Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 400 Sarah Bessey Returns - Braving the Truth with Rachel Held Evans
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In this episode, I sit down with Sarah Bessey to talk about editing Braving the Truth, a curated collection of blog posts and essays from Rachel Held Evans that feel as timely now as when they were first written. We explore Rachel’s legacy, her refusal to give in to dualistic thinking, and her commitment to telling the truth without surrendering love. This conversation is about long-term faithfulness in a time of backlash, how to plant hope in our own patch of earth, and what it looks like for us to carry the baton forward, so that we can brave the truth.
Sarah Bessey is a Canadian writer whose work creates spaces of welcome where questions are honoured, stories matter, and resilient hope is practiced, one small faithful act at a time. She is the bestselling author of five books including Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith and the New York Times bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer. Sarah also writes the bestselling weekly Substack newsletter Field Notes.
Living in Calgary with her family, she writes from the ordinary rhythms of life with warmth and theological generosity.
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I feel really strongly that if you want to understand kind of this moment in the church, but even everything that's being built on since then, you really do need to deeply understand Rachel and Rachel's work and her her witness in the world.
Joshua Johnson:You Hello and welcome to the shift in culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, you know we live in a time where forgiveness feels rare, Nuance feels dangerous and despair feels like the default setting, and yet Rachel Held Evans insisted on something different, truth telling without dehumanizing, resistance, without surrendering love, faithfulness, Without Easy Answers. In this episode, Sarah Bessie joins me to talk about braving the truth the new anthology of Rachel's blog posts and a bunch of reflections by some of the people that were impacted by her work, and we talk about why Rachel's words from 10 and 15 years ago feel like they were written for today, we talk about backlash, long term resistance, planting onions and dark seasons and what it looks like for us to take the baton and keep running so that we can brave the truth today. So join us. Here is my conversation with Sarah Bessie. Sarah, welcome back to shifting culture. So excited to have you back
Sarah Bessey:on Oh, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation. It's good to see you.
Joshua Johnson:You just started to edit a book called braving the truth, which is Rachel Held Evans blog posts. You were leading with Rachel when she died. You started to handle some of her legacy. What, what's next for, for for Rachel's work and what we're doing, where we're going. Why this book? Why her blog posts? Why do you think that this is an important thing for the world?
Sarah Bessey:Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. I mean, I'm certainly not alone in wanting to care for Rachel's work and her family and her voice. You know, in the years since we lost her so suddenly in 2019 in the immediate aftermath of that because so much life was still in the midst, Rachel had nearly finished a new book called wholehearted faith that was completed by Jeff Chu. There were a couple of children's books that were completed by Matthew Paul Turner, and so a lot of that work was kind of finishing things that Rachel already had in process and already had ready to go. This book is a little bit different than that, in that it is kind of this collection of essays, but also reflections and contextualization from other voices who were alongside of Rachel at the time. And this book kind of came about because Rachel's widower, Dan had approached me a few years ago and basically said, You know what? The Internet has changed. You know, blogging as we knew it back in that era is long gone. Has been for a long time, and there's this sense of not only from people who were reading Rachel at the time, but from those who would like to revisit things that she had written or who felt like they were incredibly necessary and pertinent for what is happening right now. Because so much of our work was so deeply prophetic, there was this idea of like, well, let's make something a little bit more permanent, you know. And I think initially there was this sense of like it being a collection or a keepsake, or like an anthology of a moment in time. But as the last two years have kind of unfolded, it has shifted, for me, of seeing it as kind of this gift from the past for the future, that it's not just kind of this retrospective thing for people who are there, it's for people now, and I think it's even for the Church of the future to understand this moment in time, the generational shift that has kind of happened in the church, what the origins are. Even a lot of the spiritual leaders that they listen to now were deeply influenced by and were listening to Rachel, and so having that origin story, I think, became even more important
Joshua Johnson:as I was reading through this book. I'm somebody that I read Rachel's books. I didn't read her blog, so it was something where I'm going back and going, Oh, I didn't read all of this. And it felt very prescient for today. I'm like everything she's talking about. We could have the same conversation
Unknown:right now. It's kind of depressing, but, yeah, it is very depressing.
Joshua Johnson:It's very depressing, but I told my wife that last night we were talking about this, and told her it was very prescient. She said, Well, Rachel was a prophet to the prophets, and not just a prophet, but I think she's a prophet to the prophets who are now, is what you were. Were saying, Adam. As she was one of the first, I think, as we're writing this, and you and some others around that time were starting to unveil things that were under the hood, that weren't really working very well, that not many people were seeing. What do you think that people have started to take now from her and her legacy that is impacting other people now, it's impacting other voices and other other people in the way that we talk about the church.
