(RNS) — In 2006, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor published “ Leaving Church ,” a memoir of such quiet, luminous precision that it felt less like a departure than a deeper conversion into the world. It was a mid-life reckoning with a vocation, written by a woman who had stayed in the room long enough to earn the right to turn out the lights.

Two decades later, the leaving-church narrative has been downgraded from a high-stakes spiritual crisis to a mandatory merit badge for red-state kids who self-sort into blue metro areas and dream of being writers.

New York publishing still handsomely rewards the best versions of this genre. But the sheer volume of lesser entries has created the fantasy that rage pays.…