My summary:

Rachel Held Evans discusses her personal journey of “loving, leaving, and finding the church”. She discusses her own doubts, her frustrations with the church, and her realization that loving Jesus is a community activity, not an individual one. 

My thoughts:

Reading this, at times, felt like Rachel Held Evans looked into my soul to speak the exact words I need to hear. I find her words to be a balm to soothe my skeptic’s soul. I appreciate that she has the foundation of knowledge to speak the words that I can’t seem to formulate on my own regarding both her simultaneous doubts and joy within her faith. Quite a bit of this book resonated with me, but, at the same time, quite a bit did not resonate with me. I would classify this book more as a memoir than theological. 

I feel like, as with all theological books, this must be taken with a grain of salt as the author’s personal interpretation of their religion. And based on reading reviews for this book, you either really connect with this or really hate the theology in it. I, personally, really connect with some of Rachel’s points. 

As a Christian, I find Christianity to be very simple and straightforward. I get extremely frustrated with the church and other Christians who make it complicated, inaccessible, and exclusionary. Rachel Held Evans speaks my language in the face of these frustrations. And my takeaway from it is agreeing with her of the necessary element of community within the faith. 

I first found Rachel Held Evans through her book Inspired. It spoke to me, many years ago, on a level I wasn’t prepared for. I was deeply saddened by the loss of her so abruptly with her death in 2019. I’ve had this book on my shelf for awhile now, as well as Whole Hearted Faith, the book she was writing at the time she passed away. I feel her death was a tremendous loss, especially for people like me that grapple with questioning the status quo of churches and organized religion and, like she often experienced, are shunned or fed platitudes in the face of openly questioning or doubting.