Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Barbara 0:00
You seem to be hearing religious literacy in the context of a chapter I wrote on Christianity and just how surprised I was at how many Christians failed the quiz on Christianity. So the religious literacy within the tradition was large. Today, when I look at shootings in synagogues and mosques, both in this country and around the world, I see a different kind of religious illiteracy at work. And that is not enough literacy about another religious tradition to be able to resist the stereotypes that are being pitched at us and scaring us. So that the religious “other“ I put that in quotes because that terms offensive to some and to others is descriptive, but the religious other gets blamed for everything from low birth rates to low paychecks to changing neighborhoods. And that's probably not just religious illiteracy, but psychological illiteracy, as well. At any rate, the ways in which our stereotypes of one another are fears obliterate the faces of our neighbors and for Christians that just seems like an abomination.
Seth Price 1:39
Welcome to April, it is April whatever first week in April 2 week of April but Spring is here winter is over. I don't care what Game of Thrones says winter is is gone or at least for me in Virginia. It feels like it's so close to being gone. As some of you know that follow the show on Facebook and or Twitter for those of you that patron supporters, you know that I just got back from vacation with a family and getting back into the swing of things and really enjoyed the break. And I'm so glad to be back. I'm glad you're all here. If you've not rated and reviewed the show on iTunes do that I like to read those. I don't know how it helps, but I feel like it help it can't hurt. So let's do those.
Thank you so much to each and every one of the patron supporters, you continue to drive the show. And if you haven't done that, if you're getting anything out of any of these conversations, I'd encourage you for less than two cups of really, really, really bad coffee for the entire year become a supporter of the show. I'll try to give you some extra stuff as best as I'm able to appreciate each and every single one of you. You'll hear me reference in the show that I sat on an ordination Council, first one ever, last year at my church and in doing so, one of the things that we did was read different theologians that impacted the candidate. And one of those theologians was Barbara Brown Taylor.
And I can remember reading just the few snippets of pages that were referenced and thinking to myself, man, this is really good and I should really read more and then I didn't, I got busy, life got in the way in shame on me. So I was surprised pleasantly in I think it's February, maybe January that the book just showed up, read through it, devoured it and read portions of it again. Barbara's book, Holy Envy is fantastic. And it gives words to things that I've struggled to explain well to other people. I love this conversation. I think you're in for a treat. So here we go. Roll the tape on a conversation with Barbara Brown Taylor.
Seth Price 4:03
Barbara Brown Taylor, I'm so happy to welcome you to the show. I know we've rescheduled this a few times. We're both extremely busy. You just had a book come out. So I'm sure you're going to be in 97 different states over the next few months. But thank you for taking time this morning to be here with me-welcome.
Barbara 4:18
Thank you so much for having me, Seth. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Seth Price 4:22
Me too! I want to be upfront. I see a lot of your quotes and I hear a lot of people reference you and it wasn't until I sat on an ordination Council for our current youth minister. And he had referenced some of your work and I read bits and pieces and snippets of theologians that impact him. And I remember writing down I should probably at one time or another figure out how to speak with you. But I wanted to read more of your work first and I didn't give it much thought since then, because I'm busy, you're busy, everybody's busy. And then out of random, your book arrived in the mail and I was like I know this name. (Laughter from Barbara) So I didn't really know what to expect as I cracked open your latest book. And then I basically read it in its entirety over the course of a few bad baseball practices for my son, you know, under under stadium lighting, outside, Virginia in the freezing early March.
Before we get there, though, you get this question often. And so I apologize. But I know a lot of the audience of this show lives outside the normal circles. And so can you briefly just kind of tell us a bit about what makes you you?
Barbara 5:28
Gosh, so we got about 9 or 10 hours for this, right?
Seth Price 5:33
Absolutely.
Barbara 5:35
Yeah, this is a medium that's just right for a narcissist. So let me keep it short.
I spent fifteen years in parish ministry, surprisingly switched to teaching college in 1998. So I've had two, long-ish, vocations, one in parish ministry full time and then one full time in the classroom. The latest book Holy Envy comes out of the classroom.
