Questions as Spiritual Practice: Remembering RHE + Resources for the Exvangelical Journey

Asking questions for courage and for our communities...

An altar space dedicated in gratitude to the work and words of RHE

Six years ago on Sunday, Rachel Held Evans passed away. On that early May day in 2019, I had just started reading A Year of Biblical Womanhood for the first time. I had been watching Rachel’s work from a distance, fascinated but nervous because I knew reading her work had the potential to ostracize me from my community at the time.

But there I was: quietly in the process of what I now call my deconversion from christofascism. I was working in Christian publishing full-time, grieving the recent death of a close friend, struggling with a litany of chronic health issues (my body screaming at me, finally unmuzzled from my days in the depths of Christian fundamentalism), and allowing myself to ask questions and trust that whatever answers I came to, the truth would set me free—as long as I allowed that truth to be whatever it was, not hiding myself behind dogma.

In the days and months and years that followed, I went on to read RHE’s entire body of work. And what stood out the most to me was the original cover from her first book, then titled Evolving in Monkeytown: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions (now titled Faith Unraveled). I was an ardent young earth creationist when I sat down to read it. Greeted by Rachel’s brash but welcoming pen, I saw that she loved the Bible and Jesus as much as I did, and her questions ran just as deep. And she said them…wrote them…out loud.

Rachel’s courageous work, and the work of so many others before and after her, allowed me to finally ask the hard questions.

Today, I’m living happily as a queer, disabled, exvangelical, and secularly-witchy writer/editor, surrounded by found family who are also not afraid to “ask the questions.”

My girlhood promise to follow Jesus led me away from Christianity, but even outside of that world, asking the tough questions has allowed me to find healing, vulnerability, and transformation within myself and within my community.

Just a few of my questions-asking community of found family

I still believe love holds up the universe and connects us all. And now as always, I believe in the power of the honesty of questions.

Today, I want to thank RHE and all who have gone before, who will come after, and who are here now, for their transformative courage of blazing a trail through question-words.

And if that vocation isn’t spiritual,¹ isn’t magickal,² isn’t divine,³ I don’t know what is.

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If you’re just beginning this journey of asking questions—especially within evangelical Christianity—below are some resources that helped me on my journey.

Through it all, remember: you are not alone.

Bookshop.org Recommendations

My Bookshop.org affiliate links page has a whole list devoted to books that can be helpful for faith-related questions.

(Full disclosure: I was a part of the editorial and/or proofreading teams for the following books on this list: whole by Marla Taviano, We’ll All Be Free by Caroline J. Sumlin, Theologizin’ Bigger by Trey Ferguson, and Giving Up God by Sarah Henn Hayward.)

Microcosm Publishing Recommendations

(NOTE: Microcosm Publishing books, including my book, don’t appear in my Bookshop Affiliate lists because I already work for Microcosm as an editor and author and therefore already benefit financially from Microcosm books sold. To avoid a conflict of interest, I’ll continue to share Microcosm book/title links in recommendations lists here on the blog, but I’ll be using links directly to Microcosm’s website instead of my Bookshop.org page in those cases.)

• My book, which does feature some reflections relevant to the exvangelical experience

• Unfuck Your Boundaries, Unfuck Your Brain, and Unfuck Your Shame by Dr. Faith G. Harper (the latter of which I was part of the editorial team for)

Substack Recommendations

• STRONGWILLED
  by Krispin and D.L. Mayfield (NOTE: I’m part of the developmental editing team for this project.)

• The Future Was Fun
  : exvangelical but still very Jesus-rooted, “no-dogma-only-wonder” writings—poems, reflections, and solarpunk fiction by my found family, ex-husband, and dear friend, Kevin Zeller

Other

• This is a questions-themed blog post I wrote for Christians while I still identified as one. It’s got my thoughts about questions, based on biblical sources. See also this article I wrote around that same time for D.L. Mayfield’s Healing is My Special Interest, about finding next steps after PTSD from religious trauma.

• I love Kesha’s TED talk, called “The Alchemy of Pop,” on not being afraid to approach taboo emotions/subjects/questions in our creative processes and life journeys.

• Undead Faith, my little PDF zine about monster myth, moral panics, and deconversion.

• Some other All The Threads posts about questions/faith transitions: here and here and here.

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: This list is by no means exhaustive; we grow and heal and learn in community. What resources have helped you in your questions-asking? Let me know in the comments.

In Wonder,

Kandi (Ivy) Zeller (she/they)

Thanks for reading! I’m a queer, disabled writer/editor, and what I do is made possible by readers like you. You can support me in this journey in a number of ways:

• Book me for an editorial project here and here

• Shop my Bookshop.org recommendations

• Buy my book

• Help with medical bills

1. When I describe or experience any tool/practices as spiritual, I want to acknowledge that that is not everyone’s experience. Any practice/tool I share is meant for all, regardless of spiritual label (or lack of label) or whether you experience these tools as spiritual or as some other adjective(s). Labels, while helpful in describing our experiences, are ultimately insufficient, so I want to hold space for that tension here.

2. I love the definition of magick laid out in this article: “action taken to bring about internal transformation or external change.”

3. Also, my understanding of how god expresses godself is expansive. Basically, I conceive of spirituality as our experience with divine love and connection. But even that feels a little religious-y. Put another way, I believe spirituality is the place where we as individuals and communities connect with the “force of love that holds up the universe” (in words sometimes attributed to Julian of Norwich), whether we conceive of that love as divine or as the love shared between fellow humans/other creatures or some combination of both loves. It is the place within our bodies and our communities where we find love and connection with all who have come before and who will come after.