The Daily - The Legacy of Rachel Held Evans

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

In a brief but prolific career, a young writer asked whether evangelical Christianity could change. In doing so, she changed it. Guests: Elizabeth Dias, who covers religion for The Times, in conversation with Natalie Kitroeff. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Read the Times obituary for Rachel Held Evans, the best-selling author who challenged conservative Christianity and gave voice to a generation of wandering evangelicals wrestling with their faith.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. In a brief but prolific career, a young writer asked whether evangelical Christianity could change. In doing so, she changed it. My colleague Natalie Kitcheroff speaks to religion reporter Elizabeth Dias about the legacy of Rachel Held Evans. It's Monday, June 3rd.

It's always interesting to me as the religion reporter for The New York Times, which spiritual figures break out into the mainstream. And I think the last time I wrote an obituary was for Billy Graham. And the word redemption means to buy back. Why do you need to be bought back? Because the Bible says you're the slave of sin. He was this giant of evangelical culture. He died at 99 and defined generations of evangelical culture. You must make a choice tonight. Are you going to continue down the broad road that leads to destruction, or will you change and go the narrow road that leads to eternal life? This is the choice that only you can make. This is the choice that only you can make. Asking one question about your faith will undoubtedly lead to another.

Rachel Held Evans was a 37-year-old writer. Changing your mind about one idea means you will likely scrutinize others. Who didn't always even seem totally sure that she was a Christian. And allowing yourself to have doubts about Christianity or about your present version of Christianity puts your sense of safety, security, certainty at risk. And yet, it is absolutely 100% worth it. She almost single-handedly brought together an entirely new kind of community that is defining Christianity for the next generation. Because living in faith, tried, tested, hard-won faith,

is so much better than living in fear. So my name is Rosella Ide White. My name is William Stell. I am Julie Rogers. I live in Washington, D.C. with my wife and our two cats. When I first encountered Rachel and her work, I had just gone through a divorce. I was still in conversion therapy, trying to become straight. She gave me permission to trust that the spirit inside of me that was leading me to come out as gay was the same spirit inside of me that was trying to follow God as I understood God at that point.

Rachel's become meaningful, I think, to so many because at some point she began to realize, wait, what I've been told, what I've been told to believe, what I've been told to think isn't all there is. And in fact, sometimes what we've been told to think, told to believe, has been hurting people. So how did we get here? When does the world meet Rachel Held Evans? I started having questions about my faith when I was in college. I was going to a Christian college. During that time, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

We got involved in Iraq. And I sort of became more aware of world events and how the circumstances of one's birth affect their entire life. their entire life. And so I started having questions about what that meant when so many people in the world either never had any exposure to Christianity or that exposure has been limited. I think the book that really started to put her on the map was A Year of Biblical Womanhood. She committed to spend one whole year living exactly as if she followed all of the rules for women in the Bible. Right. There's a famous passage in the Bible, Proverbs 31, and it's this long description of all of these things that make a wonderful woman.

One of those verses is, you know, her husband is respected at the city gate. So she made this sign, Dan is her husband. And so she made this sign that said, Dan is awesome, and held it up just inside of the town's entrance. Amazing. I certainly don't recommend that any other woman try this. You know, part of the point of doing this was to show that none of us are actually practicing biblical womanhood and that we need to be more careful with how we treat the word biblical. You know, we kind of throw that around and stick it in front of other loaded words to try and bolster our position on something. And that's not only

disrespectful to women, it's also disrespectful to the Bible. I don't think it's meant to be read that way and reduced to this adjective. This idea of challenging reading the Bible as this literal document, I mean, it's really provocative because the whole evangelical system for so long had been about biblical literalism, when you had to understand the Bible exactly for the words that it said literally. I think what often makes someone so powerful is when they start to actually name something that a lot of people feel. is when they start to actually name something that a lot of people feel. Yeah.

