Searching for Sunday :: Rachel Held Evans

• Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church on Powells

Rachel Held Evans died on May 4, 2019. More than a year and a half after RHE's much too early death, I'm reviewing Searching for Sunday, although it doesn't rate 4 stars, 5 stars, or even 3.

The book's title refers to leaving conservative American evangelicalism because Rachel loved the church too much to stay where she was; her search led to the typically inclusive Episcopal Church. Anglicanism is not a sola scriptura tradition, yet along with its distinctive polity, the two (yes, only two) dominical sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, the ecumenical creeds, Anglicanism claims scripture as foundational, but RHE interprets it according to her own imagination without regard for literary forms or reference to centuries of theological and biblical scholarship. I strongly suspect much of the content of this best-seller went down the way it did simply because the author didn't have anything approaching a formal theological education.

RHE transitioned from her evangelical upbringing into TEC, yet she nominally organized Searching for Sunday around the seven sacraments the Roman branch of the church recognizes, rather than the two sacraments or ordinances most protestants practice.

Despite acknowledging the death and resurrection paradigm that pervades the biblical witness, RHE seems to have little sense of the reality of death and its countless manifestations. The law reveals the demands of a holy God; the law also shows us how to live together in ways that defy death and generate life. The good news of the gospel includes the reality of sin and death, the ultimate reign of grace and life. Baptism initiates us into the church, but biblical theology says God enacts an ontological change and issues an subversive call in baptism.

Baptism initiates us into the church, obliterating all past human loyalties, while Rachel seems to view the church as a social organization, akin to a club whose charter says it welcomes everyone, which happens—except when it doesn't. She doesn't view – or hadn't experienced? – the church as the exhibition of the reign of God to the world.

The best part? Rachel Held Evans writes VERY well and comes alive on the printed page in a manner that's probably similar to the in-person style her audiences loved.

• My Amazon Review: beautiful writing, disappointing content