To kick off 2024 we thought we’d share a Nomad Revisited episode with you. Each month on Revisited Tim and Nick raid the Nomad archives, dust off an old interview, and ponder where their faith was then, where it is now, and what influences shaped that transition.
Nomad Revisited is usually tucked away behind a paywall on our Patreon page as a little thank you for the listeners who help us pay the bills. But we’re making this one freely available as a little New Years treat.
In this Revisited, we travel back to 2015 and a conversation Tim had with the much loved blogger and author Rachel Held Evans. Rachel was one of the early pioneers in the deconstruction space, blogging about her experiences of growing up in a fundamentalist Bible Belt culture, and her experiences of publicly questioning this.
Rachel became a beacon of hope for thousands of people wrestling with an evolving faith. But sadly she died suddenly in 2019 at just 37, leaving a husband and two young children. So this is an episode marked by sadness, but also a celebration of a beautiful life.
Interview starts at 15m 42s
If you’d like a brand new Nomad Revisited each month, then sign up at our Patreon page.
WEBSITE
BOOKS
Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions
QUOTES
“After a while you give up on trying to keep a label; you try and be the person that you are, you worship where you feel like you can worship, and if people decide to declare you a ‘heretic,’ then you just kind of have to deal.”
“My mantra throughout it all is: ‘I want to have thick skin, but I want to also have a tender heart.’ If I shut off the part of myself that can be hurt by criticism, then I’m also shutting off the part of myself that can feel empathy and compassion. And I’m not willing to do that. So – that means that sometimes it’s just got to hurt.”
“The challenge is to tell the truth about the church in all of its complexity and different shades – acknowledging the ugly parts while also acknowledging the beautiful, grace-filled, amazing parts.”
“The challenge is to not get sucked into naïveté on one hand or cynicism on the other, but to tell oneself the truth: that most of us are complicated people who are simultaneously sinners and saints.”
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