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

by Rachel Held Evans

  We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another.

  We all receive, we all give.

  We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving.

  Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity.

  At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24

  Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.

  TEN

  What We Have Done

  . . . If what’s loosed on earth will be loosed on high, it’s a hell of a heaven we must go to when we die.

  —Josh Ritter

  THREE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER JESUS DIED ON A ROMAN cross, the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christians, who had once been persecuted by the empire, became the empire, and those who had once denied the sword took up the sword against their neighbors. Pagan temples were destroyed, their patrons forced to convert to Christianity or die. Christians whose ancestors had been martyred in gladiatorial combat now attended the games, cheering on the bloodshed.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  On July 15, 1099, Christian crusaders lay siege to Jerusalem, then occupied by Fatimite Arabs. They found a breach in the wall and took the city. Declaring “God wills it!” they killed every defender in their path and dashed the bodies of helpless babies against rocks. When they came upon a synagogue where many of the city’s Jews had taken refuge, they set fire to the building and burned the people inside alive. An eyewitness reported that at the Porch of Solomon, horses waded through blood.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  Through a series of centuries-long inquisitions that swept across Europe, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them women accused of witchcraft, were tortured by religious leaders charged with protecting the church from heresy. Their instruments of torture, designed to slowly inflict pain by dismembering and dislocating the body, earned nicknames like the Breast Ripper, the Head Crusher, and the Judas Chair. Many were inscribed with the phrase Soli Deo Gloria, “Glory be only to God.”

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  In a book entitled On Jews and Their Lies, reformer Martin Luther encouraged civic leaders to burn down Jewish synagogues, expel the Jewish people from their lands, and murder those who continued to practice their faith within Christian territory. “The rulers must act like a good physician who when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow,” he wrote. Luther’s writings were later used by German officials as religious justification of the Holocaust.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  Likening their conquests to Joshua’s defeat of Canaan, European Christians brought rape, violence, plunder, and enslavement to the New World, where hundreds of thousands of native people were enslaved or killed. It is said that a tribal chief from the island of Hispaniola was given the chance to convert to Christianity before being executed, but he responded that if heaven was where Christians went when they died, he would rather go to hell.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  After Puritans decimated the Pequot tribe in 1637, Captain John Underhill explained, “Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents . . . We have sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.”25

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  In 1838, the United States government, under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, forcibly removed more than sixteen thousand Cherokee people from their homes in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia and relocated them to what is today Oklahoma. Thousands of Cherokee died of cold, hunger, and exhaustion on the journey West—on what is now known as the Trail of Tears—and even more perished as a result of their relocation. In his farewell address, Jackson declared, “Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as guardians of freedom . . . May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed.”

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  In the years preceding the Civil War in America, Christian ministers wrote nearly half of all defenses of slavery. Methodist pastor J. W. Ticker told a Confederate audience in 1862, “Your cause is the cause of God, the cause of Christ, of humanity. It is a conflict of truth with error—of the Bible with Northern infidelity—of pure Christianity with Northern fanaticism.”26 Divisions over the morality of slavery split Baptist and Methodist denominations in America in two.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  On the second day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s imprisonment in a Birmingham jail, a guard slipped him a copy of the morning paper. By the dim light of his cell, King read the tall black letters that headlined the second page: WHITE CLERGYMEN URGE LOCAL NEGROES TO WITHDRAW FROM DEMONSTRATIONS. It was the Saturday before Easter, the same day Jesus lay buried in the grave.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  In 1982, the president of Bob Jones University defended the Christian college’s policy banning interracial dating, telling a reporter that “the Bible clearly teaches, starting in the tenth chapter of Genesis and going all the way through . . . [about] the differences God has put among people on the earth to keep the earth divided.”27 When the Supreme Court ruled against the university’s tax exempt status, the administration at Bob Jones refused to reverse their policy and instead paid a million dollars in back taxes. The policy remained unchanged until the year 2000.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  In 2013, Uganda’s parliament passed a bill criminalizing homosexuality with the sentence of life imprisonment. The lawmaker behind the bill, David Bahati, told media, “Because we are a God-fearing nation, we value life in a holistic way. It is because of those values that members of parliament passed this bill . . .”28 The legislation is said to have been influenced by evangelical Christian missionaries to Africa.

  Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

  For Ambrose, who defied the empire by blocking the door of his church until Emperor Theodosius had repented of his violence, we give thanks.

  For the desert fathers and mothers who fled the violence and excess of the empire to inspire generations to live more simply and deliberately, we give thanks.

  For John Huss, who spoke out against the church’s sale of indulgences, protested the Crusades, and was burned at the stake for obeying his conscience, we give thanks.

