This week the world of Christian writing and thought and theology lost a pivotal figure in Rachel Held Evans. She went into the hospital at the beginning of the Lenten Easter season and passed away over the weekend of May 3. She was 37 years old. She had many books still to be written, many years with her family still to be lived, and many creative pursuits still to explore.

Almost immediately after she passed away news outlets and online sources wrote articles about her impact on modern Christianity. They talked about the way she articulated disenfranchisement with the current church, and the impact that she had in being a prophetic voice, “prophetic” here meaning one who reflects reality to the people around her and then calls them to something better.

One of the places that should have done the best job of memorializing her was the magazine, Christianity Today. This is the publication that is most frequently viewed as the voice of the majority of American Christianity and its trends, interest movements and culture. And the fact they bungled it speaks volumes.

There were also many people online who were harsh and insensitive. And even hateful. These are people who describe themselves as Christians and they celebrated her passing. This is a real problem, especially when you consider Jesus’ words in the Book of John that said love is how people will know someone is a disciple of Jesus.

This is something that is larger than just a one off anomaly in regards to a potentially divisive person within the church. This is reflective of the attitude of many Christians towards anything that does not up uphold their exacting uber-conservative demands. To see it all you have to do is look at all the ways Christians are known for what they’re against rather than the positives they’re for. It’s hard to want to be associated with a group that would be so dis-compassionate they’d be glad someone had died.

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To understand why Rachel might have been seen as divisive, it’s important to understand the environment she was responding to. It’s an environment where the Bible is inerrant and everything is tested against it. It’s an environment where men are generally seen as being the leaders and women are frequently the ones who do the heavy lifting of implementation. And this is all just the start of the things Rachel addressed in her writing.

Here’s the problem, particularly with the inerrancy of the Bible and the insistence that it be taken as literal: Those who claim to be Bible believers rarely realize they are not actually taking the Bible literally. And I don’t mean “literally” in the exaggerated sense as when you’re talking to someone at lunchtime and they say, ‘I literally couldn’t get out of bed today.’ I mean literal as in taking each word with it’s direct and intended meaning. Western people with the highest respect for and knowledge of the Bible are rarely observing the law of the Old Testament. They’re rarely, if ever, taking literally the proclamations of Jesus about loving your enemy or taking care of the alien or widow among you.

And guess what? Neither am I.

Everyone who lives a modern life is doing some interpretation of the Bible, wittingly or not. There’s history and traditions and interpretation thrown in that we’ve become blind to, and not by some underhanded scheme to deceive anyone, but simply by being immersed in the culture of “church”.

The fear that’s perpetuated is that if you ask hard questions about troubling passages, where will the questions take you? Where will they lead? If you question the inerrancy of the Bible, they say, you will start down a slippery slope that will probably lead to an unraveling of your faith. Better to leave those questions to the grown ups, who are most decidedly not you.

Start at 1:15 to hear what they say will happen if you question ANY of the Bible

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One of Rachel’s first books was called A Year of Biblical Womanhood . In it she tried to put into practice the laws and directives the Bible placed on women, such as sitting on her roof when she had an argument with her husband, baking bread a certain way, or even removing herself from her normal routine and sleeping in a separate tent one week out of the month.

What she accomplished through this experiment was to gently point out the absurdity of the claim while still respecting the underlying validity and importance of the Bible. She respected the Bible, felt it was full of truths and wisdom, even if it didn’t have to be used as a step by step rulebook to follow, such as Robert’s Rules of Order . That didn’t scare her, she let it be fine in its own self, rather than trying to force it to fit external set of criteria.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. She amplified voices of those who have been underrepresented, repressed, and discriminated against. She saw Jesus as building a bigger, longer table that could include more people, not fewer. Think about the way Jesus turned things on their head by hanging with those the established religious folks wouldn’t have consorted with by light of day. That’s who Rachel wanted to make space for.

My friend once described my parents as Jesus hippies. That made me laugh and I felt very comfortable with that idea, and I think they did too. I want to be a Jesus hippy. I want to be more concerned with the way my life communicates God’s love to the world around me rather than excluding people. And I want to be courageous in speaking up for those whose voice has been silenced.

Love, grace, and peace be to the memory of Rachel Held Evans, and may we all build longer tables to accommodate a larger feast.

Here’s a lovely article remembering Rachel Held Evans by Sarah Bessey

If you want to read one of Rachel’s other books you could try Searching for Sunday or Inspired , which came out less than a year ago. And if you read any of her books I’d love to hear what you think.