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

by Rachel Held Evans

My book of hours stipulates that morning prayers be said between 4:30 and 7:30 a.m. How I’m supposed to talk to God at an hour in which I cannot even speak coherently to my husband is beyond me.

Old European churchyards, dappled with wind-abraded headstones, still reflect the custom of burying the dead with their feet toward the rising sun as a sign of hope and with the expectation that when Jesus returns to Jerusalem at the Second Coming, the faithful will rise and look him in the eye. One can only hope this will happen sometime after nine o’clock in the morning, eastern standard time.

At least that’s what I tried to do when I was recently asked to explain to three thousand evangelical youth workers gathered together for a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, why millennials like me are leaving the church. I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff—biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice—but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. 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. And I told them that, contrary to popular belief, we can’t be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, ...

With my father overseeing my theological development, my poor mother was left to steer me through the social nuances of church life, a task I made considerably more difficult for her by taking the former far more seriously than the latter. It’s one thing to explain to an eleven-year-old that there’s no way to know if Anne Frank went to heaven or hell, quite another to explain why such a question might have been an inappropriate one to pose at a bridal shower in front of the church ladies. But such was the nature of my small

The good news is you are a beloved child of God; the bad news is you don’t get to choose your siblings.

When she converted to Lutheranism, she asked her Lutheran mentor to rebaptize her. Her mentor wisely declined, reminding her that an act of God cannot be undone or redone.

Like Nadia, I’ve wrestled with the evangelical tradition in which I was raised, often ungracefully. At times I’ve tried to wring the waters of my first baptism out of my clothes, shake them out of my hair, and ask for a do-over in some other community where they ordain women, vote for Democrats, and believe in evolution. But Jesus has this odd habit of allowing ordinary, screwed-up people to introduce him, and so it was ordinary, screwed-up people who first told me I was a beloved child of God, who first called me a Christian. I don’t know where my story of faith will take me, but it will always begin here. That much can never change.

Now, I’m as uncomfortable as the next Honda-driving, NPR-listening, New York Times–reading progressive with the notion of exorcising demons. When I get to those stories in the New Testament, I’m inclined to take the sophisticated approach and assume the people who had demons cast out of them were healed of mental illness or epilepsy or something like that (which, when you think about it, simply requires exchanging one highly implausible story for another).

The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God’s name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.

Whether they come from within us or outside us, whether they represent distinct personalities or the sins and systems that compete for our allegiance, demons are as real as the competing identities that seek to possess us. But rather than casting them out of our churches, we tend to invite them in, where they tell us we’ll be children of God when . . . we beat the addiction. we sign the doctrinal statement. we help with the children’s ministry. we get our act together. we tithe. we play by the rules. we believe without doubt. we are married. we are straight. we are religious. we are good. But “the first act of the Christian life,” says Schmemann, “is a renunciation, a challenge.” In baptism, the Christian stands naked and unashamed before all these demons—all these impulses and temptations, sins and failures, empty sales pitches and screwy labels—and says, “I am a beloved child of God and I renounce anything or anyone who says otherwise.”12 In some Orthodox traditions, the convert literally spits in the face of evil before going under the

Luther described baptism as the drowning of the old, sinful self which he notes “is a mighty good swimmer,”

Baptism reminds us that there’s no ladder to holiness to climb, no self-improvement plan to follow. It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt, and our despair.

In the ritual of baptism, our ancestors acted out the bizarre truth of the Christian identity: We are people who stand totally exposed before evil and death and declare them powerless against love. There’s nothing normal about that.

(If the Baptists have the corner on homemade chili—which they do—then Methodists have it on pastries. I’ve never encountered a Methodist lemon bar I didn’t like.)

In response, Andrew pulled out his smartphone, scrolled through his pictures for a moment, found what he was looking for, and then handed his phone to me. On the cracked screen was a picture of the editorial page of a church newsletter. As I zoomed in closer, I could see the article was about same-sex relationships, which the author described as sickening. To the left of the headline, a silver-haired man in a suit and tie looked back at me with eyes that looked familiar. “That’s my dad,” Andrew said. “He’s a pastor, and he published this right after I came out.” My heart sank. For every teenager like me who knew only love and acceptance growing up in church, there were teenagers like Andrew who felt like strangers in the pews, strangers even in their own homes.

