BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We also have another profile this week of Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor, one of this country's most eloquent preachers and also a teacher, columnist, and the author of 11 books. In the mid-90s, Taylor was the pastor of a small Episcopal church which she had wanted very much to serve. But then she burned out, and gave up both her pastoral ministry and a lot of her former beliefs, too. She wrote a book about all that called "Leaving Church."

Barbara Taylor and her husband moved to the hills of northeast Georgia nine years ago when she was called to be pastor of Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church in Clarksville, Georgia. She's written that she wanted to spend the rest of her life as close to God as she could get, and she thought being a parish priest would make that possible.

The Reverend BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR: I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real. And I'll capitalize both of those "R's" because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might all agree it's what is most real.

ABERNETHY: Taylor was and is such an insightful and eloquent preacher that Baylor University named her one of the best in the English-speaking world. At Grace-Calvary she was also a workaholic.

The Rev. TAYLOR: Part of what happened was the church and I succeeded. Part of what happened is that the church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching. And people came and it was a wonderful community, but we had a building that seated 82 people. And with a congregation approaching 400, we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn't doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family. And I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God. There was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray.

ABERNETHY: And then something happened, and you became miserable?

The Rev. TAYLOR: It was a stinging in my eyes after church on Sunday that I thought was an allergy, until one day I sat in the car and decided to just let my eyes tear up so that whatever was in them would come out. And what came out were tears that wouldn't stop.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, her understandings were changing of what faith is and of what she believed.

The Rev. TAYLOR: Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me during this time, because so many of my certainties about who I was and what I was supposed to be doing fell away that faith was really what I had left.

ABERNETHY: There was also the strain of what Taylor calls the toxic effects on a priest of being seen as the holiest person in the room.

The Rev. TAYLOR: I did set out to be holy and to be perfect exemplar and to fulfill all of my vows, baptismal and ordained, and we speak of ordination in the Episcopal Church as being set apart. It's part of the job. But I didn't want to be set apart anymore.

ABERNETHY: One day a call came from nearby Piedmont College asking if Taylor might like to come teach world religions. She quickly said yes and resigned from Grace-Calvary. Now, as she told an audience at Washington's National Cathedral recently, she loves her new ministry.

The Rev. TAYLOR (to audience at Washington's National Cathedral): The teaching was and is wonderful. I get to work with 19- and 20-year-olds who are not only my emotional peers but also a group I saw very little of in church.