So I'm ordained person in the Episcopal Church but now working in what's called in our tradition non-stipendiary which means I don't get paid. But I am Episcopal, what else…I live rurally, he been married a long time to the same guy, and have too many chickens.
Seth Price 6:22
How many is too many?
Barbara 6:23
Oh, when you can't count them anymore, and when they come on your porch every afternoon to eat the dog food and leave reminders of themselves.
Seth Price 6:31
I mean, you could put them in a pen.
Barbara 6:35
Ugghhh
Seth Price 6:36
That’s funny. So, I am curious. So I've not yet spoken to someone that went the direction that you did vocationally. And as I read kind of, you know, just in the very small beginning of your book of you know, the way that from what I understand, you didn't really grow up religious and so you went in with different questions and someone like myself that grew up in the bible belt or something similar to that the inherent viewer lens of God. So you went into ministry with a different mindset. And then you took that different mindset into teaching. But why did you feel that you needed to leave vocational, I guess pastoring ministering? I'm not sure what the right verb is.
Barbara 7:16
Sure, I hadn't really thought about that. I mean, so many people right now who identify themselves as reconstructed Christians or revisionist Christians. And I didn't have anything to revision or reconstruct except, you know, this many years now in in one church and visiting a lot of them. But I think what happened to me, or what I created for myself is completely typical is the life of ordained ministry, whether it's in a large congregation or a small one is extremely demanding, especially for someone who identifies as introverted and finds coffee hour much, much harder than anything else that happens on a Sunday morning. So I would say that, you know, for those reasons, above all others I simply wore out. I wore out in 1997 church was growing but it was a tiny still is a beautiful, tiny, historic church that seats 82 people. And we were up to four services on Sunday morning and God did not give me a vision of how to move forward. So, around that time college just six miles away started a religion and philosophy major and invited me to teach without a PhD. How many people get that invitation? So I taught one on one of everything.
Seth Price 8:32
What else have you taught besides world religions?
Barbara 8:35
Well, I was the only religion professor, you know of record at the college so you name it and and I taught it. Intro to the Bible, Intro to Christian theology, Intro to world religions, you know, intro to intro to..intro to…and that was perfect because I didn't have an advanced degree or at least PhD in religious studies. So it was a job made in heaven for me.
Seth Price 9:00
I want to weave my way throughout our conversation a bit about a why you needed or you felt called to write this book because it seems like there's two tones in it. It almost feels like you intended to write something else and then it turned into something deeply more personal but maybe I'm reading into that.
Barbara 9:16
No! You’re just a really perspicacious reader. That's exactly right!
Seth Price 9:19
I don’t know what that word means.
Barbara 9:21
That's one of my goals in life is to send everyone to their dictionary! So good luck!
Seth Price 9:26
How do I spell it then? And I’ll look it up.
Barbara 9:30
It was a compliment. I'll put it that way first. Seth is looking it up right now!
Seth Price 9:34
I will, I wrote it down or misspelled it. But so what do you what do you mean when you say that, like that's true? What I'm reading is true?
Barbara 9:43
You are good. Yeah, you're really good. reader. This is the fourth book that left the third person plural pronoun of we, which I used a lot in churches, we believe we're called to, you know, “we we we” when I left parish ministry, and when into a classroom where that we did not fit the students sitting in front of me who came from all kinds of religious traditions and none. I started writing in the first person instead. I started writing books that started with I. But that's always been hard for me.
So I think four times in a row now I've written a book that was supposed to be about other people. And the editor came back and said, Where are you? Where are you? We need more you in here. And because he's an editor I've been with for a while I listened to him. But you did see me step out more and more in that book than I was really comfortable doing. But it seems only fair if a reader is going to give it the time and open a heart then it's my job to do that first.
Seth Price 10:46
I want to reference something that you touch on early on. So you say I always write page notes you say right, like around page 19 that you struggle to answer the question. I think a student asked of you if you know hey Barbara what kind of course Christian are you?
So I'm curious how you answer that today? Because I know my answer has changed. Well shoot the other day, just a few. A few weeks ago, I interviewed a different person over at Cambridge, a Catholic priest. And he asked me that question, and I really stumbled with how to answer it. But people don't often ask it to me. But it was uncomfortable that I didn't really have a elevator pitch of Christianity. So I'm curious how you answer that?
