RNS: You\u2019ve talked a lot about your journey out of the church world. What do you consider yourself now? Christian or Episcopalian or something else?<\/p>\n
BBT: It\u2019s true that a wrote a book called Leaving Church in which I detail leaving parish ministry, but I\u2019m still very much involved in the church world. I end up speaking and lecturing in church settings at least twice a month. So I haven\u2019t journeyed out of the church at all as far as I can tell. I\u2019d say I consider myself a practicing Christian and in April I\u2019ll celebrate my 30th anniversary as a priest in the Episcopal church. So I\u2019m an active and practicing Christian, though I\u2019m as bad at it as most of us are.<\/p>\n
RNS: So if you\u2019re a Christians and other who have very different beliefs and practices than you are too, what makes a person a Christian exactly?<\/p>\n
BBT: I can call myself a Christian, and there are bodies of Christians who could disagree with me based on their own criteria about what makes a real Christian. But I think a lot of us are rethinking what it means to be Christian. And a lot of us are rejecting other people\u2019s rejection of us as Christians. At this point in my life, I am pretty willing to let people tell me whether or not they are Christian rather than imposing my own definitions of it on them. My base definition is \u201chere she says, here she is a Christian.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n