Sometimes the church must be a refuge even to its own refugees.

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. Nothing could prevent the eunuch from being baptized, for the mountains of obstruction had been plowed down, the rocky hills had been made smooth, and God had cleared a path. There was holy water everywhere.

Solomon declared, “Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return” (Ecclesiastes 3:19–20).

When Job demanded an explanation for his suffering, God asked, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand” (38:4). Job retreated to a heap of ashes and cried, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3). Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground, God got up.

My husband of five years, Dan, stands beside me, steady as a pier tethered to a drifting boat. Once we are home, we will crawl into bed together—both of us still dressed in our church clothes, but with our shoes kicked off—and he will listen as I mumble through my litany of grievances: the political jab during the announcements, the talk of hell, the simplistic interpretation of a complicated text, the violent and masculine theology, the seemingly shared assumption that the end times are upon us because we just elected a Democratic president with a foreign-sounding name.

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.

My classmates seemed wholly unconcerned when I pointed out the fact that, based on what we’d been taught in Sunday school about salvation, the Jews killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz went straight to hell after their murders, and the piles of left-behind eyeglasses and suitcases displayed at the Holocaust Museum represent hundreds of thousands of souls suffering unending torture at the hand of the very God to whom they had cried out for rescue. I waited for a reaction, only to be gently reminded that perhaps the dorm-wide pajama party wasn’t the best time to talk about the Holocaust.

No one could believe that Rachel Held—once such a promising young evangelist—was losing faith. Their prescriptions rolled in: “God’s ways are higher than our ways. You need to stop asking questions and just trust him.” “There must be some sin in your life causing you to stumble. If you repent, your doubts will go away.” “You need to avoid reading anything besides the Bible. Those books of yours are leading you astray.” “You should come to my church.” “You should listen to Tim Keller.” “You need to check your pride, Rachel, and submit yourself to God.”

(Oh, if I had a penny for every time I’ve been informed by an evangelical male that I have trouble with submission, I could plate the moon in copper!)

I was so lonely in my questions and so desperate for companionship, I tried to force the people I loved to doubt along with me. I tried to make them understand. This proved massively annoying to those friends who preferred to enjoy their dinner and a movie without a side of existential crisis—so basically, everyone. I was reckless at times, and self-absorbed, and I’m still mending some relationships as a result.

I have witnessed firsthand how such a network can perform miracles: a month’s worth of dinners for the mom undergoing chemo, a driveway full of men ready to haul furniture the minute the moving van pulls in, twenty-four hours of prayer and rotating visits during a complicated surgery, fully stocked cupboards for widowers, and hours of free childcare for struggling parents. These are the quotidian signs and wonders of a living, breathing church, and they are powerful and important and real. But to a woman for whom the mere mention of a “ladies’ tea” elicits a nervous sweat, sometimes being plugged in felt a bit like being assimilated. There were rules in this society, particularly for women, and I still hadn’t learned my lesson about avoiding the topic of eternal damnation at baby showers, showers that were now, inexplicably, under my care. I was better suited for leading a Bible study or theological discussion, but those things happened at the men’s breakfasts (because, apparently, only men like theology and breakfast foods), so instead I constructed diaper cakes and mixed punch and listened to women exchange gruesome and detailed birth stories before turning to me to sing, “So, when can we expect a baby Evans?”

Even after most of our group graduated to one of the many groups for young families, several continued to show up on Sunday nights, long after the length of their marriages and size of their families disqualified them from the newlywed category. Once we finished the marriage book, we didn’t bother to pick up a new one. We just baby-proofed the house so the kids could run around and invested in some nicer poker chips. I’m not sure we qualified as an official small group anymore, but on Sunday nights we had church.

