How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

Mariann Edgar Budde’s self-help text How We Learn to Be Brave blends spiritual, historical, and personal writing to craft a religious self-help book that guides her readers toward the practice of developing bravery and courage during decisive moments in life. Budde is an Episcopal bishop, and her experience with faith informs her construction of the text. She possesses a deep knowledge of the Bible and other religious texts important to the Christian faith and the other Abrahamic faiths (Judaism and Islam). Budde draws support for her arguments from the Bible, diving into both the Old Testament and New Testament to find examples of the courage she advocates. The Bible is not the only spiritual element of the book, however. In addition to biblical analysis, Budde offers examples from her own spiritual journey that required courage, including a willingness to continue persevering in positions of leadership despite difficulties and setbacks.

Budde blends elements of memoir and self-help in How We Learn to Be Brave. She describes her own failures and shortcomings in her role as a leader in the church while also sharing her moments of growth and triumph. What distinguishes the book from a memoir is that, in narrating her personal journey of self-discovery, she provides explicit lessons for readers seeking to embark on similar journeys of their own. Personal writing is a key aspect of the self-help genre, which traces its history back to mid-19th-century England, with the 1859 publication of Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, the book that gave its name to the genre. Self-help emerged as a way for people to learn to better themselves, and Budde follows this tradition by guiding her readers toward a greater understanding of how to be brave in the context of faith and their broader lives. Budde explores her own journey to faith, from her adolescent experiences with evangelical Christianity, to her return to the Episcopal faith of her youth, to her decision to become a faith leader and minister. She shares her moments of victory and her moments of challenge, illustrating the complexity of the journey of faith, the journey of leadership, and the human experience more broadly. 

How We Learn to Be Brave shares elements in common with other spiritual self-help books like Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, and Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Like these books, How We Learn to Be Brave draws on religious teachings to offer guidance intended to be useful for those outside the author’s faith tradition. Budde divides her book into clear conceptual categories—the call to go, the call to stay, and the call to start—offering inspirational anecdotes alongside actionable advice. In doing so, she draws on her work in the pulpit, reframing the genre of the homily for a secular context.