What makes the Gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.
Rachel Held Evans
Rachel Held Evans died on May 4th, 2019. Many of us had been praying for her after learning she was placed in a medically induced coma in April. And now she is gone. She was a mother of two, and life partner to Dan… I am so sorry for your unspeakable loss.
I first encountered Rachel through her writings. I met her in her second book; A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master. That book ignited a firestorm in some evangelical circles. It offered personal story, fresh language, challenged literal readings of Scripture, all the while offering freedom to so many conservative Christians… especially women. Rachel was an ally for the LGBTQ+ community within the church and was a emerging as a vital voice and credible witness within the processive Christian world. Though I only met Rachel a couple of times – and even those encounters were brief – the impact she had on me directly and on my little world more indirectly feels seismic.
She was clearly on a faith journey. And she was spacious enough to invite us to come along as she searched, questioned, doubted, experimented, grew, and changed. As you probably know she blogged, and wrote for magazines, she published multiple books, and engaged publically and wholeheartedly in conversation of faith and practice. We are not ready for her to go. I feel like I still have much to learn from her, I grieve losing a wise guide. Below are some of her writings, a few tributes, and her memorial service:
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Here are just a few tributes I have appreciated:
This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.
Rachel Held Evans
Rest in Peace, dwight