  For Teresa of Avila, who overcame opposition from the aristocracy and the church to advance sweeping monastic reforms, we give thanks.

  For Pedro Claver, the Jesuit priest who devoted his life to serving the black slaves of Colombia, especially those suffering from leprosy and smallpox brought by their conquerors, we give thanks.

  For Anne Hutchinson, who knew it was illegal for women to teach from the Bible in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but did it anyway, we give thanks.

  For William Wilberforce, who channeled his evangelical fervor into abolishing slavery in the British Empire, vowing “never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name,”29 we give thanks.

  For Sojourner Truth, who proclaimed her own humanity in a culture that did not recognize it, we give thanks.

  For Maximilian Kolbe, the Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in the place of a Jewish stranger at Auschwitz, we give thanks.

  For the pastors, black and white, who linked arms with Martin Luther King Jr. and marched on Washington, we give thanks.

  For Rosa Parks, who kept her seat, we give thanks.

  For all who did the right thing even when it was hard, we give thanks.

  Restore us, goo
d Lord, and let your anger depart from us;

  Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.

  Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,

  That we may show forth your glory in the world.

  By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,

  Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.30

  ELEVEN

  Meet the Press

  Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.

  —George Carlin

  FOR THE FIRST FEW MONTHS AFTER LEAVING CHURCH, Dan and I spent Sunday mornings doing exactly what we’d been told all the other heathens did on the first day of the week: sleeping in, making pancakes, and sipping our specialty dark roast coffee while watching Meet the Press in our pajamas. We were one New York Times crossword puzzle away from liberal nirvana, and it was wonderful.

  I’ve known many Christians who say they had to leave the church to discover Sabbath. Indeed, unplugging from a church can have the same effect as unplugging from the Internet or a demanding job. Suddenly the days seem longer, fuller, and more saturated with color. It’s like climbing out of a too-small space and drinking in fresh air again, or like rolling down the windows on an open road and letting the wind wreck your hair. You go on hikes and explore new spiritual practices involving prayer beads and meditation. You talk about how the oaks are your cathedral, the honeysuckles your incense, and the river over the rocks your hymn. You entertain the idea of taking up a new hobby—origami, perhaps, or yoga—and start writing poetry again. This lasts for a good three weeks until one morning you decide to try an episode of Battlestar Galactica on Netflix and the next thing you know, it’s dinnertime and you still haven’t put on a bra. Things can devolve rather quickly.

  At first, in an effort to keep our truancy out of the prayer chain, I’d throw on a skirt and heels before heading to the grocery store on Sunday, just in case I bumped into someone from Grace Bible Church and needed to appear like I’d come from some other imaginary church we were attending. Folks get concerned when you leave their church; they get downright judgey when you don’t bother to pick out a new one. Behind all the starched smiles and polite questions I saw the same prejudices I’d once nursed against the unchurched, people I’d assumed were too lazy, preoccupied, and self-centered to bother with God. Eventually, I learned to do my shopping between ten and eleven a.m., right in the middle of church hour, when spotting a familiar face in the checkout line is like catching someone with their eyes open during prayer. You’re both busted.

  By this time, traffic to the blog had picked up, so when I worked up the nerve to write about leaving church, a lot of people wrote back:

  “I recently left a congregation too . . . The culminating factor for me was when I was told I could no longer serve in our hot meal and food delivery ministry which feeds the homeless and poor in our community because I wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper supporting marriage equality.”—Leslie

  “I still go because my family likes the fellowship, but mentally I left years ago. The reasons I checked out were: the use of fear to motivate people into action and keep them in line; doubts were not discussed . . . no one shared their own personal struggles, and if someone ever did, they became the hot topic of church gossip; I would have more doubts that God existed after listening to the sermon than before.”—Rick

  “I left church because I was taught from a very young age that I was an abomination and should be put to death. I tried to kill myself twice as a teen because I felt God would not love or accept me as I was born.”—Tim

  “I left because I got sick of hearing, ‘What part of your walk is not right with God?’ because I suffer from a chronic illness.”—Beth

  “We left for so many reasons, but the night we made the decision for good was the night my husband looked at our tiny newborn daughter sleeping in my arms and said, ‘I don’t want her to ever know that God, the God we grew up with, the one the church at large preaches. I don’t want her to grow up with the crap we did. I want her to know God, but not that God. Never ever that God.’ ”—C. J.