Barbara 11:25
Well, at least you and he knew that that was a question to be asked; part of teaching world religions was realizing when you've met one Buddhists, you've met one. And when you've met one Christian, you've met one. And Christianity, as still the largest religious tradition worldwide, I think sometimes refers too often to itself in the singular when it's incredibly plural. So it's a good question to ask and like you, I find myself either caught up short or reaching for cliches that don't help at all. You know, to say I'm an evangelical or I'm a liberal or I'm a conservative or Baptist that doesn't seem to help anybody anymore. But I'm more and more happy identifying myself as kind of an outlaw Christian, which is I still include myself in the tribe, there are others who would not include me in the tribe. But Richard Rohr uses the phrase about being on the inside edge of an organization; not outside and not at the center, but at the inside edge. And that's a place that I'm comfortable being because I can talk to people inside and outside.
Seth Price 12:28
Yeah, building on that outlaw metaphor. If there was a Most Wanted list, like where would they where would they post your picture and who else is next to you?
Barbara 12:39
Well, you could read my one star review on Amazon. (So much laughter from both!) I've had a lot of bad reviews based on my titles.
Seth Price 12:48
Really?
Barbara 12:50
Yeah, I think you know, of course, I would be outlawed by people who do not want even to talk about in what sense is Jesus the only way to God; or in what sense is God present only in Christianity? You know, in what sense is ordained ministry in the Christian church only for men; or in what sense…I mean, I don't even need to be right about any of those. I just want badly to be in conversation with people who are as eager as I am to expand my brains about what we use to put each other in or outside, you know, I mean, what, what is our criterion for who's in and who's out. So my most wanted poster would be at the…see it’d be right at the very center of the target, but it depends on what target it is. I mean, I'm a bad person in one tradition for a different reason than I am in another.
You know, for some people, women shouldn't be ordained and so immediately, I have nothing to offer and for other people, it would be straying from Nicene Creedal affirmations about literal under standings of miraculous things so I can never tell that's why I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.
Seth Price 14:06
Sure. You referenced, and I'm I might be inferring this, that so many of the students and so I find it odd that the denomination at least based on Barna research and other research that is quote unquote religious but also not very Christian. I guess if you're going to give people categories on a on a census thing are the demographic that you've had the biggest impact on or arguably probably have had also the biggest impact on you, but you reference in your book like a rote religious illiteracy and then you also say that that's a luxury that we can't afford. But I'd like to define that. When you say like religious illiteracy what do you actually mean like to break that apart? And I can understand what we can't afford it because if I can't explain my faith to my nine year old, then really what is my faith? What are what are some of those high level, or maybe even medium level, illiterate portions of, I guess, faith in general, but Christianity, but probably faith in general, regardless of the religion?
Barbara 15:12
So you raise a great question, I wonder if there is faith in general; but we can talk about that as we go along. First of all, you seem to be hearing religious literacy in the context of a chapter I wrote on Christianity, and it was just how surprised I was at how many Christians failed the quiz on Christianity. So the religious literacy within the tradition was large. Today, when I look at shootings in synagogues and mosques, both in this country and around the world, I see a different kind of religious illiteracy at work and that is not enough literacy about another religious tradition to be able to resist the stereotypes that are being pitched at us and scaring us. So that the religious “other” I put that in quotes because that terms offensive to some and to others is descriptive but the religious other gets blamed for everything from low birth rates to low paychecks to changing neighborhoods. And that's probably not just religious illiteracy but psychological illiteracy as well. At any rate, the ways in which are stereotypes of one another, our fears, obliterate the faces of our neighbors and for Christians that just seems like an abomination.
Seth Price 16:27
Yeah, well, how do we get past that because it almost seems like the human mind is wired to inherently distrust others. And like, you insulate yourself inside your immediate family in your immediate safety net — and —America, at least for at least the America I live in; I don't really have to get out of that safety net unless I intentionally do so. Which makes everyone uncomfortable. And I'm also I know I'm getting better at it, but I'm by no means good at it. So how do we work our way in and around that?
