Searching for Sunday

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans

This book was good for me to read, it was cathartic. I found myself getting unexpectedly emotional during it. So full disclosure, this review may get personal. You've been warned.

Rachel opens the book with a mini-rant about how Christianity tends to laud early risers and sunrise devotional times, and how that doesn't leave many options for those of us who are not coherent in the morning hours - because obviously we're terrible. I knew this was one of my people, so I kept reading.

Several times throughout the book, I felt my journey paralleled the author's a lot. Given the response to her blog, and this book, I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I grew up in a high-control church environment where I didn't feel I had space to ask questions, and after it was suggested to me by one of my leaders there that it may not have been a good fit for me anymore, I found a local college group where I could explore the questions and inconsistencies that nagged at me with others who were also experiencing them. (things like if God blesses those he loves, why are people all over the world hurting? And if we have physical, real evidence of science, why do we have to deny it to be of faith? If someone in a tiny undiscovered tribe never encounters someone to tell them about Jesus, do we actually believe they'd be condemned? And if so, why would God allow that to happen? If someone is taught from childhood that being Buddhist or Muslim or Agnostic is the right way to be, and they live their life in that belief system, can we actually say that they're condemned when their only real 'fault' was being born into that tradition?) I had been taught a tradition of certainty, but these are not things I am comfortable glossing over with a generalized 'moving in mysterious ways' comment or blithely quoting a scripture. And if faith is so fragile that it can't bother to explore these questions, why should I deal with it? This college group gave me room to at least admit I had these kinds of questions.

Eventually I moved on to a church plant that was meeting in a pub. And when I read Rachel's account her of small church plant meeting on an Easter morning I cried, because I know that space. Ours may have been in a pub while hers was in a room above a morgue, but I know that place. And I cried again when she shared how that church didn't make it, because our church plant didn't either, and it still aches. After we closed down, I started taking ballet classes on Sunday mornings because the thought of attending another church was too painful. I felt like I was mourning. And I wanted to do something healing & restorative during that time. So I learned to dance.

As I said at the top of this review, this book was cathartic, and important. A lot of days I don't know what I am. There was a period for at least a year where I definitely identified as an atheist who still wanted to go to church for some inexplicable reason, and then another year where I felt more spiritually connected than I had in a long time, but didn't want to go to church at all. But like Rachel shares, I kept feeling pulled back. Whether by obligation, or tradition, or community, or getting to play music, or some combination of those, I honestly don't know. It is only in the last couple years that I have started to be comfortable with living in that tension, and recognizing that the struggle is in itself a manifestation of faith. And there are a lot of people out there who absolutely experience it that way. There are those who seek certainty, and there are those of us who are constantly struggling. I'm one of these wrestlers. Reading stories like Rachel's, making some kickass lifelong friends from a nearby seminary, and listening to podcasts from folks on similar journeys has helped me recognize this - to know that I'm not a total oddball, and I don't have to give up on church or faith to be truthful about my experience. I think it's important for us to have these conversations, share our stories, and to recognize the richness in the diversity of our journeys. I am grateful to people like Rachel for forging a way forward.