Speaking of Sin

by Barbara Brown Taylor

In Speaking of Sin, Barbara Brown Taylor brings her fresh perspective to a cluster of words that often cause us discomfort and have widely fallen into neglect: sin, damnation, repentance, penance, and salvation. She asks, "Why, then, should we speak of sin anymore? The only reason I can think of is because we believe that God means to redeem the world through us.

"Abandoning the language of sin will not make sin go away. Human beings will continue to experience alienation, deformation, damnation and death no matter what we call them. Abandoning the language will simply leave us speechless before them, and increase our denial of their presence in our lives. Ironically, it will also weaken the language of grace, since the full impact of forgiveness cannot be felt apart from the full impact of what has been forgiven."

Contrary to the prevailing view, Taylor calls sin "a helpful, hopeful word." Naming our sins, she contends, enables us to move from "guilt to grace." In recovering this "lost language of salvation" in our worship and in the fabric of our individual lives, we have an opportunity to "take part in the divine work of redemption."

Genres: Theology, Religion, Spirituality, Christianity, Nonfiction, Christian, Church

84 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Barbara Brown Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. Her first memoir, Leaving Church (2006), won an Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association. Her last book, Learning to Walk in the Dark (2014), was featured on the cover of TIME magazine. She has served on the faculties of Piedmont College, Columbia Theological Seminary, Candler School of Theology at Emory University, McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University, and the Certificate in Theological Studies program at Arrendale State Prison for Women in Alto, Georgia. In 2014 TIME included her on its annual list of Most Influential People; in 2015 she was named Georgia Woman of the Year; in 2016 she received The President’s Medal at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Mercer University and is working on her fourteenth book, Holy Envy, forthcoming from HarperOne in August 2018.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our priest referenced this book in his sermon the first Sunday of Lent, and it sounded like it would be a good read for the season. And it was! Barbara Brown Taylor is of course an Episcopal priest herself and an excellent writer. This short book is essentially three connected sermons on how Christians, both liberal and conservative, have lost a meaningful language of sin and redemption, and how (and why) we can recover it.

For liberals like me, it's challenging because she critiques our tendency to cloak sin in the language of medicine – a disease that we all have, and which is therefore not something for which an individual can truly take the blame. For conservatives like those in the tradition I was raised, the challenge is to move away from the language of law – where each individual stands condemned, with no discussion of the Bible's focus on systemic sins like injustice against the poor.

Taylor argues we need to recover a robust concept of sin as both individual and corporate, and along with that recover the notion of penance as a key step on the path to redemption. Without these notions, she argues, we cannot truly experience the grace and forgiveness – the freedom, the salvation – found in following Jesus.

Lent is coming to a close for 2017; there might be just enough time to read it before Easter. But even if you don't get it done by then, it's well worth reading any time of the year. It will challenge you and maybe even provoke you to change how you think of your own missteps.

[Katie Eichler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful to me in understanding and being better able to articulate the problem of evil.

[Rachel Fredericks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sin, salvation, justification, repentance, penance, transgression. All words that make my insides squirm because of the way they have been used by the church of my youth, when I was being taught the foundations of my faith right alongside an unhealthy dose of hatred for my sinful flesh and that of others. This book has helped to right some of that wrong. I will likely come back to it again and again.

[heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I have come to expect from Brown Taylor, this slim little book is packed full of concepts that require me to slow down and think about what she is saying. I really enjoy the way she approaches a thought from several different angles.

"People hear the guilt coming and they leave the room. They are tired of being judged and threatened by Christians who say"love" and do fear."

Also, after years of liberal-arts education, she gave me the most useful definition of "post-modern" I've ever seen:
"My own working definition of it is that the modern age is over-the age in which we believed in the power of the state, or the academy, or the church to bring out the best in us. In the age just past, nationalism has brought us Hitler, science has brought us the atom bomb, and religion has brought us some really awful television programming, not to mention apartheid or the civil war in Northern Ireland. Humanity has turned out to he hard to perfect, and the old structures we relied on to do so have let us down."

"The threat of sin and the promise of salvation sound too much like part of the old control mechanism for keeping people in line, which has failed even at the highest echelons of church leadership."

Read if: You are interested in chewy and humane theological writing. You have a lot of patience for thinking.

Skip if: You are uninterested in theology.

Also read:
The Amber Spyglass for a mirror-universe vision of sin which involves all the post-modern thinking Brown Taylor is talking about.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on my reading of scripture, it seems entirely possible that Jesus might define salvation as recovery from illness or addiction, as forgiveness of debt, as peace between old enemies, as shared food in time of famine, or as justice for the poor. These are outbreaks of health in a sin-sick word. Jesus saves because he shows us how to multiply such outbreaks.

A small book that covers a lot of ground on the unpopular topic of sin. Three things stood out for me: (1) Her explanation and rejection of the medicine/law paradigms and the need to leave room for paradox. (2) The desire for meaning in our current age shapes how we understand salvation which is different than the context of our parents and grandparents. (3) Righteousness is a matter of daily practice (action). The important thing is not that we always hit the mark but rather that we keep at it.

[Connor Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changed any view of the church

I am a big fan of authors who have the ability to express great ideas succinctly, and BBT once again proves herself to be masterful in this regard. This short read gets to the heart of one of the greatest problems with the church today, and I am going to be reccomending it to friends of all faith traditions.

It only took a few hours to read, but I predict that I will be wrestling with the contents for the next few years, if not the rest of my life. Do yourself a favor and read it!