Barbara 16:58
You just made a great case. For religion, because I can only speak with, you know, even a modicum of authority about the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but it's astonishing to me how they have central teachings about the stranger; hospitality to the one who is not like us who comes from outside not to convert and stay with us, but to go back to where he or she came from. I mean, think of the Magi, the three wise men in Matthew's Gospel, they didn't become followers of the baby Jesus and move into a house next door Bethlehem, they went back home to Persia, where they were probably Zoroastrian priests. But I think that the sacred texts that I know best hold open this frightening space for the “other”. Sometimes the language is for the brother or sister and I think when people whose sacred texts they are read those they think, oh, that means people just like me, people to whom I'm related by faith or kinship somehow, but that's not what the text says it's says that if you can't love the people, you do see, you can't love the God you don't see. So it's amazing to me how these sacred texts hold the antidote for people who read them in exclusive ways, in ways that would, would try to eliminate the stranger, the other no one who doesn't look like us.
Seth Price 18:25
Does that same thread, and, and this, again, will be me in my ignorance. I know, I invest so much time into each interview that I don't really read much outside of what I'm interviewing about, which is why I tried to intentionally push where I go, you know, I'm trying to push my margins out wider, because I don't want to be an echo chamber, in and of myself. And even then in some subset of deconstruction, or I think I'm beyond that part of my life, but a lot of people aren't and so I don't want to be an echo chamber in in my own little community. Do you find that that inherent what seems like as I read the different chapters, and you talk on different, broad strokes of different religions, the tension seems to be at least the way that you write that everywhere else that you and your, you took your students, you know, on all these trips to kind of engage intentionally in community, not in book knowledge, that the fear of other was mostly insular in the people on the van or the bus with you and that the communities themselves were open arms, feel comfortable, ask your questions. It's okay. So do other faiths in general. treat other more? Well, that's not even a good sentence than we do?
Barbara 19:38
There's no “in general”. So the thing to pay attention to in the example you just used is I researched and I chose communities that were eager to be known and eager to host students who were eager to learn. So we didn't walk cold into places where people were not expecting us that principle could be applied to anybody anywhere. You don't have to be in a class in a college. But should you decide you want more for your imagination to work with than what you're getting from Hollywood, or the headlines, or the internet, then you go out of your way, you know, to find something like the pluralism project at Harvard www.pluralism.org. Go there and listen to interviews with people from 13 faiths, all in the United States. You know, none of this is global it's all about diversity of religion in the United States. But that site alone, you could spend a year on and buy a terrific book find someplace in your own community that's open to visitors. There's now a “visit a mosque Saturday” in most communities where you can go on a Saturday and have some cookies and meet some people to give your imagination something better to work with.
You can read a book, a novel, poetry, by someone from another tradition I gave my granddaughter copy of The Way of the Bodhisattva because she's not a church person. And she called me one night and said, this is like a Bible, what is this? I love opening this up in the middle of the night and reading it! So she got exposure to another religious tradition, one that has no interest in converting her by the way. But any person of goodwill who wants to learn more can do that.
Seth Price 21:24
One of the things that I like is, well, no, I don't want to say what I like I'd like to hear your answer for so you tell a story of a student named Mariah when y'all are going to a Hindu temple. And as I'm flipping back through the book as you speak, I'm finding that I underlined almost all of that and so I'm wondering if in brief, because by now, the book is out, and if you haven't bought the book, you need to it's fantastic. We'll Barbara, you don't have to you wrote it, but other other people should. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about that story. And then depending on what you say, I do have a follow up to it but I'm really curious you probably touch on it to begin with, but, just that story around Mariah and her uncomfortability?
