Tim Keller offered this observation in his introduction to “The Reason for God”. “A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.” Rachel Held Evans' first book "Evolving in Monkey Town" is all about avoiding that collapse.
Rachel grew up as a religious overachiever in Dayton TN, home of the famous monkey trial (a case where a biology teacher broke the law by teaching evolution). The book chronicles her questioning of American fundamentalist theology and ideology. I suspect a good many young women who grew up contexts like hers will relate to her story and her questions. I think one of the chief social functions of contemporary popular media is to validate and I think a lot of young women will find validation in the struggle Rachel voices. In some ways her voice in this book is a sort of Bizarro Anne Lamott, seeking a contemporary faith she can live with but coming from the other direction.
I hope Rachel is tough because a lot of people are not going to like this book. She openly expresses her doubts or disagreement of the party line positions on a whole range of issues that populate the “no man’s land” in the American culture war: gays, women in church office, pluralism, the Bible, Creation/evolution, etc. That isn’t unusual of course, but she does so with a pleading subvoice for inclusion in this community she has questioned. Communities that major in hard lines don’t usually have to think twice about how to respond to those who start to look like traitors to the cause. Others will simply dismiss the book as yet another 20 something evangelical breaking ranks for the emergent camp.
I think the book should be read in the context of the Tim Keller quote above. She speaks from a generation that is not simply going to accept the regime created to keep them compliant and they know they don’t have to. Perhaps what is most exposed by this early memoir is a misplaced faith the church has placed in its processes of indoctrination. Conservative Christians can speak glowingly about political liberty while saving their best tyrannies for their religious institutions. The information age has broken those tyrannies wide open and there is simply no going back for many of the sharp, literate, question asking 20 somethings like Rachel. Can traditional Christian orthodoxy find a new winsome identity in the public market place of ideas despite yet another generation that has felt itself poorly treated by some of its keepers?
Rachel I think speaks for a generation within her subculture when she writes “doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves”. One of my favorite chapters was a brief one where she describes her husband fixing up and flipping a house and repeatedly admonishing her to “respect the process”. These are words of wisdom for an older generation of anxious parents worried by where and how their children will land.
How will this book be used? I think it will bring comfort to a lot of young women who are haunted by what Rachel brings forward and won’t feel as frightened or alone because of her book. Most of what I hear her pushing against I have heard in the voices of many others like her. Anxious church leaders that simply can’t see why their formulas for next generational compliance are falling short might want to listen carefully to her story.
Our projects and programs for inviting next generations into the faith should never replace our faith in the one who calls them. Vital to this transference is the full and free appropriation of the faith which is always a scary process. Twenty years from now Rachel may be writing another book about her daughter’s doubts about Rachel’s questions and answers. Central is our Lord’s generational missionary enterprise is the kind of anxious questioning known to every praying Christian.
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Comments (8)
Given the different expectations for gender roles the subculture she is responding to clearly evokes a particularly female response. Also because it is a spiritual memoir gender comes through strongly in the book as well. I think plenty of men could relate to the issues raised but to me the book had a very clear feminine voice and I think young women in particular will resonate with it.
A writer's gender definitely influences the experiences they have to write about, but the significant questions she asks are universal.
Thanks for your thoughts on this book and the struggles that Rachel and others like her have gone through.
One central issue seems to be the question, "what is the nature of faith?" Faith is a word that means different things to different people, and has been largely de-valued, even within the church. So, what do you think Rachel means by the word / concept of faith? Indeed, what do you mean by it?
Doubt seems to be something of a mixed bag. While it's good and productive to raise doubts, I don't think doubt is something that should be prized for its own sake. That is, while doubt can function as a means by which new questions are asked, it's somewhat static all by itself... which is to say that I don't believe that doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves. At all. Especially if this doubt is raised out of resentment toward im/proper authorities, rather than being raised in response to the injustices that said authorities propogate. Doubting the idea that women are second class citizens, that LGBTs are lower than that, and that the Bible doubles as a science primer are good things to doubt, but doubting is not enough, and effects no change on its own. No: for faith to really evolve, these reasons for these doubts need to be explored, and a good constructive response to these doubts needs to be put forward.
I myself do not doubt the conservative positions on LGBTs, women in church office, pluralism, the Bible, or creationism. I flat out reject them. And I don't see why people like myself should beg to be included within the Christian communitiy we've questioned and opposed... we're already a part of it. Individual communities and churches may not accept us, but Christianity is as much our inheritence as it is theirs.
Injustice does not require a pleading subvoice... it requires a response and a resolution. If resolution comes at the price of no longer bearing the mantle of traditional Christian orthodoxy, then that's a price I think we should be willing to pay.
I worry about exemplifying doubt. I find that most people who hold to "traditional" values often do so over and against the futility that doubt can lead us into. Doubt is good because doubt is honest, but doubt itself doesn't lead very far. To praise doubt as the means by which faith evolves is good in that it allows us to doubt without thinking of ourselves as being unfaithful, but I wouldn't want to ever suggest that doubting for its own sake is a good idea, or that convictions and leaps of faith are bad ideas because they lack sufficient doubt. "Traditional" values require questioning, yes... but what they require even more are alternatives.
Thanks for your helpful comment. pvk
The questions she asks,especially the one biggie that causes a lot of people to stumble - "God, if you so love mankind - if you so love me - why did/do you allow certain things to happen?" - are relevant to every human being on this planet, not just to some gal raised in the south. It's a courageous thing to ask such questions, and even moreso to admit one's disagreements with almost everybody in your community.
I laughed out loud in some places - Held's humor and writing are wonderful - cried in others, and it surprised me to discover that her background (she had/has firm Bible-believing parents, an "in-church-nine-months-before-I-was-born" life, and was totally immersed in Christian pop culture for her entire life) - still led her to have questions about her faith. My upbringing was almost exactly opposite hers, and I ended up with the same questions. Until I read this book, I thought that I wouldn't have had so many doubts if I had been raised Christian. But I was wrong in this assumption. This book is really good when it comes to dealing with breaking down people's assumptions!