In Barbara Taylor Brown's book Holy Envy, the author acknowledges "that everyone wants to play on the winning team," but calls that feeling "the worst possible reason to practice any religion." She continues, "If the man who asked that question could not think of a dozen better reasons to be a Christian than that, then what, indeed, was he doing there?"
Brown became a priest to spite her atheist parents, but stepped away from the altar when she felt that she and the Episcopal church had confused Christ's "living water" with the well.
She took a position teaching world religions at Georgia's Piedmont College in the rural foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. There, she faced that same competitive approach to faith right away, in a young Christian man who asked if she was going to teach what was wrong with the religions. If not, he would drop the class, because he was afraid of losing his faith. (He dropped the class.)
I so identify with the fear that impinges on faith for Christians. A tract about the hell that awaits non-believers scared me to tears in 7th grade. Then I became angry at Christianity for condemning my Jewish friends.
That childhood fear of hell gnawed at Brown even as she was teaching. She dealt with that by remembering, "My best view of divine reality is still a partial view." She points out that Jesus says as much to the man who addresses him as "good teacher": Why do you call me good? ... No one is good but God alone. Playing off a metaphor by Thich Nhat Hanh that "the wave also lives the life of water", Taylor writes, "I am riding on the truth of that, trusting God alone to guide my wave and carry me ashore."
The most entertaining and moving parts of the book are anecdotes about her students.
- There's the young woman who bolted from Atlanta's Hindu Temple, sobbing for all those idol worshipers who were going to hell and didn't even know it. Weeks later, for her capstone project, she designed a beautiful interfaith worship space for the campus: a dark room, round with reflective wood panels, lit by pools of light so that people would see themselves among neighbors.
- There's the young man, unresponsive until he is suddenly moved by a Hindu exhibit, whispering to Brown over a bowl, "What chakra is this? It's speaking to me." She motions to her heart. Near tears, he just nods.
- Around twelve students, outnumbering the worshipers at a vast empty synagogue in Atlanta, were surprised when the rabbi invited them to join her on the dais to unscroll the Torah. Solemn and joyful -- the moment unaccountably moves me to tears every single time I think of it.
- There's Shlomo, the only Orthodox Jew on campus, very comfortable in his own skin and an eloquent exponent of his own faith. He wasn't out to convert anyone: since God already made a covenant with the whole world after the flood, why should anyone else take on the added requirements of the covenant with Israel?
Shlomo helped Brown to understand the Jewish approach: it's how you live, not what you think, that matters. The Jews don't even have a creed; the shemah ("YHWH is our God, the only God") is as close as they get. Observing how her students, meeting each other for the first time, would often quiz each other on beliefs ("Do you believe in the resurrection? Do you accept the virgin birth?"), Brown wondered how things might be different if these young Christians were to ask, as Shlomo might, How does your faith make a difference? What's the hardest part of loving your neighbor as yourself? What is your favorite way to pray?
Brown points out the historical fact that this "fundamentalist" approach to faith was born and propagated in the early 20th century by a reactionary group, the Biblical Institute of Los Angeles. She opines that polls showing a falling away from "institutional religion" and towards "spirituality" may be a reaction to a gospel message that it's our-way-or-go-to-hell.
She understands the element of competition baked into the scriptures of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Their books were written by people surrounded by oppressors and enemies. No wonder there's competition.
While there is a strong cord of triumphalism and exclusion throughout the Bible, she picks up a parallel thread, a "counter-narrative." It includes a string of "holy outsiders" from the Hebrew tradition (Ruth, Pharaoh's daughter, Cyrus the instrument of God's will, the magi, the Syro-Phoenician woman at the well with Jesus, Roman centurion whose faith "astonishes" Jesus...). The first sermon of Jesus recorded by Luke is on this subject: the foreign general Naaman and the poor widow who hosted Elijah are two outsiders who experienced God's grace. Besides, there are so many passages that warn us not to think that God thinks as we do (Is. 55.8-9), that anyone can own God. In the same sermon when Jesus says "no one enters the gate but by me," he also says, "anyone who knows God knows me."
But how, in the end, does Brown deal with this competition among the religions for which one is true, or most true?
First, Brown does NOT say "all religions are basically the same." That disrespects the uniqueness of these faiths. She does NOT retreat to the "default position" that "yours is true for you, mine is true for me." That shuts off exploration. The fact that she was attracted to aspects of each religion did NOT mean to it was time for her "to convert or -- conversely -- to start making a quilt of spiritual bits and pieces with no strong center."
She cultivates instead a "holy envy." A phrase coined by religion professor from Harvard turned Lutheran bishop in Sweden, "holy envy" is NOT projecting her own experience on other faiths in a craving for some of their intensity -- that's plain old envy. The bishop preached 3 rules of religious understanding: don't compare your best with their worst; don't confuse the container with the contents; don't think you know the other without listening. Brown likens holy envy to how athletes compare their best with the best in others, to make each better.
She gives some examples of holy envy from her time with the students:
- Christians were shocked to learn that Muslims pray more than most Christians do
- Protestant students were touched by the observance of Lent
- a visiting pastor was awed by the crowd at a large masjid bowing in unison
This is NOT appropriation of what you like (which smacks of colonial trophies, Brown says). Like fine wines from different lands, Brown writes, "The things I envy have their own terroir." Brown explains, for example, how the Buddhist doctrine that we are responsible for our own salvation ("Be a lamp to yourself") helps her to see Jesus and the Holy Spirit "lighting a fire" in us so that we can each be "the light of the world." That's echoed in the epigram she chose for this book, Andrew Young's claim, "Before I read Gandhi, I couldn't see what difference Jesus made."
To conceive of this world of different faiths, Brown offers metaphors from other authors. The Church's discovery of other traditions was a Copernican revolution in religion that put God at the center and individual planets in orbit with their own qualities and perspectives. The faiths are like the rivers that nourish different lands (Rome's Tiber, Egypt's Nile, India's Ganges, USA's Mississippi...). To share the ground doesn't mean the ground is lost.
I re-read the book this spring in the context of a seminar I co-teach, Education for Ministry (see our EfM class blog). The theme for the year was "living out our faith in a multi-cultural world." We wondered what evangelism looks like when we respect others' faiths. I offered Gandhi's answer to that question, to practice "the evangelism of the rose" -- put it out there, let it be fragrant, allow people to respond as they will.
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