Searching for Sunday

Time for another book review! I loved Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans. I loved Rachel Held Evans. I still feel sad that the world has lost her voice.

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Over the years I have read articles here and there by Rachel Held Evans. I particularly loved her thoughts on abortion (she is politically progressive but largely pro-life, as am I). And I loved her thoughts on doubt and faith and patience and persistence. I fully agree with her advocacy for inclusion and equality, her self-identification as a feminist and an LGBTQ ally, and her exploration of how to improve inclusion and equality to the point that every believer feels safe at church.

She and I were almost exactly the same age, and we married our college sweethearts near the same time, and although I am an active Latter-day Saint and she grew up in the evangelical tradition which she eventually left to become a (mostly) Episcopalian, we had very similar experiences as active church-going teenagers. (I loved her description of multi-regional church youth activities as an "introvert's nightmare." I did actually love church youth activities in the '90s, but I don't think I could handle them now!)

When I heard that Rachel had suddenly died, I felt so sad that we wouldn't hear any more from this dynamic voice, and I began to read this book, which was perhaps her seminal work. It took me a few weeks, and it is dense, but I loved it. I connected to her journey and to the depth of her searching. I loved her explorations of Bible stories and history, various scriptural translations, and potential motivations for the characters' actions. I loved her framing of her thoughts amid "seven sacraments," particularly her thoughts on the Eucharist (or as I call it in my tradition, the sacrament) and on marriage. I closed "Searching for Sunday" after the final page feeling inspired to continue pressing on in my faith and my relationships, to study more closely the life of Jesus Christ, and to keep seeking no matter what.

A few quotes (I highlighted so many it got ridiculous after a while, so this is just a sampling):

About her husband: "Dan is the son of a former pastor, and his parents divorced when he was a teenager, which is about all you need to know to understand why Dan didn't get freaked out over a little religious turmoil. He moved through the world with the patient maturity of someone who'd already had his expectations adjusted, who already knew that faith was something you took a day at a time, no something you figured out at the start."

"All the beliefs I struggled with during the week were taken for granted on Sunday morning, accepted as self-evident fact. This made my own misalignment all the more pronounced. Around me, people nodded their heads and raised their hands and murmured "amen," while I raged internally at their confidence, their blithe acceptance of the very doctrines that kept me awake night after night. I was surrounded by the people who knew and loved me best in the world, and yet it was the loneliest hour of my week. I felt like an interloper, a fake."

"I realized that just as I sat in church with my doubt, there were those sitting in church with their sexuality, their race, their gender, their depression, their addiction, their questions, their fears, their past, their infertility, their eating disorder, their diagnosis, their missed rent, their mess of a marriage, their sins, their shame--all the things that follow us to church on Sunday morning but we dare not name."

"I'm a Christian 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." (this was my favorite quote)

"So many of our sins begin with fear--fear of disappointment, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of death, fear of obscurity. Cynicism may seem a mild transgression, but it is a patient predator that suffocates hope, slowly, over many years, like the honey mushroom which forces itself between the bark and sapwood of a tree and over decades is strangled to death." (second favorite)

"Ours is a culture of achievement, of sufficiency, of bootstrap-pulling and ladder climbing. We celebrate the winners, the leaders, the do-it-yourselfers. Like any good American, I like to wait until I think I've earned. I like to wait until I think I've deserved. With giving, I can maintain some sense of power, some illusion of control. But receiving means the gig is up. Receiving means I'm not the boss of what comes into life--be it trial or trouble or unmerited good."

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who has experienced doubt, who knows more doubt is coming, who believes in the necessity of doubt, and who despite that repeated pull toward doubt is also committed to the triumph of faith, hope, and love.