Barbara 22:04
Yeah, that was the very first field trip I ever took in Religion 101, I'd only been at it a little while and I realized we had to get out of the house. It was no good having people come to visit us, because then they were the uncomfortable ones. And we were sitting there in our safety zones. So I took a group to the Hindu temple in Atlanta. It's been there a long, long, long time. For a while people from South Carolina, Alabama, neighboring states would drive to Atlanta for High Holidays. And I've been there once before, but I had gone as myself I'd gone as my curious, fairly secure in my tradition, self. And I'd forgotten how the Hindu temple might appear to someone who'd never been in such a place and who was only 19 years old, and whose life depended on the love of Jesus, and who saw much of what she saw in there, namely, statues of deities. Hindu deities that didn't look anything like Jesus.
The story you're referring to is she ran out on the porch and just started sobbing and I had students inside the temple and was going outside the temple to console her before I could go back inside the temple and be with other people, none of whom was having as hard time with being there as she did. But she woke me up to needing a safer place, a place that felt safer was less strange for first time visitors. So Mariah ended up being my teacher.
She not only survived the night, but she survived the class and made an A. You may be thinking of the end of the chapter because people worry so much about her, she was such a dear person. The assignment near the end of the class was to design an interfaith chapel for Piedmont College based on what you learned in the class. And her design was a circular kind of Labyrinth(y) space that was made all black marble, and she said all the lighting would be soft, no religious symbols, but polished black marble. So everywhere people look, they would see each other's faces reflected back at them.
And it was a remarkable image, a remarkable space she created in her mind. So she gets all the credit for making a transition from the beginning of that semester to the end. And finding a way to see God's face in the faces of all the people reflected back to us in the dark marble of God.
Seth Price 24:35
So I tried to draw that after I read that it's deceptively hard, because it causes, if you're gonna do it, right, you have to deal with that same emotional process and it's just hard.
Seth Price 25:22
One of the things that it seems like you've learned from students is to not answer their questions. You seem to censor yourself, it feels like you want to say something sometimes in a story, and maybe it's the editing of the story. Do you find that you've had to not answer questions so that people can self answer and if so, how do you censor yourself? Because so many people today just tell you what they think and why you're wrong. So how do we learn to censor that or to at least filter it and give time in between question and answer?
Barbara 25:57
Yeah, first of all, I learned that from Jesus every day. Somebody wanted an answer from him, he'd asked them a question or he would, you know, hold something up for them to look at and give an opinion on so he was a genius at not taking over people's transformation. I have seen too many bullies at the front of classrooms, in front of microphones, and in pulpits of churches, I've seen too many bullies to want to be one. And I never yielded to the bullying it just made me want to leave. So I didn't want to join that group. And it seemed to me whether you call it the Socratic method or the Jesus method or just good teaching is to help people formulate better and better questions instead of handing out answers that students have to mimic or they won't pass the class.
So that that came out of personal experience and, and also it deescalated anxiety. The Mariah story came from 20 years ago and what I found by the way, last 10 years of teaching was that didn't happen so much anymore. Students went to public high schools where there were other students from all around the world. Gwennett County south of me is a majority minority county with about 143 languages spoken. So I found that later in my teaching career, the world had changed. And the students changed as well. The fear level was way, way down, though the (religious) illiteracy level was still pretty high up because there's not a lot going on about learning about your religion. I think Christians in particular, perhaps for good reason, focus more on our devotion then on our understanding of how we got to be where we are and what makes us who we are. So I think I just left your question in the dust‽
Seth Price 27:49
(Laughter) Feedback that I get often from the show because I'll entertain ideas that aren't necessarily what's the word I want. I'm entirely comfortable to entertain a Buddhist idea or a Hindu idea or shoot even a Muslim it like it doesn't matter, specifically when I talk about eschatology, because I like to ask people like I hear what you're talking about with hell, and with the way that souls are, quote unquote, created. But have you asked any Jewish people about that? Because they've been wrestling with this text a lot longer than our Western Church has. And people get angry about that. And so how should we respond when people are affronted by any toe dipping into the pool of religious pluralism?
