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The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest and well-known author. She is currently on the faculty of Piedmont College in northeast Georgia and Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA.

Member of:

The Episcopal Church

Representative of:

Piedmont College and Columbia Theological Seminary

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest and well-known author. She is currently on the faculty of Piedmont College in northeast Georgia and Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA.

An Episcopal priest since 1984, Taylor now teaches religion at Piedmont College in rural northeast Georgia, where she holds the Harry R. Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy. She also serves as adjunct professor of Christian spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.

Before becoming a full time teacher, Taylor spent fifteen years in parish ministry, first at All Saints Church in Atlanta and then at Grace-Calvary Church in Clarkesville, Georgia. In recent years, she has lectured on preaching at Yale, Princeton and Duke Universities, and has preached at churches across the country.

She is co-editor of Feasting on the Word, a multivolume commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary readings published by WJK.

A columnist for The Christian Century and sometime commentator on Georgia Public Broadcasting, she is the author of twelve books, including An Altar in the World, When God is Silent and Home By Another Way. Leaving Church, her first memoir, received the 2006 award for Best General Interest Book from the Association of Theological Booksellers and a Georgia Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association in the category of creative nonfiction.

The eldest of three daughters, Taylor was born in Lafayette, Indiana, while her father completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Purdue. Over the next several years, the family lived in Kansas, Ohio and Alabama before settling in Atlanta in 1965. Taylor attended public high school, graduated from Emory University in 1973, and Yale Divinity School in 1976. Baptized in the Catholic church as an infant, she spent time with the Baptists, the Methodists and the Presbyterians before being confirmed in the Episcopal Church during her senior year in seminary, the same year that the General Convention of the church voted to admit women to priesthood.

Winding her way toward ordination, Taylor worked as a camp counselor, a cocktail waitress, and a secretary at Candler School of Theology. She also wrote short stories, saving up all her vacation time to spend in residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. While her writing went nowhere, she was invited to preach her first sermon at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta in 1978. When people asked for copies afterwards, she realized that she had sold her first story. After several more years of training, including a year as a hospital chaplain, Taylor was ordained deacon in 1983 and priest in 1984, on the feast of Dame Julian of Norwich.

As the Sewanee Theological Review has noted, Taylor “possesses a gift that is in short supply these days: the gift of conveying a living sense of the transcendent, the holy, and the grace-full in and through the stuff of our lives.”

Latest Content by The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor - Day1 Podcast Extra

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (TEC)
The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, educator, author, and Episcopal priest, talks with Day1 host Peter Wallace about her teaching, her bestselling books, and about how Christians can reclaim the physicality of their faith. More...

The Prophet Mary

John 12:1-8

5th Sunday in Lent - Year C

March 21, 2010

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (TEC)

Today we are headed to a home in the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany, where Jesus stopped in to see his old friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus before he entered the city for the last time.  He loved them, John tells us, although he does not tell us why.  Maybe there is no "why" to love.  They called him Lord, so they knew who he was, and yet they were not his disciples, at least not in any formal sense.  They were his friends, the three people in whose presence he could be a man as well as a Messiah.

Read full transcript...

Other Recent Content by The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (Part 1) - Day1 Conversations with Peter Wallace

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (TEC)

Best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor sits down with Day1 host Peter Wallace to discuss the work of teaching, leaving preaching, and the joys and inspirations in her life.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (Part 2) - Day1 Conversations with Peter Wallace

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (TEC)

Renowned scholar and theologian, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, sits down with Day1 host Peter Wallace for the second part of their lenten interviews discussing a wide range of topics including her books, her students and her passion for her work as a teacher.

February 21, 2010

The Wilderness Exam

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (TEC)

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor guides us into the season of Lent by taking us into the wilderness, where Jesus Christ was tested by the devil.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor - Day1 Podcast Extra

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (TEC)

In this podcast extra, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and well-known author, shares her personal insights and experiences.