Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

  The words from Anne Sexton’s poem “Protestant Easter” floated into my brain:

  Jesus was on that Cross.

  After that they pounded nails into his hands.

  After that, well, after that,

  everyone wore hats . . .17

  And smiles. And masks. And brave fronts.

  I didn’t stop going to church after the Vote Yes On One campaign, but I stopped being present. I was too scared to speak up in support of LGBT people, so I ignored my conscience and let it go. I played my role as the good Christian girl and spared everyone the drama of an argument. But that decision—to remain silent—split me in two. It convinced me that I could never really be myself in church, that I had to check my heart and mind at the door. I regret that decision for a lot of reasons, but most of all because sometimes I think I would have gotten a fair hearing. Sometimes I think my church would have loved me through that disagreement if I’d only been bold enough to ask them to. Like a difficult marriage, my relationship with church buckled under the weight of years of silent assumptions. So I checked out—first in spirit, then in body. When our closest friends from Sunday night moved to California, our interest in the social events began to dwindle. After a few months, Dan and I began sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

  It is perhaps no coincidence that I discovered blogging around the same time, and along with it, a whole community of people from across the world who smiled back at me from the tiny avatars in the comment section and bestowed upon me, like gifts wrapped in delicate paper, two very powerful words: me too. Turns out I wasn’t the only one struggling with doubt. I wasn’t the only one questioning my church’s position on homosexuality and gender roles and a whole host of other issues. I wasn’t the only one who felt lonely on Sunday mornings.

  Of course, blogging about these things meant airing my unpopular opinions like red bras on a clothesline, which meant talk around town only amplified. I became a recurring topic of conversation in the Sunday school classes I didn’t attend (or so I was told). Word got back to my parents that I’d been questioning biblical inerrancy on my blog. I received a Facebook message from a friend who had heard from someone, who’d heard from someone else, that I’d become a Buddhist.

  “A Buddhist?” I wrote back. “Oh, I’m not disciplined enough to be Buddhist.”

  “Praying for you” is all I heard in response.

  Now, Pastor Doug made space in our church for differences, for tension, for diversity, and for grace. He made space in his calendar for old and young, wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated. He made space for those who agreed with him and those who didn’t. But Pastor Doug made no space for gossip. The man simply has no patience for it. When a prominent couple in the congregation announced their divorce and whispers about the details rushed through town like a flash flood, Pastor Doug stood before the congregation and, in a rare moment of blunt candor, gave us direct orders: “More praying. Less talking.” As far as Dan and I were concerned, this made him a hero.

  In keeping with his character, Pastor Doug invited us to his office one weekday morning to discuss, in person, our conspicuous departure. We made some mistakes in leaving our church, but perhaps the biggest was in trying to slip quietly out the back door. We thought we were doing everyone a favor by avoiding a potential conflict, but my pastor friends tell me this is a bit like breaking up with a guy by simply not returning his calls. After fifteen years, I owed my church a DTR.

  Following some awkward small talk, Pastor Doug told us he missed us, but he understood that sometimes when people’s faith changes, so must their church. We sat in the twin occasional chairs across from his desk, Dan drumming his fingers nervously on his knees while I stared at the carpet and tried not to cry. (Dan, by the way, had been working through these very same doubts for years, only with his trademark lack of fanfare.) Around us, bookshelves lined with commentaries and devotionals seemed to ballast the speckled ceiling. We’d done our marriage counseling in this office. I hid behind the door once, during one of those lock-ins when the youth group played sardines.

  When Pastor Doug asked if there was anything specific he could address, we focused on the church’s fourteen-point doctrinal statement, which required a signature for full membership in the church. It had been Dan’s idea to start with something concrete, something on paper we could delineate and name. Belief, after all, is the language of evangelicalism. Not sacrament. Not spirit. Not liturgy. Not tradition. Not discipleship. Belief. We’d been taught all our lives that it was shared belief that kept us in this community of faith, so we just assumed difference in belief left us out of it.

  This led to some discussion over what exactly is meant by “inerrant in the original writings,” “judgment and everlasting punishment,” and “the act of creation as related in the book of Genesis.” I raised a few concerns about the church’s policy on women in leadership, which Pastor Doug confirmed prevented women from pastoral leadership and preaching. We never talked about Vote Yes On One. We discussed our departure as we would the terms of a contract we could no longer sign.

