The Author (Rachel Held Evans)

Rachel Held Evans was born in the early 1980’s which, as she says in this book, made her a so-called millennial. That, she adds, gave her a mindset and a collection of values that made questions about her Evangelical Christian faith difficult to answer. The book chronicles her struggles with those questions, beginning with her decision to leave the church in which she grew up and ending with her not being affiliated with any single church, but having collected examples of faithful fulfillment, or fulfilling faith, from several.

A key factor in Evans’ considerations is her sense of family, manifesting primarily in her marriage to a thoughtful man named Dan but also in her relationship with her sister Amanda, which she describes as both inspiring and infuriating. The author’s concept of family, however, seems to go beyond experiences of both marriage and...