Barbara 28:30
I can't stop them from being affronted. I mean, to me, that's their privilege is to be affronted. I mean, again, I have to know what person we're talking about to I have to know what's going on in the room. What's the context? What's the affront about it? Maybe it may be a way I'm presenting something, it may be a conversation they just came from. Those are such delicate interactions, but you know, people who immediately respond negatively to any reference to another tradition, I often will say something Like, tell me why that matters so much to you. And then we can at least start talking about a real thing. Sometimes that backfires and people will just say, Well, I just think it's wrong, I just think it's wrong! And you have to keep trying to get down to, you know, what's going on in there to provoke that response. That's what I get interested in, is, you know, whatever the fear, the anxiety, the the true belief in my in one, but it seems important to me to get to some real human conversation. So the front, if I can't get around, I might just change the subject, but it's not my job to block that.
Seth Price 29:37
you reference a lot of theologians or mystics as well, that I'm just not familiar with and that I've added to my list of people that I need to become accustom with one of those and I'm sure I'm gonna say this name wrong. Christian or Christ or Stein,
Barbara 29:50
Seth Price 29:53
Yeah, I love those three rules, and I'm certain you do as well because leaving room for holy envy is literally the title of the book. But it's number it's number one and two the interplay in between. But my question is, depending on the thread of the religion that you're in, how do we evaluate what equates to best and worse because the second rule is don't compare, you know, our best to their worst. Here we go. Don't compare Barbara Brown Taylor to a version of a Christian that would go in and shoot up a church. But that's an easy comparison. But how do we do it for things that aren't at either polar extremes? Like what's a good way to find what is best to best or medium to medium?
Barbara 30:36
Let me and again you may have to bring that one back from me. I want to rewind for listeners who may not have the book in front of them and say that this Krister Stendhal was at that time 1985, Bishop of the Church of Sweden in Stockholm when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints built a new temple in Stockholm. And that shook some people in the city though Sweden then and now had a rich history of welcoming religious strangers. So Krister Stendhal took to the microphone press conference and proposed three rules for religious understanding.
The first of which was if you want to know about another religion asks its adherence and not its enemies. And the second rule, which you just referred to, is don't compare your best to their worst. And the third rule was leave room for holy envy.
And that's where I took the title of the book, but you're focusing on number two: don't compare your best to their worst and that that often comes up with, you know, something like, I'll tell you a story from the classroom where a student went home from the unit on Islam and was telling her family how she'd never known about five times daily prayer before; or how you could set your watch so you knew when other Muslims were praying. So even if you were the only person in your school, you'd be praying with other Muslims, and before she knew it, her parents We're saying, well, you're a sitting duck for ISIS, you better stay off the computer before you know it, you'll be captured and you know, held for sex with terrorists.
And, wow, that was really, you know, pretty quickly from a possible best to a possible worst. More typically, when we're comparing things between traditions will say things like, well, Christianity is a religion of love and Judaism is a religion of law. And that is so lacking in any kind of subtlety or depth. So, you know, simply to be aware of that I call it practice theological humility that has too many syllables in it. But when we compare our best to their worst, it's just not even a fair contest. It's a cheap shot!
Seth Price 32:44
So to put practice to that, just disengage from the conversation when that's happening, or like, do you just politely excuse yourself or do you we’ll just take a Jesus metaphor out of context, he flipped the tables and they listen to me-what are you doing?
Barbara 33:00
You know, interestingly, since you asked should it happen in front of me, I would probably take a breath and count to 10 like my grandmother taught me to. And then I usually respond with something like, did you know, or are you aware, and I'll you know, bring out some statistic that I hope doesn't have a lot of prickliness in it and just take the opportunity to teach for a second if I can, you know, if something occurs to me that would refute or deepen or enrich with the person saying, sometimes you can get a genuine opening there just for somebody to go, “Oh, I didn't know that.” But what's most interesting about your questions, it doesn't happen to me. Whether it's the circles I travel in, or the fact that Religion 101 was such a great class, I get the opposite. You know, I get students who are all of a sudden seeing the worst in their own traditions. And they think that other traditions like the Buddhists are all peaceful, wonderful people, and all Muslims pray five times a day and never touch a drop of alcohol.
And you know, they come away with positive stereotypes which are probably no better than the worst. But at least you know they're getting more than they get in the headlines. So it just doesn't happen. I so seldom am with people who are doing the the attacking, I read about them, but I just don't know them. I don't know them in Clarksville, Georgia. I don't know them in Atlanta, Georgia. I've never met them in Oregon. I've never met them anywhere I go. So I must carry a bubble with me, or people are generally much kinder than most of us can imagine.
