Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Keystone Work by a Recently Deceased Author, or Why Didn’t I Read This Sooner

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans

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Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read “Searching for Sunday” for a book club recently. I have been wanting to read the works of Rachel Held Evans, but life got in the way and distracted me until now. I was not disappointed. She melds her experience growing up in an evangelical church community with the youth groups, each reach opportunities, and community mindedness. As she grew into adulthood, she started to […]

For the cynics and realists…

Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

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Rachel Held Evans passed away earlier this year, and the world is a lonelier place without her writing. This is her most recently published book, and reading it after her death just added a layer of sadness that I didn’t expect. Growing up in a conservative Christian environment, she was always the “good church girl”… but things started falling apart in her faith when she began asking questions. How can we say that God is loving when the Bible says that He ordered the massacre […]

Looking at Christianity in unflinching, honest terms

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There are always polarizing figures in Christian circles, and Rachel Held Evans is no exception. She has energized liberal Evangelicals with a bent for social justice, inclusion, and mercy (I include myself in this) into action, just as she has outraged politically conservative Evangelicals who believe that being a Republican is a sign of morality, and that Democrats are evil. I am only slightly exaggerating—the last eight years have leached my patience. That said, Evans takes an unflinching look at faith and religious practice in […]

Rachel Held Evans’ brave, beautiful new book

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Before I launch into my review, a little background. I’m a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, who was raised Conservative. While I am still an active believer with a church home, I am also a pro-birth control, pro-LGBT liberal academic. There are moments where I feel not-at-home in either my largely secular academic community or my largely Conservative, often-anti-LGBT Christian community. When I find like-minded souls, I glow a bit more, because I feel understood. And loved. And that brings me to Rachel Held Evans. I read […]

I don’t think I could have lasted a week

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This is so not my usual reading material, but my aunt recommended it and was kind enough to lend me a copy, so I figured I would give it a shot. I ended up really enjoying most of it, and I’m glad I tried something outside my comfort zone. As a bit of background, I am a liberal atheist who lives in a very conservative state and works for a very Christian company. My parents made us go to church until I was a teenager, then stopped for […]



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