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

by Rachel Held Evans

We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith.

We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.

I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren’t welcome at the table, then we don’t feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people.

The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.

Millennials aren’t looking for a hipper Christianity, I said. We’re looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity.

Philip got out of God’s way. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.

There was no great personal tragedy to shake my foundations, no injustice or betrayal to justify my falling away—just a few pesky questions that unraveled my faith like twine and left me standing here unable to sing a song I know by heart, chilled by a shadow no one else can see.

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.

That recurring choice—between faith and science, Christianity and feminism, the Bible and historical criticism, doctrine and compassion—kept tripping me up like roots on a forest trail.

As with the death of someone dearly loved, I felt the absence of my faith most profoundly in those everyday moments when it used to be present—in church, in prayer, in the expansive blue of an autumn sky.

It became increasingly clear that my fellow Christians didn’t want to listen to me, or grieve with me, or walk down this frightening road with me. They wanted to fix me.

faith was something you took a day at a time, not something you figured out at the start.

(because, apparently, only men like theology and breakfast foods),

Often it was the assumption that women were unfit to speak from the pulpit or pass the collection plate on Sunday mornings, but were welcome to serve the men their key lime pie at the church picnic.

Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.

For better or worse, the faith of our youth informs our fears, our nostalgia, our reactions, and our suspicions.

For those who have doubted, a flash of warm recognition spreads across their faces, as if they’ve just discovered we share an alma mater, a hobby, or an old friend. Those who haven’t look back at me perplexed, like I’ve begun speaking Swahili.

They looked at me, expecting some kind of a response, but I didn’t know how to tell them this was exactly the sort of thing that made me doubt. Christians like to claim divine protection when a long line at Starbucks miraculously saves them from the fourteen-car pileup on the interstate, or when a wildfire just misses their home to take out a dozen others, but I’m always left wondering about the victims, those whose supposed lack of faith or luck or significance puts them in the path of the tornado instead. What kind of God pulls storm clouds away from a church and pushes them toward a mobile home park? And what kind of Mother would only shield a few if her arms were wide enough to cover all?

Madeleine L’Engle said, “the great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”58 I think the same is true for churches. Each one stays with us, even after we’ve left, adding layer after layer to the palimpsest of our faith.

But you won’t know how to explain that there is nothing nominal or lukewarm or indifferent about standing in this hurricane of questions every day and staring each one down until you’ve mustered all the bravery and fortitude and trust it takes to whisper just one of them out loud on the car ride home: “What if we made this up because we’re afraid of death?”

In her memoir Still, Lauren Winner recounts the story of her friend Julian. When Julian was just twelve years old and preparing to be confirmed, she told her father—the pastor of the church—she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. She wasn’t sure she believed everything she was supposed to believe, at least not enough to make a promise before God and her congregation to believe those things forever. He father told her, “What you promise when you are confirmed is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that this is the story you will wrestle with forever.”

And what they find is when they bring their pain or their doubt or their uncomfortable truth to church, someone immediately grabs it out of their hands to try and fix it, to try and make it go away. Bible verses are quoted. Assurances are given. Plans with ten steps and measurable results are made. With good intentions tinged with fear, Christians scour their inventory for a cure.

“SEEMS TO ME THAT FOR YOU, EVANGELICALISM IS LIKE the boyfriend you broke up with two years ago but whose Facebook page you still check compulsively.”

And suddenly I’m caring again. I’m invested again. I realize I can no more break up with my religious heritage than I can with my parents. I may not worship in an evangelical church anymore or even embrace evangelical theology, but as long as I have an investment in the church universal, I have an investment in the community that first introduced me to Jesus. Like it or not, I’ve got skin in the game.

Marriage is not an inherently holy institution. And it cannot magically be made so by the government, by a priest, or even by the church. Rather, marriage is a relationship that is made holy, or sacramental, when it reflects the life-giving, self-sacrificing love of Jesus. All relationships and vocations—marriage, friendship, singleness, parenthood, partnership, ministry, monastic vows, adoption, neighborhoods, families, churches—give Christians the opportunity to reflect the grace and peace of the kingdom of God, however clumsily, however imperfectly.

s just that when we leave men to draw all the theological conclusions about a metaphorically feminine church, we end up with rather predictable categories, don’t we? Virgin. Whore. Mother.

I’m not exactly sure how all this works, but I think, ultimately, it means I can’t be a Christian on my own. Like it or not, following Jesus is a group activity, something we’re supposed to do together. We might not always do it within the walls of church or even in an organized religion, but if we are to go about making disciples, confessing our sins, breaking bread, paying attention, and preaching the Word, we’re going to need one another. We’re going to need each other’s help.