April 20, 2015
Today’s link comes from Emma Green who interviewed Rachel Held Evans regarding Evans’ latest book, Searching for Sunday. The book’s thesis is that millennials are, in fact, searching for the Divine, but that they want something authentic, not a trendy, prepackaged commodity that’s being pitched at them.
“That’s why upbeat music and stylish services don’t do it for Evans: Hers is a Christianity that is fully aware of darkness. ‘So much of what Christianity produces as far as books and literature and even music in our worship—it’s all very rosy, when that’s not really life, and that’s not really church,’ she said. ‘We carry the weight of many, many centuries of injustice, and that matters, and we can’t just ignore that.’”
Another aspect of the dark, authentic Christianity Evans has in mind requires embracing the messiness and diversity of life rather than forcing a tidy, homogenous, religious system of easy, black and white answers.
“Evans describes attending a conference of the Gay Christian Network, many of whom were evangelicals who had left or been asked to leave their churches. ‘I remember the first time I was called a … homophobic word,’ said a young woman, no more than twenty, who wore a flower in her hair and kept her eyes on her shoes. … ‘It was at a church.’ This, Evans said, is the issue that will define the church experience of many young Christians.”
Read about Ms. Green’s Interview with Rachel Held Evans in The Atlantic here.