  When the sun came in sharp and gold through the blinds we knew it was time to go. I said something about just needing some space to sort things out. Dan said something about appreciating all the church had done for us through the years. Pastor Doug, with the twinkle of a tear in his eye, said we’d always be welcome in this church. Always.

  As we walked in silence back to the car, I knew we wouldn’t be back, at least not as regulars. Dan grasped my hand, and I felt his sadness too.

  I have friends who struggled for years to disentangle themselves from abusive, authoritarian churches where they were publicly shamed for asking questions and thinking for themselves. I know of others who were kicked out for getting divorced or for being gay. Those are important stories to tell, but they are not mine. I have no serious injuries to report, no deep scars to reveal. I left a church of kind, generous people because I couldn’t pretend to believe things I didn’t believe anymore, because I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I could never be the stick-figured woman in the Vote Yes On One sign standing guard in front of the doors. I didn’t want to be.

  We crossed the parking lot, which still smelled of fresh asphalt, and climbed into the safety of our car. As soon as the doors shut, I put my head in my hands and cried, startled to tears by the selfishness of my own thoughts:

  Who will bring us casseroles when we have a baby?

  NINE

  Dirty Laundry

  Churches should be the most honest place in town, not the happiest place in town.

  —Walter Brueggermann

  IN MANY CHURCHES, THE HOLIEST HOUR OF THE WEEK occurs not in the sanctuary on Sunday morning but in the basement on Tuesday night, when a mismatched group of CEOs and single moms, suburbanites and homeless veterans share in the communion of strong coffee and dry pastries and engage in the sacred act of telling one another the truth.

  They admit their powerlessness and dependency. They conduct “searching and fearless inventories” of themselves. They confess to God, to themselves, and to one another the exact nature of their wrongs. They ask for help. And beneath the flickering of fluorescent lights, amidst tears and nervous coughs and the faint scent of cigarette smoke, they summon the courage to expose their darkness to the light: “My name is Jeremy, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  I’ve heard many recovering alcoholics say they’ve never found a church quite like Alcoholics Anonymous. They’ve never found a community of people so honest with one another about their pain, so united in their shared brokenness.

  “The particular brand of love and loyalty that seemed to flow so easily [in recovery meetings] wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced, inside or outside of church,” Heather Kopp says in her memoir about getting sober. “But how could this be? How could a bunch of addicts and alcoholics manage to succeed at creating the kind of intimate fellowship so many of my Christian groups had tried to achieve and failed? Many months would pass
before I understood that people bond more deeply over shared brokenness than they do over shared beliefs.”18

  The other day I was asked in a radio interview why I’m still a Christian. Since I’ve never been shy about writing through my questions and doubts, the host wanted to know why I hang on to my faith in spite of them.

  I talked about Jesus—his life, teachings, death, resurrection, and presence in my life and in the world. I talked about how faith is always a risk and how the story of Jesus is a story I’m willing to risk being wrong about. And then I said something that surprised me a little, even as the words left my mouth.

  “I’m a Christian,” I said, “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.”

  “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed,” instructed James, the brother of Jesus (James 5:16). At its best, the church functions much like a recovery group, a safe place where a bunch of struggling, imperfect people come together to speak difficult truths to one another. Sometimes the truth is we have sinned as individuals. Sometimes the truth is we have sinned corporately, as a people. Sometimes the truth is we’re hurting because of another person’s sin or as a result of forces beyond our control. Sometimes the truth is we’re just hurting, and we’re not even sure why.

  The practice of confession gives us the chance to admit to one another that we’re not okay, and then to seek healing and reconciliation together, in community. No one has to go first. Instead, we take a deep breath and start together with the prayer of confession:

  Most merciful God,

  we confess that we have sinned against you

  in thought, word, and deed,

  by what we have done,

  and by what we have left undone.

