I read this book because I love Rachel Held Evans' blog. I think she might be one of my kindred spirits, theologically speaking. She was raised in a family and church steeped in conservative fundamentalist/evangelical American thought. She was a good student. She knew all the rules of who was saved and who was damned and how she was going to convert everyone to Christianity. She could win "sword" drills (remember those? finding a passage in the Bible faster than any other kid in the Sunday schoo...

Bullet Review:I am really glad the name changed from "Evolving in Monkey Town" to "Faith Unraveled" because the correlation between the actual subject matter of the book and the Scopes Trial is tenuous, at best. Reading the various attempts to intertwine the two were kinda painful, such as the mostly frivolous Chapter 3 on the history of Dayton, as really the only relation is that Evans became less fundamental (or as she calls, "evolved her Christianity") in the town where teaching evolution in

Rachel Held Evans and her two sisters grew up in a fundamentalist family in Dayton, Tennessee, a place best known for the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial that H.L. Mencken so deliciously sent up. Equal parts memoir, Christian philosophy, and explication of modern fundamentalism, Evolving in Monkey Town provides something for Christians and agnostics alike. I found myself really invested in Evans’ spiritual evolution, if you’ll pardon the pun. Despite living in Kentucky, home of snake handling, the Chur...

I’m not sure where to start with this Bimbo? She has no foundation for any of her liberal Christianity- so she spends the whole book attacking and mocking and criticizing everything she failed to understand in her lame attempt at apologetics And being a Saint in community. Mostly so she can justify her applauding of GLBTQ values and Democratic political views. There’s just gotta be a cherry picking way to make the god she hates more progressive on her pet social issues (even if she has to ignore...

I went into this book with an open mind. "How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions" might stand in as the tag line for my own faith journey. I too attended Bryan College, drank coffee at Harmony House, and had a minor crisis of faith in college. I even took the Christian Worldview class under Professor Held, Rachel Held Evans' Dad. I too grew up in a Christian home, won the awards, and knew all the answers. Then I moved 12 hours away to attend a private, Christian college...

A touching and proud account of Rachel's struggle with fundamentalism and her journey away from and back to faith. I love her honesty and her subtle sense of humor. She's also a wonderful writer. What a tragedy that she died so young. I will miss her voice.

Perhaps I am just reading this book at the exact right time in my life, but I think this is one of the best spiritual memoirs I have ever read. Rachel Held Evans is funny, brilliant, and brutally honest, but in a gracious, loving way. This is a book all about questioning our beliefs in God, and that it is okay to do so. This book has given me the courage to ask those questions I have been putting pins in, questions that I thought might destroy my faith if I asked, questions that might get me dir...

Ok, so I confess, my 5 Star rating of this is highly biased, because so many parts of it were like getting inside my own head of several years ago. This is a great read for anyone who ever struggled with trying to hold onto their faith, while having unorthodox views on evolution, homosexuality, politics, salvation and certain parts of the Bible.

I wish there was an option for half-stars. I liked this book much more than three-out-of-five stars would suggest. While I'm not convinced that I subscribe to everything Rachel (her, not me) believes or suggests in the book, I'm coming away from it feeling like I really *get* her. Or like she really *gets* me; I'm not sure which. Maybe it's because I have a natural affinity for other strong-willed women who love Jesus, love reading, and who have got wind of the idea that they can be or do anythi...

I read this book because of a post on Amanda Lawrence's Facebook page. I am so glad that I did. I highly recommend it for anyone who grew up in the ultra-Baptist world and has found themselves "progressive," "intellectual," "critical thinking," or any synonym of these. I grew up in Independent Fundamental Bible Believing Baptist Churches - just the kind Ms. Evans describes in this book. We were never taught to question or criticize anything and just told that the Bible is the "inherent Word of G...

When I read this book for the first time in 2012, I was still fairly early in my own deconstruction process. So Rachel's book challenged me and encouraged me in so many ways. I identified with so much of her own background. I've read it three more times since then. The most recent time I listened to Rachel read the audio book version as I drove to her funeral. This was both devastating and comforting at the same time.The bottom line is, I would recommend this book to anyone who was raised in a c...

So many wonderful bloggers I follow have books coming out. BooMama, BigMama, Annie Downs, Sarah Bessey, Elizabeth Esther, Ed Cyzewski, and on and on. Plus the marvelous and very funny Lisa McKay released her memoir, Love At The Speed Of E-Mail, in May, which I promptly devoured on my Kindle and tweeted to her in real time exactly where I was in the book so she could permanently classify me as a potential stalker enjoy my reading experience by proxy. Then I bought a hard copy. I know the Kindle i...

wow. this was amazing. I love Rachel Held Evans!! She was so open and honest about her faith and the questions she had. Her books are so helpful to my reconstruction faith journey.

I was only vaguely aware of Rachel Held Evans and her books until she died, tragically and suddenly, just two weeks ago. She was 37 but had already had (and I know will continue to have) a sizeable impact on building a more inclusive Christian church. She grew up in Dayton, TN, which was the home of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The original title of this book before it was reissued, was “Evolving in Monkey Town.” I think that was a better title, because it seemed to me that her faith didn’t so much

Loved, loved this book. It resonated with me on every page. I'm so glad there are other Christians like me in the world, other Christians who are going through the same questions and situations.

As someone who has left Christianity behind, but who is interested in what others draw from it, this was a fascinating read. I'm a sucker for a good memoir, and one in which there is a major break in a person's trajectory - real upheaval through which they have to work - is exactly my jam. So this was satisfying on a number of levels. I understood the Christian context, and indeed, my upbringing was very similar in some ways. I really understood all of Evans' questions, and how disarming it is t...

I appreciate the author honestly sharing her doubts and her interpretations of her personal faith and her reconciliation of how she was taught to perceive the world and her faith and how she actually perceives the world and her faith, but this book felt light in its explorations of how literal biblical interpretations of Christianity disenfranchise women and create an unequal power balance in relationships (her male friend's faith-mansplaining email (pp. 115-118) raised my hackles), it felt dism...

Well, this one hit a little too close to home. If you ever grew up in a world of AWANA, Bible drills, apologetics, Left Behind and other hallmarks of '90s Christianity, and you don't quite know how to make sense of it all anymore, then Faith Unraveled is for you.Author Rachel Held Evans walks through her fundamentalist childhood and explores the unwelcome questions that eventually drove her to step away from her faith community and rediscover her beliefs on her own. Evans is a great writer and s...

I decided to read this book based on a blog post I saw in a couple of places on my social media feeds. The title of that post is "Everyone's a Biblical Literalist Until You Bring Up Gluttony." That post, and this book, hit on very personal issues for me. In essence, this book rails against:1)The idea that Christians should have blind faith, ignoring their intellect 2) The idea that Christians/saved people have the right/ability to judge other people, especially gay people3) The idea that the bes...

I'm sad that I'm so late coming round to read Rachel Held Evans. This book and the spirit it conveys are a blessing, and I look forward to reading the rest of her work. But now, with her untimely death, I'm left to say what so many have already now said. Rachel Held Evans writes with grace and compassion of what a teacher of mine might call "a lover's quarrel with the church" -- or at least with a slice of the fundamentalist branch of the church. And that's in part, ironically, why I delayed in