Seth Price 34:37
What have been the biggest, I guess world, religions that have impacted the way that you you reference that you learn about all these other religions but it's Jesus that you come home to at night. Which you can tell that you're from the south because that's that's verbs that we use often like you don't come home. That just the way that that sentence is structured sounds like my family. I don't know if people in the north talk that way. But I've never heard them talk that way.
But what are some of the religions and the things that you've been like? No, I can take this portion, you know from from a Native American religion or take this portion from Buddhism, that have deeply impacted the way that you now see God?
Barbara 35:17
Yeah, let's, maybe we can bring that down from how I see God because how I see God is almost inconsequential to anybody but me I mean, we all see God in different ways, you know, and if we love sacred texts, just look at the pages we've marked and the ones we've ignored. And you'll see that we have a little hand and making God in our own image. I think it would sound familiar to a number of people to say I have been to a yoga class and have found that incredibly beneficial, or my form of prayer right now takes the form of meditation of being quiet instead of talking.
I think that anybody who goes outside and thanks God for creation is getting really close to some Native American truths. I find myself drawn to those three in particular because they have no interest in converting me ,they have no interest in making me part of their crowd. They offer me, pretty freely, what they have to offer and say you can use our cup and drink from our well and you don't have to buy the cup. And you know, you can go on and taste from other wells. So they seem to be open to me coming by and because they're not particularly theistic and certainly not monotheistic, they don't crash into my ideas, insofar as my ideas matter, does make any sense?
Seth Price 36:40
It does, but it's, I'm trying to find the best way to voice it. Um, I like the answer. But I don't it makes me still have to do the processing and I'm lazy, so…(laughter from both)
Barbara 36:53
Tell me what you're processing?
Seth Price 36:57
Well…earlier…you, earlier, you referred, you know, people ask me a question, I end up asking another question, which is effectively what you just did, which then requires me to actually do the work and I'm not…so let me put it this way. I didn't prepare for that answer. So I don't know how to answer your question.
Barbara 37:14
Thats good. That's fine. I mean, if you go away with a live question and have to look up perspicacious, too, we've just had a win win here!!
Seth Price 37:20
I agree. My dad was the same way. Like he would use words like the superfluous and I'm like, but I'll be honest, they're stuck in my head, like, you know, like, what else did he flamboyant? He used flamboyant when I was like, seven. It's like, stop being so flamboyant! What does that mean? Look it up! I don't even know how to spell it. Figure it out. It's either p h or F. You're smart enough to figure it out. Find it.
Barbara 37:42
Well, Seth really, eschatology strikes some people that way too. Okay, let's tell the truth here.
Seth Price 37:49
It was strikes me that way. I often when people ask me what what are your views on this? I'm like, I'm pretty sure anytime that we're talking about hell or heaven, it's usually a metaphor and it's really more about how you treat people today and tomorrow, than it is about something place that I'm going. It's somewhere that we're collectively co-creating with God. And I'm fine being wrong, but I'm pretty sure you're doing this wrong. And I'm not certain how to tell you why.
Nor do I necessarily want to. Yeah, there's a Veterinarian, actually, at the end of my block that constantly has different scriptures that are rapture related, and then the right things about it, and it's on the vet's office, and I really want to go over there and just fix it. But that won't, that won't be helpful. I just want to fix it.
Barbara 38:33
I want to get out of the car where I live in rearrange the church signs, you know, make them say something different.
Seth Price 38:39
You should, we'll do it. We'll do it together, we'll both go to jail for trespassing.
