Reprising themes she explores in her books,   (Zondervan, 2010) and (Thomas Nelson, 2012), and on her popular blog, Evans repeatedly urged faith communities to nurture diversity and honor differences.

That message was one that Davis also wanted to celebrate.

“I was raised Pentecostal, attended a Brethren college, go to a Methodist church, and study at a Mennonite seminary,” Davis said. “When I found Rachel’s blog, I was struggling with faith and doubt and being a woman wanting to pursue pastoral leadership yet being told I couldn’t. What she talks about has resonated with me and inspired me.”

Similar feelings brought audience members to Harrisonburg from as far away as Pennsylvania and Indiana.

�������Բ�’ thoughtful, often humorous explorations of her evangelical faith and the Christian tradition have earned her both controversy and acclaim. She’s appeared on , , and in a host of national newspapers. She was named one of Christianity Today’s “” in 2012.

Church is where we ‘tell the truth about ourselves’

During a chapel talk titled “Keep the Church Weird — Millenials and the Future of Christianity,” Evans said that she’s often asked to speak about reasons why teenagers and twenty-somethings are leaving the church. Though at 32, she barely qualifies as a millennial, Evans thinks her (in one month last year, it received more than 272,000 visits) has come to resemble what the younger generation wants in a church: a haven for fellow-seekers and fellow-questioners, where alternative viewpoints are welcomed and explored.

“That’s what we want,” Evans said, reciting from what she termed a “litany” of millennial needs. “We want the church to be a safe place to doubt, a safe place to wrestle with tough questions about everything from sexuality to science to Biblical interpretation. We want the church to be where we can tell the truth about ourselves and about the world.”

She urged a change in style – to a “truer, more authentic Christianity” – instead of the all-too-popular and much too superficial “change in substance” of updated music, cool hangouts, and hip youth pastors. Too often, she said, branding and theology, denominational differences and the culture wars “get in the way.”

One of �������Բ�’ themes is that the story of Jesus is powerful and that God’s grace is “always enough.”

“Let’s get out of the way,” she repeated throughout the day. “We get in our own way. We get in God’s way.”

Clearing that path to God means letting in – and leading the way for – the marginalized, the poor, the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40), including the LGBT community, Evans said during an afternoon discussion with an Anabaptist Biblical Perspectives class. She is not merely stating her own beliefs, but sharing those of many millenials, according to polls by the Barna Group and Pew Forum.

“What gives you hope?” asked Bible faculty member at the end of the Q & A session.

The empowerment of the marginalized through the online community, Evans replied. “They are still coming. They still want to be part of this family, this church story. People from the margins will have positions of leadership and start changing things and have a voice. That’s exciting. That is really good news.”

Afterward, Schrock-Hurst said it was an honor for the campus to host Evans.

“Since her visit I have had numerous students share about how much they enjoyed her chapel presentation about millenials and the church,” Schrock-Hurst said. “Rachel has a gift for sharing concerns about her doubts and the church, and yet also models an inviting spirit that doesn’t let us off the hook on faith issues.”

The Bible as a conversation starter

�������Բ�’ evening presentation about her bestseller, The Year of Biblical Womanhood, drew a near-capacity crowd to Lehman Auditorium. The book chronicles �������Բ�’ year-long exploration of the Bible, during which she searched, exhaustively and humorously, for a single, cohesive formula of what it means to be a Christian woman.

In the process of exploring Biblical values such as gentleness, domesticity, obedience, justice and fertility, Evans also discovers that gender roles “get in the way of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.”

“Traditions that overemphasize gender roles reduce womanhood down to a list of acceptable roles, especially being a homemaker, a wife, a mother,” she said. “It’s not about acting like a man or acting like a woman. What matters is where you find yourself as a follower of Jesus. It’s not really about roles, it’s about character.”

That discovery led to a new relationship with the Bible, Evans said. Rather than seeking a “blueprint” for behavior and tradition, she now sees “the Bible as this beautiful, ancient collection of stories, proverbs, songs, and prophecies that pulls us into communion and community, that gives us something to talk about, precisely because it’s difficult to understand, it’s complex and complicated.”

