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

by Rachel Held Evans

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