other faiths and allowing it to deepen your own. I think that many of us are pretty ignorant of other faiths besides our own (if we adhere to one at all), and so by learning about what others believe, we can be more accepting of them. Since Rev. Taylor taught at a church-affiliated college in a predominantly Christian area of the country, many of her students identified as Christian. Some of them were bothered by her teaching methods, which included field trips to other religions’ houses of worship. But there were other students who drank it in as not only an educational, but a spiritual experience as well. In fact, through her teaching experiences, Rev. Taylor herself learned much and grew spiritually.
Rev. Taylor gives some background on each of the five major world religions she taught: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I learned a number things myself merely by reading this book, not just about other faiths, but also my own. I have to admit that there were some things that surprised me and maybe even made me a tad uncomfortable. Rev. Taylor said that happened to her as well, but over time, she’s worked through those issues. I think that’s where I am, as well, working through it all and figuring out exactly what I believe. But I love learning about all the ways in which the beliefs of other religions intersect with my own. I also enjoyed seeing certain Biblical passages interpreted in a different way from what I’m used to, offering fresh, new, valuable insights. As Rev. Taylor demonstrates through one of her metaphors, the reality is that, whatever our chosen faith, we’re riding just one wave in a much bigger ocean, and even within our chosen faith, there are so many divergent beliefs that it is pretty much impossible for one sect, denomination, or even an entire faith to have all the answers and be the only game in town. So for that reason, I highly recommend Holy Envy to anyone who is open to learning about other faiths or who might be searching for a way to peacefully co-exist in our religiously pluralistic society.
Review provided by The Hope Chest Reviews