And she was writing at the same time that social media was really taking off. I think a lot of women were asking these questions and struggling with these issues. And what I love about the internet, what I love about blogging, is it gives platforms to people who wouldn't otherwise have them, particularly in Christian culture. At the church I was raised in, I couldn't even pass the offering plate, much less teach a Sunday school class or speak in front of the congregation. And so blogging gave me a voice in evangelicalism that I would never have had because I'm a woman. She broke down the access barrier of who could be asking questions about what it meant to be a Christian and who got to talk about what those answers might be.

And how was she received by the larger evangelical Christian world? Well, I think at first she was a bit of a curiosity. You've told me you have doubts. Yes. What do you doubt? I mean, what's the hard part for you? Oh my goodness, where to start? I mean, a lot of this is really hard to believe, and oftentimes I think all this resurrection stuff, we made it up because we're afraid of death, and this solves that problem. And I doubt when I see people who claim to be Christians not

behaving like Christ. I doubt the more I learn about science and our place in the universe, I wonder where does God fit into all of this? So my doubts are a pretty consistent part of my faith. She'd speak at churches, and most of the time she was being interviewed by men. I was often told, you're losing faith. Just pray more. Just read your Bible more. That'll fix it. At the same time, other people were really flocking to her.

There's so many of us that have been disconnected from the church because the church has been so black or white. disconnected from the church because the church has been so black or white. Christians who thought, you know, I've been told my entire life that women can't lead. I wonder if Christianity has something else to say. And I think a lot of these people, their struggles were the same, right? It's the same kinds of doubts and questions. In her, they found this safe place to actually think through some of those. I still doubt. I still wake up some mornings unconvinced that the God I worshipped in church on Sunday

even exists. And I don't want to glorify that experience because sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it's really lonely and really hard and really scary. But I know for a fact it's better than the alternative. I have to tell you, as I said, I've been going through an evolution on this issue. I've always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. It's funny to think about now, but even President Obama then was just kind of getting to the point where he was openly supporting gay marriage. I had hesitated on gay marriage,

in part because I thought civil unions would be sufficient. In the evangelical world, the division was there, but it was much more under the surface because evangelical teaching has long been that homosexuality is a sin, and that comes from longstanding interpretation of biblical passages. I'd just like to start by saying thank you to everybody for coming tonight. I really appreciate it.

In the midst of all this, Rachel decides to question some of what she'd been taught to believe about it. The Bible is not opposed to the acceptance of gay Christians. In 2012, there's this guy named Matthew Vines. Being different is no crime. In 2012, there's this guy named Matthew Vines. And he put a video up on YouTube. You see him in front of a church, and he's speaking, and he and family is no more selfish or sinful than when a straight person desires and pursues the very same things. You can be gay and be a Christian. And Rachel wasn't immediately on board, but she listened. September 2013, she did a blog post about that talk that I had given and was using it as a way to open up the conversation among the readers on her blog about the Bible and same-sex relationships

and really to try to start presenting an affirming case for understanding same-sex relationships from a biblical standpoint. And the way that she was approaching it was not, again, by saying, this is what I think, but rather these arguments are worth considering. Let's talk through them. Let's think through them. He wasn't like an academic or biblical scholar or someone famous, but she was just interested in what he had to say. She puts this idea out there like, well, you know, evangelicals, maybe we're wrong about homosexuality. And so she and this online community that she's building are working through these questions together. And this conversation does not seem like it's necessarily going to be the easiest one for the evangelical establishment to stomach. Yeah, that kind of change was such a threat.

