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

Rachel Held Evans has again spoken for her generation with a compassionate yet firm voice. The evangelical churches in which she and a whole generation of young men and women grew up were formational in faith and practice, to be sure. But as Evans explores her own journey in this tradition, she uncovers the best and the worst of how faith and practice became enmeshed, leaving her disillusioned. Like many, she found it easier to stay in bed, read and relax, or go for a hike on a Sunday morning. But leaving only led to searching, and searching to finding again.
 
Evans uses the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as “tent pegs” on which to hang her “church story,” a literary rather than theological device. Not part of her own tradition, they allow her to reach back beyond her own evangelical history to a more universal framework. Evans leads us into a conversation about the mysteries of faith and tradition even as she identifies the arrogance and exclusivity that drove her away in the first place.
 
Reading this book left me pained but hopeful for a generation that is picking up the pieces of the fractured church with a willingness to live into the mystery of knowing less rather than more.Searching for Sunday is for you if you have anyone in your life who has loved, left, and is still searching for church. (Thomas Nelson)