I ask this question to anyone that has influence or at least experience with the generation to come because I have an inherent bias of wanting to know what to plan for and maybe that's the banker part of my brain. But we're coming close to the end of our time. And so if that Church and in my church, I mean big C church, which is really a bad way to talk about the church. But I mean, all churches, not necessarily the Christian church, if we can somehow figure out a way to hold holy envy in such a way that we're more amenable to see truth than other people; whether or not that truth is necessarily written in between Matthew 1&2, because somehow my canon is better than someone else's. What does that church look like 10 years from now? And then how do I either prepare my children to be in it? Not necessarily myself because hopefully, I'm helping to create that. And so that should be an easy transition for me, but the generation to come? I'm fearful that parents today listening have no way to bridge that for people. So my fear is there will be a huge drop off. And the for all of its ills. organized religion, for the most part does do a lot of fantastic things. But I'm fearful for the next decade.
Barbara 39:57
Oh, and you say it's going to fall off‽ How about already has!
Seth Price 40:02
Well I’m being hopeful, why not? There is already so much broken in the world, I want to have a little bit of hope.
Barbara 40:07
I don't have children, and I didn't raise children. I have grandchildren. But somebody else did the heavy lifting there. So I'm not a great person to ask. But I know Cindy Wang Brandt also has a podcast and she deals with exactly this kind of question all the time, about raising kids to have faith in a world where that's changing, and she's Christian as well. So, that's a good place to go for people with hands on experience.
But I can't imagine anybody who can predict 10 years from now, the students I know best can't predict two years from now whether they'll even have the same job that they went to school to prepare for. So I think there's a much shorter range of prediction. I don't think we could have predicted who the last two presidents would have been, you know? So it gets really hard to put things way far out there. I'm pretty sure there will be less buildings in the future. There are too many of them already on the sale block where I live being turned into theaters and restaurants and condominiums.
Fewer buildings lower overhead more bi-vocational pastors who work in the so called world and who carry out church duties on Sundays. I think worship will take place outdoors and in bars and restaurants and people's houses. I think it will not be doctrinal enough for most Christians who are denominationally tuned today.
But I have this bizarre trust in the spirit and of the Spirit of God to keep the stories that matter alive. When I talk to people who are still Catholic, I say, Why are you still Catholic? They say the stories just can't give the stories up. So I have…we're at the end of our time, I think the spirit will keep blowing and, and I'm willing to be blown around with it.
Seth Price 41:53
Yeah. And then one last plug in this one thing I wanted to ask you about and I couldn't but for those listening, go and buy the book and just go to Chapter 9, the way that you rip apart Nicodemus. And this is partially because of a past guest, Alexander Shaia, the way he also references Nicodemus, and that mindset. So read chapter nine, everyone if you read nothing else. So, Barbara, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people connect with you? The book is everywhere that you know, fine books are sold.
Barbara 42:24
We just made the New York Times bestseller list, number 6 on miscellaneous I mean, there were cookbooks.
Seth Price 42:32
How is that even the correct category for religion?
Barbara 42:35
I think it's code for books we don't like and don't know what to do with?
Seth Price 42:39
But they keep the code for everybody seems to buy this, but we don't really want to print it.
Barbara 42:43
Yeah, they have a poorly maintained website. It's just my name BarbaraBrownTaylor.com, but that's enough. But I put everything I know in the book. So if it's not there, it doesn't exist.
Seth Price 42:55
Fair enough. Yes, kind of you'd invite me. Thank you for the conversation and the great questions.
Seth Price 43:00
Thanks for being on. And I hope that you genuinely hope that you enjoy all of those chickens, every single one of them.
Barbara 43:07
Give me your address and I’ll send you eggs!
Seth Price 43:15
I'm reminded of a news article right after the Christchurch New Zealand shooting of Jewish synagogues that that did that close service to be in communion and do life with the Muslim victims of that mass shooting. And when I think of what holy envy should look like, what it sounds to me or what I feel like it should be is community. And as a Christian, I'm pretty sure that's what Jesus said as well. Love others. Love God, but the key word in both of those is love.
Without that community, without genuine seeking to understand the best of other people as opposed to pointing fingers at the worst of other people. What the heck is the point? I pray that your month and your year stretches you. That you find things in other faiths and other people that you're envious of and that you and I, instead of choosing to be jealous or spiteful or bigoted, will learn from others lessons that maybe our religion isn't geared to teach us. Lessons that other parents or other marriages, other faiths, other parents, other lives have to show us. Thank you for listening today. Talk with you next week.