For months after that, she was on the receiving end of a lot of mocking, abusive commentary. The idea for her of changing her mind about homosexuality not being a sin, that's enough to cause people to say she's a heretic. And yet, in the midst of all of that... You know, it's so scary to leave behind a really conservative faith community, even if it's a sort of toxic community, if you don't have somewhere else to go. Her online platform and community, I mean, that's just growing through all of this, and it's getting stronger. And I feel like Rachel built up other places and even create a movement that we could be a part of and belong to that sort of

made it much easier to fully come out of the closet. If I had not come across those people, I think I likely would have stayed in conservative evangelical communities a lot longer, maybe even tried to marry a man and just see if I could make it work. Or that might have become so desperate and unbearable that I would have just left the church altogether. The next really big issue for her was around race. She would talk about race or write about things around people on the margin, or write about things around people on the margins, so whether it be racially or identity-wise, orientation. Around this time, Trayvon Martin had been shot and killed,

and George Zimmerman, the man who had shot him, he was acquitted. Her piece on her blog about Trayvon Martin and the verdict around complicity and doubt. And her role as a white woman really, really spoke to me. And so you have this moment when the loudest voices in the more mainstream evangelical culture were white men speaking out. Quite frankly, I think it's more of a sin problem than a skin problem. And when I hear people, you know, scream Black Lives Matter, I'm thinking, of course they do. But all lives matter. But Rachel did the opposite here. Rachel starts to give up this platform that she had created. Using her platform for a Black woman who speaks about racial justice, using her platform for a Native woman, an Indigenous woman who's calling

out rights for Indigenous people. She did that all the time. She starts promoting Black writers and speakers. I don't know that I had any standard readers outside of my friends and family before Rachel Held Evans came along. Rachel introduced me to her literary agent. She introduced me to her literary agent. She introduced me to her speaking agent. She started a conference called Why Christian and allowed me to be one of the first speakers of that conference. She not only used her social platform, she then created two whole events and then brought us to

be speakers at these events. We were different races. We were different sexualities. We were just different. We were so different. She had this rare sense for when she needed to be the one to take a step back and to listen instead of speaking first. So seeing her, hearing her fight with us and alongside us was just really powerful. So through all of this, all of this criticism, backlash to a certain extent, does she ever get to a breaking point? Well, I don't know if I'd call it a breaking point, but she does join the Episcopal Church in about 2014. And it's very public about why she's formally leaving the evangelical church. You know, for all of my differences with evangelicalism, I still love that community and still feel very much a part of that community. And I didn't get the sense it was this, you know, wholesale rejection. It was more of a recognition

of the kinds of fights that she did and didn't want to have anymore and what kind of church she was able to call home. It's her work to say, although there are rotten roots in our practices around Christianity, we may not have to throw the whole thing out. We'll be right back. Fast forward two years. You have the 2016 election. I'm wondering what her take on the candidacy of Donald Trump is, especially given how many questions were being asked around whether evangelicals were going to endorse this person, this candidate.

Right. Well, 2016 was pivotal crossroads for evangelicals in America with Donald Trump's candidacy. Evangelicals have long voted for candidates who oppose abortion rights, and then-candidate Donald Trump was promising to advance those causes in really significant ways. You know, in the middle of this, Rachel comes forward and says, look, I am pro-life, but this is why I'm going to vote for Hillary Clinton. And she ended up writing this article about how she was going to support Hillary Clinton, even though she was still holding on to her pro-life views. So in the article, she said, even though I think abortion is morally wrong in most cases and support more legal restrictions around it, I often vote for pro-choice candidates

when I think their policies will do the most to address the health and economic concerns that drive women to get abortions in the first place. For me, it's not just about being pro-birth. It's about being pro-life. So when does Rachel get sick? So on Palm Sunday in the middle of April, Rachel sends out a tweet. And she says, if you are the praying type, I'm in the hospital with a flu and UTI combo and I'm having a severe allergic reaction to the antibiotics.

