I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with Rachel, on and off, since nearly a decade ago. She was always eager to introduce her readers to different voices — including atheists — and we joked in emails about how there was a lot more overlap in our values than our religious labels suggested.
As her voice became more popular, and her books began selling well, it would’ve been easy for her to stay within the boundaries of evangelical Christianity and build a career on that. Instead, she burned all the right bridges. She called out the hypocrites on her own side.
She defended LGBTQ people and their inclusion within the church community, fighting back against those who used the Bible as a weapon against them. She was “pro-life,” but knew that progressive policies (like affordable health care and comprehensive sex education) lowered the abortion rate. Criminalizing the procedure, as Republicans have long championed, wouldn’t make anything better. It’s why she urged evangelicals who were one-issue voters to support Hillary Clinton in 2016.
She pushed for change within white evangelical Christianity, and when she felt she could do no more to change their hearts, she walked away from them. In the process, she made a lot of other Christians rethink their own allegiances, especially people who claimed to follow Jesus but ended up getting linked to a political party that treats Jesus as nothing more than a strategic tool.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/05/04/progressive-christian-author-rachel-held-evans-has-died-at-37/
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