Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

I don’t know where my story of faith will take me, but it will always begin here. That much can never change.

At a time when most of my peers were struggling to find an identity, I knew exactly who I was: the church girl, the girl who always had a place in her youth group family, the girl on fire for God. I’m not sure I can ever calculate the value of that community, that sense of belonging and of being loved.

There are recovery programs for people grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse. You can buy books on how to cope with the death of a beloved pet or work through the anguish of a miscarriage. We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith. You’re on your own for that.

I became a stranger to the busy, avuncular God who arranged parking spaces for my friends and took prayer requests for weather and election outcomes while leaving thirty thousand children to die each day from preventable disease.

I left a church of kind, generous people because I couldn’t pretend to believe things I didn’t believe anymore,