Sunday mornings, on the other hand, weren’t going so well. On Sunday mornings, my doubt came to church like a third member of the family, toddling along behind me with clenched fists and disheveled hair, throwing wild tantrums after every offhanded political joke or casual reference to hell. During the week I could pacify my doubt with books or work or reality TV, but on Sunday mornings, in the brand-new, contemporary-styled sanctuary of Grace Bible Church, doubt pulled up a chair and issued a running commentary.

We could never predict what moment in the service would trigger a full-blown crisis of faith. Once, it was the kids’ choir singing “Nothing but the Blood” during special music. “Surely I’m not the only one who thinks it’s creepy to hear all those little voices singing about getting washed in the flow of someone’s blood,” I muttered as Dan and I escaped out the double doors. Another time it was a prayer about God granting our troops victory over their enemies as they served him in Iraq. “Don’t you think the Iraqis are just as convinced God is on their side?” I whispered.

Sometimes it was just the way people chatted in the fellowship hall about “those liberals,” as if feminists or Democrats or Methodists couldn’t possibly be in their midst. 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.

One muggy summer morning, when we’d roused ourselves in enough time to pull into the church parking lot just a few minutes late, we noticed a half-dozen red, white, and blue lawn signs growing from the strip of grass between the highway and the freshly paved blacktop. They said “VOTE YES ON ONE” across the top and “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman” across the bottom. In the middle was a stick-figure family holding hands. I groaned. It’s no secret that the Tennessee state legislature has kept itself busy over the last decade producing mountains of wholly unnecessary legislation designed to protect what it considers to be Tennessee’s most threatened demographic: white evangelical Christians. One proposed bill would have made practicing Islam a felony, punishable by fifteen years in prison. Another sought to ban middle school teachers from even mentioning gay relationships to their students. House Bill 368 (signed into law in 2012) encourages teachers in public schools to “present the scientific weaknesses” of evolution and climate change. In 2013, panicked rumors among legislators that renovations to the capitol building included the installation of a “Muslim foot bath” were assuaged when it was revealed that the fixture in question was, in fact, a mop sink.16

That particular summer, Tennessee lawmakers were busy amending the state constitution to include a ban on same-sex marriage. Churches and conservative organizations across the state had organized a campaign to remind voters that if they wanted to say no to gay marriage they needed to vote yes on proposition one and the Tennessee Marriage Protection Amendment. Nearly every church in town boasted several signs on their lawns, and now ours did too. “We might as well hang a banner over the door that says ‘No Gay People Allowed,’ ” I muttered.

I didn’t stop going to church after the Vote Yes On One campaign, but I stopped being present. I was too scared to speak up in support of LGBT people, so I ignored my conscience and let it go. I played my role as the good Christian girl and spared everyone the drama of an argument. But that decision—to remain silent—split me in two. It convinced me that I could never really be myself in church, that I had to check my heart and mind at the door. I regret that decision for a lot of reasons, but most of all because sometimes I think I would have gotten a fair hearing. Sometimes I think my church would have loved me through that disagreement if I’d only been bold enough to ask them to.

When a prominent couple in the congregation announced their divorce and whispers about the details rushed through town like a flash flood, Pastor Doug stood before the congregation and, in a rare moment of blunt candor, gave us direct orders: “More praying. Less talking.” As far as Dan and I were concerned, this made him a hero. In keeping with his character,

I have friends who struggled for years to disentangle themselves from abusive, authoritarian churches where they were publicly shamed for asking questions and thinking for themselves. I know of others who were kicked out for getting divorced or for being gay. Those are important stories to tell, but they are not mine. I have no serious injuries to report, no deep scars to reveal. I left a church of kind, generous people because I couldn’t pretend to believe things I didn’t believe anymore, because I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I could never be the stick-figured woman in the Vote Yes On One sign standing guard in front of the doors. I didn’t want to be. We crossed the parking lot, which still smelled of fresh asphalt, and climbed into the safety of our car. As soon as the doors shut, I put my head in my hands and cried, startled to tears by the selfishness of my own thoughts: Who will bring us casseroles when we have a baby?