For this reason, the Bible should be a “conversation starter, not a conversation ender,” she concluded. “Of course, we’re going to disagree. But no matter that we disagree, we’re still brothers and sisters in Christ. We can still break bread, share communion, be a family.”

All of Rachel Held Evans’ talks at EMU on March 19 can be accessed online:

Rachel Held Evans has attracted attention for her nuanced and accessible discussions about current issues in modern Christianity as the author of Evolving in Monkey Town (Zondervan, 2010) and The Year of Biblical Womanhood (Thomas Nelson, 2012) and a popular blog at www.rachelheldevans.com. She has promoted theological and political unity; fostered interfaith dialogue; celebrated powerful women; publicized social justice issues; and led fundraising campaigns for and , among other non-profit organizations.

Evans will speak at ��ݮ���� March 19 during a and also at . Both events are free and open to the public. Campus maps indicating Lehman Auditorium location and parking availability (which is free), are .

Evans has been spotlighted by NPR, Slate, BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian (UK), The Times London, The Huffington Post, and Oprah.com, in addition to speaking at retreats, conferences, universities, and churches of various denominations. In 2012, she was named one of The just-published 2014 edition of Faith: History, Mystery and Challenges Revealed ranked Held Evans No. 4 on its list of leaders shaping the next generation of Christians.

Raised in an evangelical, but progressive household (her father is a professor of Christian thought and Biblical studies), Evans grew up – and still lives – in the small town of Dayton, Tenn., infamously nicknamed “Monkey Town” after the 1925 Scopes Trial that tested the state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2003, she graduated from Bryan College, a nondenominational evangelical Christian college, and embarked on a career as a writer.

Her first book, Evolving in Monkey Town, is aptly summarized by its subtitle: “How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions.” In an interview, Evans recounts, “In my early twenties, after graduation from a Christian college, I began to question everything I’d been taught about origins, the Bible, about religious pluralism, about faith, about politics, about heaven and hell, and about what it means to be blessed by God.”

Her second book also wrestles with the teachings and conventions of her evangelical upbringing. By the age of 9, she writes, “I’d received a lot of mixed messages about the appropriate roles of women in the home, the church, and society, each punctuated with the claim that it was God’s perfect will that all women everywhere do this or that.”

The Year of Biblical Womenhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” chronicles the author’s year-long exploration of the Bible’s “formula” for womanhood. Each month, she delves into a different virtue, and attempts to follow the Bible’s teachings regarding women in her day-to-day life. A diehard Alabama football fan and naturally vociferous on just about any other topic, Evans unfortunately selects Gentleness as her first virtue (a godly woman has a “kind and gentle spirit,” according to Peter 3:4). To curb her tongue and cultivate civility, she tallies her transgressions with pennies in a “Jar of Contention,” leading eventually to a Proverbs-motivated punishment of roof-sitting (as mentioned in her subtitle). And that’s just in the first month of her radical experiment.

Since her first blog post in December 2007, Evans has written, sometimes controversially, about current issues among evangelical and progressive Christians, from gender roles to self-righteousness to homosexuality. She explores religious plurality in a post titled “Learn About Other Faiths (from the people who actually practice them).” Two of her most popular posts, about her personal search for a faith community to call home, are “15 Reasons I Left Church” and “15 Reasons I Stayed With the Church.”

�������Բ�’ has flourished as a discursive space where believers, wonderers, and searchers congregate. She regularly fosters interfaith discussion. “One in Christ: A Week of Mutuality” was a week-long conversation about the dueling Biblical views of complementarianism and egalitarianism. In the series “Ask A…,” she facilitates discussion between readers and experts in various faith traditions (a series on the topic of hell featured Q & A with a Christian universalist, a traditionalist/exclusivist, and a conditionalist/annihilationist).

Evans’ visit is co-sponsored by the President’s Office, Provost’s Office, Campus Ministries, Albert Keim History Lecture Series, and the Intellectual Life Committee.