Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor is a wonderfully readable memoir of a college religion professor discovering spiritual truths in the process of teaching a World Religions course. As a psychology professor striving to incorporate interfaith awareness into a History of Psychology class, I found we had a lot in common.
Holy Envy: Finding the Divine in Novel Experience
Taylor is an Episcopal priest and the a successful author of several insightful works well worth reading, including An Altar in the World. She describes herself as committed to a spiritual path and yet willing to raise troubling questions that others might not. That sounds a lot like me as well.
In her classroom and in her “field trips” to different communities of faith Taylor strove to provide her students a sort of world tour in one metro area of various faith traditions. Her field trips included exploring the faith of various traditions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. In some ways more fascinating still are the surprising reactions of her largely Christian students to them.
In the process, Taylor finds her own sense of God and where God might be found considerably expanded. For most of her students, the same. And somewhat to her surprise, Taylor at times felt a sense of envy at experiencing the spirituality inherent in these faith traditions in the fresh way a novice often does.
As an added plus, at least from my point of view, the reader also gains a sense of the joy and growth a teacher feels from joining with their students in their journey. I recognized the richness of Taylor’s experience in parallel experiences of my own. Besides taking readers on a spiritual journey, she also illumines what the experience of a fully engaged teacher is like.
Teaching an Inclusive History of Psychology
My own effort in that area is to teach a History of Psychology class that is not limited to the typical movers and shakers of “Western civilization” in general and psychology in particular. As most faith traditions provide a picture of human nature as do modern psychological theories, it seemed only right to introduce students to early religious writings along those lines.
In one of my earliest lectures I provide students to de-identified passages from six different traditions: Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, Judeo- Christian and Muslim. I then break up the class into “teams.” Their task is to identify which traditions the piece of writing came from and whether they deem the text sufficiently “psychological” to belong in the course.
Two realities quickly emerge. Most students feel underprepared in their knowledge of the traditions. I try to give them minimal benchmarks to aid them in their task. The second reality is that, devoid of the divine trappings of those traditions, descriptions of human nature can be confusingly similar. It is always an enjoyable and energizing exercise that prompt interesting discussions.
By exploring this website, especially those articles regarding the history of psychology, you get an idea of what my course is like. Many of the articles herein emerged from research I did for that course. I don’t claim it is as rich as Taylor’s book, but I do have a strong sense that it has been equally rewarding for me. And for lifelong learners everywhere, what a rich world of opportunity our libraries and the internet provide if you’re intentional as to where to look.
Ideas for Further Reading
If you are interested in reading Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, you can find more information at the HarperCollins webpage devoted to the book.
My hope is that this website provides just a little of that smorgasbord of different cultures, different mythic stories, and different heroes, legendary and in popular culture. A possible beginning here might be in reading this article on Sufi Psychology, reflecting Muslim roots, or this one on Liberation Psychology, reflecting progressive Christian influence. The role of gender fluid figures such as Loki might reveal some ancient Norse wisdom as it struggles with an emerging Christian worldview.
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