Churches should be the most honest place in town, not the happiest place in town. —Walter Brueggermann

Many months would pass before I understood that people bond more deeply over shared brokenness than they do over shared beliefs.”18

“I’m a Christian,” I said, “because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition—that we’re not okay.” “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed,” instructed James, the brother of Jesus (James 5:16). At its best, the church functions much like a recovery group, a safe place where a bunch of struggling, imperfect people come together to speak difficult truths to one another. Sometimes the truth is we have sinned as individuals. Sometimes the truth is we have sinned corporately, as a people. Sometimes the truth is we’re hurting because of another person’s sin or as a result of forces beyond our control. Sometimes the truth is we’re just hurting, and we’re not even sure why.

The practice of confession gives us the chance to admit to one another that we’re not okay, and then to seek healing and reconciliation together, in community. No one has to go first. Instead, we take a deep breath and start together with the prayer of confession: Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent, For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.19

So why do our churches feel more like country clubs than AA? Why do we mumble through rote confessions and then conjure plastic Barbie and Ken smiles as we turn to one another to pass the peace? What makes us exchange the regular pleasantries—“I’m fine! How are you?”—while mingling beneath a cross upon which hangs a beaten, nearly naked man, suffering publicly on our behalf? I suspect this habit stems from the same impulse that told me I should drop a few pounds before joining the Y (so as not to embarrass myself in front of the fit people), the same impulse that kept my mother from hiring a housekeeper because she felt compelled to clean the bathroom before the Merry Maids arrived (so as not to expose to the world the abomination that is a hair-clogged shower drain), the same impulse that Nadia refers to as the “long and rich Christian tradition which in Latin is called ‘totally faking it.’ ”21

My mother used to tell me that we weren’t the type of people to air our dirty laundry. What she meant was good Southern girls didn’t go around talking about their troubles or divulging their secrets. (I can only assume it is by some divine corrective that her daughter turned out to be a blogger.) But this is a cultural idiom, not a Christian one. We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are—no hiding, no acting, no fear. We come with our materialism, our pride, our petty grievances against our neighbors, our hypocritical disdain for those judgmental people in the church next door. We come with our fear of death, our desperation to be loved, our troubled marriages, our persistent doubts, our preoccupation with status and image. We come with our addictions—to substances, to work, to affirmation, to control, to food. We come with our differences, be they political, theological, racial, or socioeconomic. We come in search of sanctuary, a safe place to shed the masks and exhale. We come to air our dirty laundry before God and everybody because when we do it together we don’t have to be afraid.

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.

In a book entitled On Jews and Their Lies, reformer Martin Luther encouraged civic leaders to burn down Jewish synagogues, expel the Jewish people from their lands, and murder those who continued to practice their faith within Christian territory. “The rulers must act like a good physician who when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow,” he wrote. Luther’s writings were later used by German officials as religious justification of the Holocaust. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Likening their conquests to Joshua’s defeat of Canaan, European Christians brought rape, violence, plunder, and enslavement to the New World, where hundreds of thousands of native people were enslaved or killed. It is said that a tribal chief from the island of Hispaniola was given the chance to convert to Christianity before being executed, but he responded that if heaven was where Christians went when they died, he would rather go to hell.

It’s the oldest religious shortcut in the book: the easiest way to make oneself righteous is to make someone else a sinner.

Jesus knew all about this sin-sorting system, so when the religious leaders challenged him about the company he kept, he replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). This momentarily assuaged the religious leaders, who, of course, counted themselves among the healthy.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Jesus said, “for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). “Woe to you who are well fed now,” Jesus said, “for you will go hungry” (Luke 6:25). When Jesus said he came not for the righteous, but for the sinners, he meant he came for everyone. But only those who know they are sick can be healed. Only those who listen to the rumblings in their belly can be filled. Only those who recognize the extent of their wounds and their wounding can be made well.

At least for a moment, the religious leaders got it: Jesus hung out with sinners because there were only sinners to hang out with. “Where are they?” Jesus asks the woman after they have gone. “Has no one condemned you?” “No, sir,” she replies. “Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

Billy Graham once said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.” Perhaps it would be easier for us to love if it were our own sins we saw written in that dust and carried off by the wind.