Why I’m Grateful to Rachel Held Evans

By Reverend Rachel Kessler — SOUL MATTERS

How do you appropriately grieve the loss of someone you’ve never met?

This is a question I have been asking myself since I was casually scrolling through Facebook one Saturday afternoon and saw news that Rachel Held Evans, the 37-year-old “post-Evangelical” progressive Christian author, had died from a rare convergence of medical complications.

I spent the next several days going through what I can only describe as the stages of acute grief. I would randomly burst into tears sitting in my office when I thought about how much she still had to give to the world of religious writing (not to mention any time I thought about her two kids who are even younger than mine!). Or I would feel a kind of intense rage at the injustice of her loss. As I have wrestled with my feelings, I keep coming back to one realization. Whatever else I feel, I know that I feel a profound sense of gratitude for everything that Rachel Held Evans accomplished in her all too short life and career.

I am grateful that Rachel Held Evans made me and so many others feel less alone.

If you have not gone through the process of disentangling from a conservative religious upbringing (particularly in American Evangelical Christianity), it is hard to describe. Friends do not…