Dear Church Family,
The world lost a bright light this week in Rachel Held Evans, a woman not much older than me, who died after a brief and mysterious illness. She was a voice for the millennials disenchanted by church, who nonetheless deeply desired the community of faith and who dreamed of a church where doubts were welcomed and where faith turned into action. She bridged the worlds of evangelical and mainline churches, which isn’t an easy feat.
To the evangelical churches, and to right-leaning Christian America, Held Evans wrote of the idolatries of American culture that somehow got baptized and incorporated into popular religion. Where church and state got mixed up she pointed out all the hypocrisy. She twitter-ranted against sexism, racism, and homophobia with ferocious and comedic precision. She pointed out the sexism of the Bible in her semi-ridiculous project “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” where she strove to take all the Bible’s commands literally, especially those directed at women. This important work is what got her noticed in the news and made her the hero of post-evangelical Christians everywhere. https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/05/rachel-held-evans-the-hugely-popular-evangelical-writer-is-dead-at-37.html
She wrote to those on the left, though, too, and that may not get picked up as readily by the news headlines. To you at MPC I most recommend her book or audiobook “Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church”. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22574709-searching-for-sunday In it she described her times of searching, the pain of being a misfit in different kinds of churches, and the beauty of what a church can really be through word and sacrament. Through it all she stayed light and funny at the same time as deeply spiritual and serious. To us who float around on the left, not just politically but spiritually speaking, she was able to articulate reasons why we might cling to tradition, and keep Jesus in the center, and find deep meaning in all the church can offer. She co-founded a conference called “Why Christian,” in which she and her fellow leaders articulated a faith that is worth keeping, even as we work hard to strip away the racism, sexism, homophobia, and narrowmindedness that have attached themselves to our religion through human failings. If all that bad stuff is the bathwater, and we were all for throwing it all out, Rachel Held Evans kept reminding us there was a baby in the bath – and a holy baby, a Christ Child.
It’s hard for me to write about her in the past tense. Her quick illness and death were nearly unbelievable. Her light on earth is now gone and we won’t have her snappy tweets to look to, next time church and state get mixed up real bad. She has joined the communion of saints – those near and far, recent and long-gone – who surround us spiritually and call us on to the good work begun so long ago. I hope you’ll join me in mourning the fragility of a life stopped so young, and celebrating the beauty of the Life that lives in us as one small part of the Church universal.
Every Blessing,
Talitha