Book Review
Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019. 238pp. $16.81
by Neal D. Presa
Famed Episcopalian priest and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor, employs her wise pen to call the Church, and, indeed, anyone–whether one is churched, unchurched, or overchurched–to dignify the pursuit of the divine in the various faith expressions of the world. As a Christian leader who left congregational ministry to take on full-time ministry as a professor of religion at Piedmont College in rural Georgia, Taylor recounted her experience teaching Religion 101 and the first semester engaging a class who themselves were navigating the certainty of their roots and the mystery of diversity. Taylor is a pastor at heart who delves into the curious minds and hearts of her students, thereby showing her own personal journey of remaining an Episcopalian Christian while dignifying the faith of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
Taylor shared that the title of her book came from the late biblical scholar of Yale, Krister Stendahl, who became bishop of Stockholm and, upon the occasion of the dedication of a Mormon temple, Stendahl shared the following “three rules of religious understanding” (65):
- When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.
- Don’t compare your best to their worst.
- Leave room for holy envy.
So, for example, Taylor engages in “holy envy,” the sacred discipline and attentiveness paid to being in the presence of the Holy, when Muslims pray regularly, prostrating themselves toward the East. Such religious beauty, Taylor observed, speaks to the often casual approach that many in the Christian household take in praying throughout the day. Or when Taylor took her class to a Hindu temple, she experienced the non-threatening hospitality and welcome of Hindu devotees, contrasting that to the tendency of many in Christian circles who treat other religious s of a netraditions with an inhospitable attitude and posture. She sees that one will deepen and grow in their particular religious tradition as one engages and understands other religious traditions.
Taylor’s book, like her other writings, is not heavily academic with technical terms. Hers is a pastoral theology that weaves personal anecdotes–the ruminations and reflections of a person of faith on a journey—with an invitation to join her on a part of that journey so that we can reflect upon where our heart is and where our heart has been.
In a time in the body politic – within churches and society – where our religious/theological and political divisions erupt in violence or where hate is disseminated through digital media with a sheer volume and velocity that threaten any semblance of being a human community, what we are needing is the best values of all of the world’s faith traditions to know what it means to be neighbor one to another; such values as love, compassion, human dignity, and pursuit of peace are sorely needed in these times. Taylor’s apt metaphor ixt-door neighbor who peers over the fence of the adjacent dweller and ponders if the grass is greener on the other side. Engaging in holy envy means that we don’t have all the answers, that there is much that can be learned from one another, and that our collective pursuit of living with each other in the presence of the Holy means that we ought to approach that calling with a humble confidence and a confident humility of our own shared humanity.