  We have not loved you with our whole heart;

  we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

  We are truly sorry and we humbly repent,

  For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

  have mercy on us and forgive us;

  that we may delight in your will,

  and walk in your ways,

  to the glory of your Name. Amen.19

  The Lutheran Confiteor makes it even more personal:

  I confess to God Almighty,

  before the whole company of

  heaven and to you, my brothers

  and sisters, that I have sinned in

  thought, word, and deed by my

  fault, by my own fault, by my

  own most grievous fault;

  wherefore I pray God Almighty

  to have mercy on me, forgive

  me all my sins, and bring me to

  everlasting life. Amen.20

  These brave prayers are just the start. Like the introductions at an AA meeting, they equalize us. They remind us that we all move through the world in the same state—broken and beloved—and that we’re all in need of healing and grace. They embolden us to confess to one another not only our sins, but also our fears, our doubts, our questions, our injuries, and our pain. They give us permission to start telling one another the truth, and to believe that this strange way of living is the only way to set one another free.

  So why do our churches feel more like country clubs than AA? Why do we mumble through rote confessions and then conjure plastic Barbie and Ken smiles as we turn to one another to pass the peace? What makes us exchange the regular pleasantries—“I’m fine! How are you?”—while mingling beneath a cross upon which hangs a beaten, nearly naked man, suffering publicly on our behalf?

  I suspect this habit stems from the same impulse that told me I should drop a few pounds before joining the Y (so as not to embarrass myself in front of the fit people), the same impulse that kept my mother from hiring a housekeeper because she felt compelled to clean the bathroom before the Merry Maids arrived (so as not to expose to the world the abomination that is a hair-clogged shower drain), the same impulse that Nadia refers to as the “long and rich Christian tradition which in Latin is called ‘totally faking it.’ ”21

  The truth is, we think church is for people living in the “after” picture. We think church is for taking spiritual Instagrams and putting on our best performances. We think church is for the healthy, even though Jesus told us time and again he came to minister to the sick. We think church is for good people, not resurrected people.

  So we fake it. We pretend we don’t need help and we act like we aren’t afraid, even though no decent AA meeting ever began with, “Hi, my name is Rachel, and I totally have my act together.”

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed this same phenomenon at the underground seminary he served during his protest of Nazi Germany:

  He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone in our sin, living lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!22

  My mother used to tell me that we weren’t the type of people to air our dirty laundry. What she meant was good Southern girls didn’t go around talking about their troubles or divulging their secrets. (I can only assume it is by some divine corrective that her daughter turned out to be a blogger.) But this is a cultural idiom, not a Christian one. We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are—no hiding, no acting, no fear. We come with our materialism, our pride, our petty grievances against our neighbors, our hypocritical disdain for those judgmental people in the church next door. We come with our fear of death, our desperation to be loved, our troubled marriages, our persistent doubts, our preoccupation with status and image. We come with our addictions—to substances, to work, to affirmation, to control, to food. We come with our differences, be they political, theological, racial, or socioeconomic. We come in search of sanctuary, a safe place to shed the masks and exhale. We come to air our dirty laundry before God and everybody because when we do it together we don’t have to be afraid.

  My friend Kathy Escobar spent many years climbing the leadership ladder at a megachurch in Denver before trading a life of religious success for what she calls a life of “downward mobility” inspired by the humility and poverty of Christ. As a counselor, Kathy had encountered Christians who kept their battles with pain and depression a secret from their churches, so she helped found and pastor the Refuge, an eclectic and growing faith community in Denver inspired by both the Beatitudes and the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

  Kathy discovered that when a church functions more like a recovery group than a religious organization, when it commits to practicing “honesty for the sake of restoration,” all sorts of unexpected people show up.

  “People who make $600 on mental health disability and never graduated from high school are hanging out with friends who have master’s degrees and make $6,000,” she said of the Refuge. “Suburban moms are building relationships with addicts. People from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds are engaging those with pagan backgrounds . . . Orphans, outcasts, prostitutes, pastors, single moms and dads, church burnouts, and everything in between are all muddled up together . . . It’s wild.”23

  Kathy, who describes herself as a recovering perfectionist and control freak, doesn’t glamorize the process. She admits the healing happens at a slow pace and that this much diversity often leads to awkwardness and drama. It’s not exactly what you call a seeker-sensitive model—
“most people don’t go to church to get annoyed,” the petite blonde says with a laugh—but through the Refuge she has experienced mercy, grace, love, and healing like never before. She says she’ll never go back to the upward-mobility life again.

  Rather than boasting a doctrinal statement, the Refuge extends an invitation:

  The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other.

  We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can.

  We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways.

  We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible.

  We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts.