Weekend Book Review: Wholehearted Faith

Last weekend I began my weekend book review series, and if you missed it you can read it here. Today, I’m choosing and highly recommending a wonderful Christian non-fiction book I read by Rachel Held Evans called Wholehearted Faith. Happy reading!

This Week’s Pick: Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans

• Genre: Christian non-fiction
• Page Length: 256 pages (I listened to the audiobook version)
• Published November 2, 2021 by HarperOne
• A new collection of original writings by Rachel Held Evans, whose reflections on faith and life continue to encourage, challenge, and influence. 

This book is my first introduction to Rachel Held Evans, which made reading it more emotional, as I knew she’d passed away at age 37, the manuscript still unfinished. Yet her loving husband, close friend and writer Jeff Chu, and friend and fellow woman of valor Nadia Bolz-Weber wrapped themselves in and around her these beautiful essays, making the work feel whole.

Held Evans opens the door for the doubt and uncertainty we feel as humans wrestling with ideas of faith and Christianity and makes us feel safe to explore what’s inside. You don’t have the answers? You don’t believe others’ answers? You’ve been told your answers are wrong? That’s okay. You are welcome here. She writes, “ most of the openhearted wanderers I’ve encountered are looking not for a bulletproof belief system but for a community of friends, not for a spiritual encyclopedia that contains every answer but for a gathering of loved ones in which they can ask the hard questions.”

As I travel on in this life and see the world around me grow increasingly divisive and people drawn like iron filings to opposite sides, I feel like it’s lonely in the middle. As the Christianity that is dubbed mainstream becomes increasingly white, patriarchal, evangelical and conservative, I am finding the work of women like Brene Brown and Held Evans incredibly healing and validating. Held Evans explores the drawbacks to her own evangelical upbringing and how the Calvinistic view of God’s wrath and judgment of humans as evil-hearted sinners (in her amazing essay “Jonathan Edwards is Not My Homeboy”) has damaged so many members and seekers in the Christian faith. She also acknowledges the other side and how far-left Progressives can misuse science and their own agendas to do the same.

Instead, her journey has led her to what she calls wholehearted faith, centered around a God who loves us all. “Wholeheartedness means that we can ask bold questions, knowing that God loves us not just in spite of them but also because of them – and because of the searching, seeking spirits that inspire us to want to know God more deeply.” She points to women of faith in the Bible who have paved the way for her own journey, often overlooked but possessing great courage, which only can be fueled by God’s love.

She writes about what it looks like to love our enemies, and how we can often be our own worst. In a beautiful essay, “Loving our Enemies,” she describes how she learned the art of origami, printed out the hate emails she’d received because of her poking the evangelical bear, and made cranes and pigeons that gave “flight” to her hurt and served as tangible reminders of the struggle to love and forgive. “Something tells me that we might all be a bit more careful, a bit more gentle, if we knew how our words can travel through another’s ear and linger for a long time in their soul.” Her acute insights and honest humor invite us to believe in the goodness that can be found in choosing to love the entire book, margins and all, instead of throwing it at those who don’t fit in our box.

I listened to the audio version of this book and am going to buy the ebook so I can read it again and make notes and highlights. It is too packed full of beauty and wisdom to take in during one listening. I am also definitely adding her other books to my TBR shelf. I just wish a voice and a life like hers wasn’t cut off at such a young age, as it is obvious she had so much still to give, and share, and experience.

You can find this review and my other book reviews on Goodreads.com at

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans

My rating: 5 of 5 star


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