Dialogue: Barbara Brown Taylor and Jeff Chu – Calvary Episcopal Church
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Dialogue: Barbara Brown Taylor and Jeff Chu

Dialogue: Barbara Brown Taylor and Jeff Chu

  • Barbara Brown Taylor and Jeff Chu
  • 04/02/2025
  • 56:21

Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then, she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being the full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals. Her new book, Coming Down to Earth, from Convergent Books, will be out in 2026.

Chu serves as an editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure, teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in North Carolina, and parish associate for storytelling and witness at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley in California. He is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper, 2013) and Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand (Convergent/Penguin Random House, 2025). He is also the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times MagazineThe Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer,” Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. An ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, he lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.