And she jokes, I'm going to miss Game of Thrones. And things escalated from there, her brain began having these seizures and they just didn't stop. And so she's in the ICU and doctors put her in a medically induced coma. At some point, the news trickles out on social media and everyone organizes a prayer campaign for her with this hashtag, pray for RHE. And you started to just see this flood of prayers from all sorts of people, many of whom had never ever met each other in person, but were all part of Rachel's church on her social media feed. church, you know, on her social media feed. And then on May 4th came the news that all of the sudden she had experienced sudden and extreme changes to her vitals and her brain was swelling. And doctors took emergency action to stabilize her, but the swelling just caused severe damage and ultimately was not survivable. So Rachel died early Saturday morning, May 4th, 2019. For me personally, it feels like

I've lost a champion. I felt less alone in the world because she was in it. I'm sorry. This is really hard. Once she dies, it's instantaneous. I mean, the outpouring of grief across the world. It wasn't just people who might have considered themselves Rachel fans. It was people that she had sparred with. And it was people that she had sparred with.

You know, evangelical men who she'd taken to task were remembering how grateful they were to her for her authenticity. She required a response. Her work and her life demanded a response from people who didn't agree. It didn't stop. That went on for days. who didn't agree. It didn't stop. That went on for days. People trying to make sense of how someone so loved and so young just died in the middle of this dynamic work that she was doing.

So I have to ask, Rachel built this community, and now she's gone. What happens? Well, you might think that when someone so central to a community dies that the whole project might disintegrate. Rachel's own evolution gave all of us the fearlessness to evolve too. And because she had created such community, we knew that we didn't have to evolve alone. She walked with us. If nobody else would, she would walk with us. She said, the folks you're shutting out of the church today will be leading it tomorrow. That's how the spirit works. the futures and the margins. I hope that we will embody her legacy of freedom because she set so many of us free. I think the movement that she's built

will only grow because she was here long enough and she was working long enough in order to make changes that I don't think will be able to be undone. I really don't. The last thing that her readers heard from her was this blog post that she wrote for Lent, and I'll read it. She said, It strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches something that nearly everyone can agree on. Whether you are part of a church or not, whether you believe today or you doubt, whether you are a Christian or an atheist or an agnostic, you know this truth deep in your bones. Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return. Death is a part of life. My prayer for you this season is that you make time to celebrate that

reality and to grieve that reality and that you will know you are not alone. I keep thinking about the women who showed up at the tomb on Easter morning. On the days when I believe this story, I'm struck by the fact that they showed up with burial spices. They showed up ready to walk through the rituals of grief and say goodbye to their friend. That was women's work in those days, tending to those vulnerable things. But it's only in tending to the vulnerable things

that we can expect to witness a miracle. I can't promise you resurrection, but I can promise you companionship. I can promise you friends for the journey. I can promise you fellow travelers to help you carry those burial spices. And as we tend to the vulnerable things together, may the God of every season, the God of survival, and if not survival, then death and resurrection, bless, preserve, and keep you now and forever. Amen. The funeral for Rachel Held Evans was held this past weekend in Chattanooga, Tennessee. held this past weekend in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The eulogy was delivered by her high school youth pastor, who said that being her pastor had not been easy because she was constantly asking questions and challenging him. She, he said, like Jesus, was a revolutionary.

In the weeks since her death, Evans has reappeared on the New York Times bestseller list for the book she wrote about grappling with her faith, Searching for Sunday. Thanks to Willie Stell, Rosella I. Day White, Julie Rogers, Emmy Kegler, Austin Channing Brown,

and Matthew Vines for sharing their stories with us. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. 16 hours ago, the lives of 12 people were cut short by a senseless, incomprehensible act of violence. Police are still searching for a motive behind a mass shooting inside the city offices of Virginia Beach, which left 13 people dead, including the shooter.

The gunman, a longtime city engineer, began shooting at co-workers inside the city's municipal building on Friday afternoon, hours after submitting a letter of resignation. This morning, I have the responsibility to inform friends, co-workers, and the public of those who lost their lives yesterday. All but one of the 12 victims were employees of the city of Virginia Beach. I have worked with most of them for many years. On Saturday, the city manager of Virginia Beach, Dave Hanson, paid tribute to each of the victims during a news conference. We want you to know who they were, so in the days and weeks to come, you will learn what

they meant to all of us, to their families, to their friends, and to their co-workers. They leave a void that we will never be able to fill. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.