Early on the morning of May 5, 2019, Rachel Held Evans, only 37, died suddenly after a brief hospitalization. She left behind her husband, two very young children, and a theological legacy that will take years to unravel. She was immediately and intensely mourned on Twitter, her preferred social media platform and a Christian subcultural space she helped shape. Evans fled Bible-belt evangelicalism for the comfortable doubts of The Episcopal Church, frustrated that she had not been able to carve out theological space for herself. If she could have witnessed the heartbreak upon her death, however, she would have seen that she irrevocably had altered the face of American evangelical Christianity. Rachel Held Evans’s blog posts, books, and conferences provided refuge for many in the evangelical Christian church who questioned their faith and had many doubts about what the Bible taught about sexuality, hell, and creation. This podcast is a conversation about the influence of Rachel Held Evans’s beliefs and is a discussion about how she interpreted Scripture, why she was popular among evangelicals, and what her popularity says about the current state of the evangelicalism.
This Postmodern Realities podcast episode is a conversation with Journal author Anne Kennedy about her Christian Research Journal online-exclusive feature article“The Theological Legacy of Rachel Held Evans.”
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Other articles and Postmodern Realities podcasts featuring this author:
Have You Considered Trying Harder: The Theology of Rachel Hollis
Episode 136 Have You Considered Trying Harder: The Theology of Rachel Hollis