Quotes by Rachel Held Evans

Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.

Gods ways are higher than our ways not because he is less compassionate than we are but because he is more compassionate than we can ever imagine.

What a comfort to know that God is a poet.

Caring for the poor, resting on the Sabbath, showing hospitality and keeping the home—these are important things that can lead us to God, but God is not contained in them.

(About changing faith) At our best, Christians embrace it, leaving enough space within orthodoxy for God to surprise us every now and then.

My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think shes right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)

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.

Turns out, I wasnt the only one struggling with doubt. I wasnt the only one questioning my churchs position on homosexuality and gender roles, and a whole host of other issues. I wasnt the only one who felt lonely on Sunday mornings.

Scripture doesn’t speak of people who found God. Scripture speaks of people who walked with God.

Faith is something you take a day at a time, not something you figured out at the start

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.

There is not a corner of this world that God has abandoned.

Wilhelm Dilthey puts it rather starkly, Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church.

Seems to me that for you, evangelicalism is like the boyfriend you broke up with two years ago, but whose Facebook page you still check compulsively.

In the years preceding the Civil War in America, Christian ministers wrote nearly half of all defenses of slavery.

My interpretation can only be as inerrant as I am, and thats good to keep in mind.

You cant get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.

When we refer to the biblical approach to economics or the biblical response to politics or biblical womanhood, were using the Bible as a weapon disguised as an adjective.

Invariably, I will be referred to Gleason Archers massive Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound explanations for every conceivable puzzle found within the Bible - from whether God approved of Rahabs lie, to where Cain got his wife. (Note to well-meaning apologists: its not always the best idea to present a skeptic with a five-hundred-page book listing hundreds of apparent contradictions in Scripture when the skeptic didnt even know that half of them existed before you recommended it.)

If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate and honor women, you will find them.