A Review of the Book "Searching for Sunday" by Rachel Held Evans

                                                 

Title: Searching for Sunday

Author: Rachel Held Evans

Publisher: HarperCollins Christian Publishing Inc

Year: 2015

258 pages

Rachel Held Evans was always one of those authors that I had heard about and who was on my "to read" lists, but I had yet to get around to reading. Upon her death in 2019, I knew I just had to get my hands on her books and get them read. Not knowing if I should start from the beginning of her writing or not, I just grabbed the first one that I found in my pile. It was everything I expected, and more.

In Searching for Sunday, Evans writes about growing up in the Evangelical Church, doubting her faith and subsequently leaving her church, and then her reexamination of her Christianity while trying to find a new place to call home for Sunday worship. And she does all this "through a series of stories told around the church's sacraments."

The vulnerability that Evans shows in her writing as she delivers these personal stories of struggles and doubt is incredible, and it really hit home for me as I had (and have) many of the same doubts as she speaks of in this book. Even though you can feel the struggle in each story, Evans also has a way of ending them in such grace and hope that you can't help but fall in love with her story-telling.

As a priest, I was certainly drawn by the fact that she used the church's sacraments to show where faith meets doubt, fear meets hope, and life meets death meets resurrection. One of my favorite lines (and I had many!) was, "But lately I've been wondering if a little death and resurrection might be just what church needs right now." (p. 225)

Each week we celebrate the resurrection through the Eucharist, but are we doing so with our eyes shut and our arms crossed? With all the accounts of decline in the church today, perhaps we are all searching for Sunday, searching for the resurrection, searching for a home for worship.

Reading Searching for Sunday has given me the grace I need for my doubt and the hope I need for my faith. I look forward to read Evans' other books.