Phyllis Tickle: A Life

by Jon M. Sweeney

The definitive biography of one of the most beloved and respected figures in American religious life.In this comprehensive biography, Jon Sweeney, official biographer of Tickle’s literary estate, explores every aspect of her life, a more than 50-year legacy of poetry; plays; literary, spiritual, and historical/theological work; and advocacy. Sweeney examines Tickle’s personal and professional roots, from her family, long marriage, and life on The Farm in Lucy, Tennessee, to early academic career and move into book publishing, where her role as founding editor of the Religion Department at Publishers Weekly influenced the growth of spiritual writing and interfaith understanding during the 1990s. Sweeney also looks at pivotal relationships with John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, and Brian McLaren, as well as her great influence on the increasing number who adopted fixed-hour prayer, the Episcopal Church as a whole, and the Emerging Church, for which she served as historian, forecaster, and champion. A look at her early, passionate advocacy for the LGBT community, lecture circuit controversies, and projects left unfinished completes the picture.

256 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 15, 2018

About the author

Jon M. Sweeney is an independent scholar and writer of popular history. He is married, the father of three, and lives in Montpelier, Vermont. He has worked in book publishing for 25 years: after co-founding SkyLight Paths Publishing, he was the editor in chief and publisher at Paraclete Press, and in August 2015 became editorial director at Franciscan Media Books.

He has written more than 20 books, seven about Francis of Assisi, including "When Saint Francis Saved the Church" and "The Complete Francis of Assisi." HBO has optioned the film rights to "The Pope Who Quit."

Jon's first 20 years were spent as an involved evangelical (a story told in the memoir "Born Again and Again"); he then spent 22 years as an active Episcopalian (see "Almost Catholic," among others); and on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi in 2009 he was received into the Catholic Church. Today, Jon is a practicing Catholic who also prays regularly with his wife, a rabbi. He loves the church, the synagogue, and other aspects of organized religion. He would never say that he's "spiritual but not religious."

In all of his writing, Jon is drawn to the ancient and medieval (see "The Road to Assisi," and "Inventing Hell"). Many of his books have been selections of the History Book Club, Book-of-the-Month Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am, in this review, utterly and personally biased. I'll admit that freely.

Because though I never met or spoke with Phyllis, she changed the arc of my life. A few years back, when I was floundering about trying to self-market my e-book on Christian faith and multiverse cosmology, I wrote to her cold, asking if she'd be willing to look at it. She didn't know me from Adam's-off-ox, as that old Southern saying goes. My only connection was as a marginal and forgotten player in the failed Presbyterian hyphen-mergent effort.

But she bothered to read the letter...not email, but letter...that I sent to her at her charmingly named Farm at Lucy. And she replied, sure, I'll look. Wrote me a nice little blurb, and then...not that I asked...said she'd love to see anything else I wrote. When I completed WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL, which I'd figured on self-pubbing, I sent it to her.

"It's beautiful, David...gripping and quietly deep and beautiful," she replied. Then she went out of her way to connect me with my delightful agent, and helped open doors at the house that published my novel. And then her husband died, and then she got cancer, and then she died. And I never got to meet her.

Which is why I was so eagerly awaiting Sweeney's excellent and deeply-informed biography of her life. I wanted to know her. And in fleshing out a person I knew functionally nothing about, this book didn't disappoint. Her Southern life...the children, the miscarriages, the books and poetry, the teaching and speaking, the farm, the often complicated marriage? It's all there, told through Sweeney's straightforward, candid and loving prose.

For all of that welcome narrative, though, you didn't need to have more than a few moments of contact with Phyllis to realize what was so precious about her: a remarkable, generous grace. Not just to me, but to just about every person she came into contact with.

In an era when generosity and grace seem more and more elusive, the story of such a soul is well worth the reading.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Phyllis Tickle was a mystic, a prophet, a teacher, a leader. She is someone who gave me chills every time I saw her speak. She is an inspiring figure. Phyllis Tickle was also fully human- a wife, mother, individual with normal flaws and quirks that I saw firsthand as a Memphis Episocpalian.

This book had so much potential and I was excited to start it, but it took me nearly two weeks to finish because what it most needed was a good hard edit. Maybe TWO good hard edits. This text was full of irrelevant details, like who officiated her husband's funeral, what cross street they lived at in Central Gardens, who her father's secretary was. The name and physical description of her husband's nurse/caretaker. Details that filled pages but were meaningless or not at all relevant to what most readers of Tickle's work would want to know. In the end, he dulled her shine with too many details.

[Renita Weems · Rating 3 out of 5]

For devoted fans of Tickle who miss her brilliant mind and are eager for any writing that promises us to tell us more about her life, her life's work and especially those final days leading up to her death, "Phyllis Tickle: A Life" is a gratifying read. But for those like myself who want to understand Tickle better as a woman of her times, a southern writer, a woman and writer shaped not only by questions religious, but by cultural and political forces, this book by Sweeney is lacking. Tickle was exceptional, but as a woman and a southerner she didn't manage to achieve what she did without roadblocks, professional ones as well as personal ones. Tickle was a woman beyond her time on lots of things, but she was also a woman of times. No talk about any discrimination she may have faced as a woman in a male dominated discourse, besides one brief mention of having to pack up her kids and move to a friend's place when news spread of King's assassination there in Memphis, there's nothing else about how that moment or the larger Memphis civil rights movements may have influenced her progressive leanings, etc. I look forward to the next Tickle biography by someone more distance from Tickle than her literary agent, someone who might share Sweeney's admiration for, but not his adoration, of his subject.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I must confess I knew the subject of the biography (and loved her), and know the author. It is a pleasure reading a book about someone you've known--certainly I can picture Phyllis' actions and voice. Having said that, I must say Sweeney has done a remarkable job of describing a person warts and all.
Phyllis was a remarkable woman from East Tennessee, who was a wife, mother, teacher, poet, writer, journalist, lecturer, and much more. Her daily prayer life was an essential part of who she was as she often slipped out to pray at regular intervals. She was, as well, an apt observer of the trends around her and became an important writer about Emergent Christianity in the 21st century.
Sweeney spends some time describing the politics of working at Publishers Weekly and in the Christian publishing community, as well as Phyllis' work with religious organizations. These details are essential for understanding Phyllis' life.
If you are interested in a woman who burns the candle at both ends (and prays in between), and/or publishing, you'll enjoy this book.

[George Donigian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jon Sweeney portrays a life well lived, a life that certainly had challenges, and a life understood as gift. Those who pray The Divine Hours and have read other works by Phyllis Tickle or who knew PT will find surprises in this work. A book that brought to mind my own encounters and meetings with PT.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish this book, but I have it a good try. The writing was.... not terrible, but bad enough to really detract from the pace of the book. Disappointing.

[Elizabeth Felicetti]

I reviewed this book for Episcopal Café here: https://www.episcopalcafe.com/book-re...