Rachel Held Evans, a best-selling Christian author who was unafraid to wade into fierce theological battles over issues like the role of women, science, gay and transgender issues and politics on her blog and social media, died Saturday, after spending weeks in the hospital for an infection. She was 37.
Her husband, Dan, who has been writing health updates, wrote on her blog Saturday that she had been weaned from an induced coma, but swelling in her brain was not survivable.
"This entire experience is surreal. I keep hoping it's a nightmare from which I'll awake," Dan Evans wrote. "I feel like I'm telling someone else's story.
Evans tweeted in mid-April that she was in the hospital with the "flu + UTI combo and a severe allergic reaction" to antibiotics and asked for prayers. Dan Evans wrote that she then developed seizures, so doctors put her into a medically induced coma.
An Episcopalian, Evans drew a large following in the evangelical community in both progressive and conservative circles. She criticized widespread evangelical support for President Donald Trump, encouraged women in church leadership, questioned a literal reading of the Bible, among other issues. From her home in Tennessee, she became a beloved progressive speaker at many conferences around the country.
Her books, including A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again and Faith Unraveled pushed theological boundaries for many conservative evangelicals but gave voice to many progressive evangelicals who had become frustrated with their churches.
Evans served on a White House council for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships during President Barack Obama's second term.
Evans emerged during a blog renaissance in the early 2000s. She once said that her evangelical church's activism on a Tennessee campaign to ban gay marriage eventually led her to leave that church, but she continued to write about her love for her church and the Bible and joined an Episcopal Church.
A Section on 05/05/2019