[Katherine Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, Barbara Brown Taylor's books never disappoint. I'll have a lot to think over for a long time to come. The concepts she discusses in this series of three related talks or sermons would have been extremely useful to me when I stumbled through faith after leaving the Baptist church. The language she uses to describe sin, repentance, penance, and salvation, are worth reading no matter what your faith is or is not.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

BBT is always thoughtful. Reclaiming the idea of sin from the liberal version (medicine) and the conservative version (punishment0 and bringing it back to the meaning of restorative justice. The uncomfortable part is that it is not enough to confess, but one must also repair the harm. Also, she says that repentance and restoration are both individual and corporate - we cannot heal the world without healing ourselves

[Joni Duke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sin is our only hope, because the recognition that something is wrong is the first step toward setting it right again”
Repentance will not make peace with sin, nor is it interested in singling out and punishing; instead, it calls us to ‘engage in the work of repair and reconciliation without ever forgetting our own culpability for the way things are.’
A brief read filled with a fresh and honest look at sin with an invitation to join God’s work of transformation.

[Greg Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book marvelously and effectively reclaims on old word that nowadays is often regarded as offensive at worst and at the very best too antiquated to taken seriously by contemporary minded people.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is intentional regarding faithful effective communication of the Christian faith within postmodern culture.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. These pages pack a punch. They are so powerful and I always love what Barbara Brown Taylor says: she is engaged so deeply and thoughtfully in her work and I love the aspect of repair, restoration, and relationships in this book.

[Caleb Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important work for reclaiming parts of traditional Christian language that has lost meaning in the institution of the Church.

[E. L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Made me think.

[Jarren Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barbara...just save yourself the trouble and be a Wesleyan. You're at the 10 yard line.
Some good stuff in this one.

[Rev. Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the back cover of "Speaking of Sin":Barbara Brown Taylor brings her fresh perspective to a cluster of words that often cause us discomfort and have widely fallen into neglect: sin, damnation, repentance, penance, and salvation. She asks, Why, then, should we speak of sin anymore? Because we believe that God means to redeem the world through us. Abandoning the language of sin will not make sin go away. Human beings will continue to experience alienation, deformation, damnation and death no matter what we call them. Abandoning the language will simply leave us speechless before them, and increase our denial of their presence in our lives. Ironically, it will also weaken the language of grace, since the full impact of forgiveness cannot be felt apart from the full impact of what has been forgiven. Contrary to the prevailing view, Taylor calls sin a helpful, hopeful word. Naming our sins, she contends, enables us to move from guilt to grace. In recovering this lost language of salvation in our worship and in the fabric of our individual lives, we have an opportunity to take part in the divine work of redemption."

[sarah]

lowkey informational

[M Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this slim volume (72 pages of actual text) in an afternoon with time out for my Monday nap. I'm sure I'll read it again. Rev. Taylor, the well-known Episcopal priest and teacher, does an excellent job in leading the reader to consider why traditional words and concepts like "sin," "repentance," "penance," and "salvation" are actually still necessary to the spiritual path of wholeness. The prose is simple but compelling. While the book is aimed at her fellow preachers, Rev. Taylor has given us a work that any lay person, indeed, any person with or without a connection to Christianity, will find understandable and useful.

So, why will I read it again? As we say down home, "this'll preach." It's not been that long since Rev. Taylor was named one of America's best preachers and this book displays her gift. I'll be reading it again to mine it for my own sermons some Lenten season very soon.

[Will Waller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Excellent. Fantastic. This little nugget spells out sin's place in the world and not just the hearts of people. It does a great job of eliminating the liberal tendencies to no-fault people for their sin and conservative's full-fault of sin. The book also describes how institutions can become tainted by sin, a job done by few and by none as well as Taylor. This is a quick, one day read, but it'll have me thumbing through it again and again. Would recommend this to anyone with a church background.

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author offers a compelling argument for why the language involved with sin (sin, transgressions, etc.) is necessary for understanding and accepting salvation, as well as how it could be translated into our daily lives. One section that was particularly good was on the subject of penance; what it is, and what it could mean for us.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

BBT can always be counted on to provide thoughtful and thought-provoking words on God, people, and the world. This book is very good because it acknowledges sinfulness and looks at it from various angles. Brown's writing is not unnecessarily academic or unnecessarily simple. She writes like people speak. This would be a great book to read with a group. Bonus: it's not long at all.

[Joey Dye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a quick read but many great reflections on sin, confession, and repentance. This is a great book to read at the beginning or during Lent as we start the process of self- and communal-examination in preparation for Easter. Highly recommended.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I have really enjoyed another book from this author. There are always wonderful nuggets and passages in her writing, and good fodor for thinking about how you live your life. 3 stars in comparison to other of her books that I have read.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Realistic and transformative. Much of the language of the Christian faith is rarely used and seldom understood: sin,salvation,confession, penance, sanctification, justification, righteousness. If we don't use and know these words, what are their substitutes? Only 72 pages - highly readable.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is really a lot of good stuff in this short book. I liked much of what Taylor had to say. However it is her lectures in book form and they really read like lectures. I wasn't expecting that when I picked it up and the lecture writing style significantly impacted my enjoyment of the book.

[Anthony Risson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy book to read, though gripping in theological nuance and detail. Taylor has a way with words which invites me to keep reading, even though the reality of what I am reading causes me to be restless in my faith. Will continue to read Taylor's work; rich and evocative.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

The noted preacher's book on sin was yet another thoughtful read.

[Avary Doubleday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting discussion of the language of sin, forgiveness, pennance, salvation.

[Elsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted more from this, though I'm not sure what I hoped to find. Still, it's BBT so quite good.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that really makes you think about the meaning of sin.

[Fabienne Bogle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Taylor is very insightful and I love the way she writes.