  “I left because I was repeatedly molested by a pulpit minister while an entire congregation looked the other way.”—Kate

  “The reason twentysomethings are leaving church is because of a consumer mentality. ‘It’s all about me.’ ‘I leave because I feel this way or that.’ Church isn’t about you! It’s about worshipping Jesus . . . Instead of being consumers, let’s go to church and ask what we can give Jesus because of all he has given us.”—Dustin

  “I’ve only seen one person in all the comments mention the reason we go to church: to glorify God . . . This is not an easy thing to hear because we are saturated in our Western culture and church with wanting things ‘my way’ when what really matters is that God gets his way.”—Matthew

  “We stay because of John, who prays for my family every single day . . . and the Smiths, who hosted my husband’s high school group forty years ago and still pray for us . . . and Marilynne, who would slip me a five-dollar bill on Sunday because we are in ministry . . . and Brooks, who is developmentally disabled and loves to stand in the front, in the middle, and enjoy the signing . . . True, the rest of it drives me crazy, but where else would any of those things happen?”—Carolyn

  “As a pastor, I go to church because I’m paid to be there. I’m scared to tell anyone that, deep down, I’m not sure I believe in God.”—Anonymous

  As I continued to engage in conversations like these, I came to see just how much tension and misunderstanding can exist between the churched and the unchurched, particularly when we are unfamiliar with one another’s stories. It’s easy for church folks to dismiss my entire generation as fickle consumers who bail on church the minute it gets hard, but what about the young woman who left her church because it protected her abusive husband and blamed her for their divorce? Is she just a product of a consumer culture? Should she be blamed for needing some time to recover from her experience? What about the family that left because their autistic child struggled with sensory overload during worship? Are they being too selfish, too demanding? And what about the college student who waits tables on Sunday mornings, or the couple who were told by their pastor that faulty parenting had made their kid gay, or the skeptic whose questions were met with platitudes, or the woman whose battle with depression just makes it too hard to get out of bed? The last thing these people need is one more person calling them failures, one more person piling on the guilt and shame.

  Conversely, I noticed an assumption among many of the unchurched that those who remain in the pews do so as unthinking, uncritical drones just going through the motions to maintain their membership in the country club. I read snide comments about preserving power structures, keeping up with the Joneses, and ensuring that the pastor stays “fat and happy” with his coffers of tithe money. But for every story of exclusion, judgment, and even abuse, there are stories of inclusion, healing, and justice. We can’t just dismiss the experience of the single mom for whom the church-hosted baby shower made all the difference. Or the Burmese refugee whose faith community helped her learn English and find employment when she was far from home. Or the pastor who spent more than a decade working within his denomination to enact changes in favor of gender equity.

  Our reasons for staying, leaving, and returning to church are as complex and layered as we are. They don’t fit in the boxes we check in the surveys or the hurried responses we deliver at dinner parties. How easy it is to judge when we don’t know all the details. How easy it is to offer advice when what is needed is empathy. How easy it is to forget that, in the words of novelist Zadie Smith, “every person is a world.”

  “When I get honest,” writes Brennan Manning, “I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a r
ational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”31

  And so, the same ganglia of impulses and intentions, hopes and frustrations that called me out of church followed me around when, after six months of Battlestar Galactica and Meet the Press, Dan and I decided to try church again.

  We googled “Rhea County churches,” and the resulting map appeared to have contracted a severe case of chicken pox. Hundreds of red dots marking churches of all sizes and denominations speckled the screen. The minute he saw it, Dan released a deep, resigned sigh and handed me the laptop, the prospect of testing each notch in the Bible Belt a bit too overwhelming for him to bear before his second cup of coffee. I assured him we could narrow the search by process of elimination, but even after we’d filtered out the Southern Baptists (too conservative), the Unitarians (too liberal), and the Jehovah’s Witnesses (too . . . friendly), we still faced hundreds of options.

  In a small Southern town there are typically just a few main players around which most of the faithful coalesce, so we began by visiting those, a move that kicked the local gossip into full gear on account of the fact that we drove the only turquoise 1994 Plymouth Acclaim in town, which, when spotted in the parking lot of the liquor store, doctor’s office, or the First United Methodist Church, could start all sorts of wild rumors.

  During Lent, we received ashes at St. Matthew’s, a dwindling Episcopal congregation that met in a converted home rendering the “smells and bells” of the traditional liturgy a tad more awkward than awe-inspiring. On Good Friday, we cried “Crucify him!” with the Catholics at St. Bridget’s, perhaps the most ethnically diverse congregation in town with its mix of sprawling Latino families and displaced Yankees, all gathered beneath an imposing crucifix. On Easter we went back to Grace, where everyone was a little too happy to see us. By Pentecost, we’d found our way to the same Methodist church where William Jennings Bryan made his last public appearance after the Scopes Trial and where the entire sanctuary was decorated like a carnival for vacation Bible school.32