Walking with Faith: Southern Baptist to Quaker

Reviewed by Barbara Birch

November 1, 2026

By Mary Ann Downey. Producciones de la Hamaca, 2025. 158 pages. $20/paperback; $5/eBook.

Mary Ann Downey is an active member of Atlanta (Ga.) Meeting, social worker, workshop leader, and accomplished writer. She began keeping a diary 70 years ago in grade school after a teacher told her that her thoughts were important and worth recording. Downey sometimes wrote intermittently and sometimes wrote every day about her observations, relationships, travels, griefs, and excitements. In this book, she calls her diary her “lab work and notes” (borrowing language from Friend Bill Kreidler) for exploring and understanding her life. Her journal practice evolved into a “search for the presence of the Spirit” as she responded to the query “How is the Spirit moving in your life?” She notes, “I write to nurture my spiritual self, to stay in touch with God, to do my lab work.”

The book Walking with Faith is the direct result of Downey’s lifelong journal practice. Many of these essays will seem familiar as over a dozen were previously published in Friends Journal. The book is a kind of a memoir, but it is not strictly chronological. It is divided into four prose sections on general themes: “Family and Childhood”; “Career, Faith Community, Ministry”; “Loss, Recovery, Lessons”; and “Vespers Messages,” along with a final poetry section titled “Aging with Faith.” The 26 poems are in the form of a cinquain, a short five-line poem with a specific syllable structure, similar to a haiku. Each poem is inspired by a word for each letter of the alphabet. Christian and former Christian seekers and doubters will enjoy reading about Downey’s life experiences in these essays and poems.

I was drawn to Downey’s book because of my interest in the genre of “exvangelical” memoirs. Exvangelicals are adults who have re-evaluated their membership in strict conservative churches and now question the beliefs and traditions they grew up with. Their memoirs range from the strident and bitter to the thoughtful and low-key. However, in Downey’s writing, I was pleasantly surprised to read that her journey from her Southern Baptist upbringing to her life and ministry in Quakerism was relatively seamless because in the church of her childhood, although strict and conservative, Downey felt “loved, instructed and guided.”

In her Baptist church, Bible literacy was fundamental, and Downey learned her Bible through competitions:

I especially liked competing in “sword drills,” where we would stand at attention with a Bible (our Christian sword). The leader would call, “Attention, draw swords,” and we would hold the Bible in front of us with left hand on top, right on the bottom. The leader would then call out a scripture reference. The first person to find the right verse would step forward and read it aloud. And win!

Downey made it clear that her father and mother did not discourage doubts, questions, and humor about their faith. She recounted that her “Mama” would sometimes stay home from church to cook Sunday dinner even though her attendance at worship was expected. Later in the day, when Mama asked her husband (a lay minister and Sunday school teacher) about the topic of the sermon, he would answer, “Sin, woman, sin.” Mama would reply, “Was he fer or agin it?”

Downey concluded that this combination of intense and strict religious instruction combined with loving and irreverent parents created a foundation for her later Quaker faith. I am around the same age as Downey, and I too remember a distant time when churches were not on the defensive, when they were not associated with a single political agenda, and when the word “Christian” had not yet been problematized. It was bittersweet to be reminded of that time.

Barbara Birch is a member of Strawberry Creek Meeting in Emeryville, Calif., and a board member at Ben Lomond Quaker Center outside Santa Cruz, Calif. Author of Lectio Divina: Revelation and Prophecy (Quaker Quicks), Barbara facilitates online lectio divina programs and publishes her musings at yourwifey51.medium.com.