Sarah Bessey:Yeah, I think there's a number of things. I mean, that was one of the challenges I felt like I had when I very first began to kind of spend all of this time in our shared past, you know, in these archives and in these moments. You know, do you do things chronologically? Do you do things as they happened in real time? You know, how much legwork and lifting do you do to explain certain moments in time? But the thing that kind of emerged was, like, very thematically, there were things that Rachel was speaking to, and it's exactly what you you were pointing out, right? I mean, you know, far from being someone who was just very much, you know, she was often characterized as being, like controversial or or combative even. But I think that when people have that response, it tells me that they really profoundly misunderstood not only Rachel's work, but Rachel because she was unrelentingly for things that she loved and that she believed in. I think that's why she was so passionate about the church. Like one of my favorite essays or reflections in the book comes from Glennon Doyle, who writes that, like Rachel had it required such strength to stay and to complicate this story, to not just abandon ship when it came to Christianity. And so the things that Rachel was talking about at the moment that feel very prescient are things like what she used to call like the the unholy American Trinity of like patriarchy, white supremacy and Christian nationalism. You know that she was speaking to things like LGBTQ plus inclusion when that was still considered an incredibly controversial conversation and take which, sadly, has not changed that much. But she also wanted to write and talk about what she dreamed about for the church and what she envisioned and what could be beautiful about it being uncool and weird and messy and like she loved scripture, and it's like her nerdy love for the Bible was what made her so committed to like, grappling with what it meant and how that would actually inform how you moved through life. And so I think that all of those things across the board are what end up being the thing that is so incredibly meaningful. There's a lot of people with a lot of opinions and takes on things nowadays. We're very viral driven. We're very hot take kind of oriented short video notions. And the way that Rachel used to just really honor her audience, of going really quite heavy in, in in these areas, and not taking the easy way out, but really trying to bring in the nuance and the conversation and the community that was around it, I think is part of why people trusted her in that moment, there were moments in there of her intense vulnerability and honesty that made people pay attention when she spoke up, because they felt like they knew her and they were alongside of her, and in a lot of ways, they were
Joshua Johnson:what do you Think we miss in our social media? Viral short video, type of hot takes, moments that Rachel was giving us in what we think is, you know, a blog, and there's still lots of comments and going back and forth. And she was very she was on Twitter, going back and forth with people, but her essays seem to be thoughtful. That seemed to be like she's actually really taking time and putting something down that she believes needs to be said, and not just as wasn't just reactive, but it was like wrestling with, like, slow faithfulness. What are we missing now that Rachel was giving us then?
Sarah Bessey:Well, quite a lot. I mean, I think that that one of the things when Rachel very first started her blog in 2007 to be honest, she didn't have a whole lot of interest in blogging. You know, she saw herself more as, like a writer, right, like as someone who wanted to write books. And at the time, blogging was a very new medium in a lot of ways, and it was, you know, quite, you know, Twitter had just started. You know, Facebook at the time was primarily, you know, university students. So even the landscape of. Social media was very different, and so the ethos that Rachel wanted to bring to the blog was exactly that it was very thoughtful. She wanted to treat it with the same seriousness you would treat like a book chapter or that sort of thing. But the other aspect that was really, I feel like a different thing about Rachel was that she never really forgot the people who were reading it. You know, she really fought to remember to write for her kindred spirits and not for her critics. And there was this real sense of community around blogging at the time that's almost hard to explain to people who weren't there, because in so many ways, like you would write a post in response to something a commenter had said or, you know, so it was a very communal kind of experience. And I think that's the thing that maybe we're missing right now, is the idea of relationship and even the idea of humanity and personhood. You know, Rachel really insisted on being Rachel in that space and in all of her places, right, that she didn't want to just be, you know, someone that was throwing up opinions on the internet, but there was a real groundedness in her life and in her marriage and in her church, in her community, and the things that she was afraid of and the things that she longed for in her experiences becoming a mother. I mean, all of those aspects were points where she was trying to point out that almost everything we think and believe and hope about God has its roots in your life. And so that's the thing that we really are kind of missing right now. It feels like that sort of wholeheartedness, that sort of honesty and truth telling, the vulnerability. And I think the other thing that I would say that Rachel really impacted me, personally, and I think a lot of others, was the idea of being alongside of people, instead of ahead of them, or like we kind of came up in a version of Christianity that was very hierarchical. And this idea of, well, the smart people are going to tell you what to think. They're going to tell you what your opinions should be. They're going to tell you what your marriage should look like. They're going to tell you how to raise your children. They are going to tell you how to vote. They're going to do and so this notion that Rachel embraced was, I want to be alongside of people, and it's almost this respect and this honor that she had for everyone who was there as fellow teachers of you know, her husband, Dan, used to always say, like, just assume you're not the smartest person in the room. And she kind of brought that spirit to it, and that's something that I think still feels incredibly rare in a time when, like, nobody will admit that they're wrong, nobody will apologize. It's seen as like this huge thing if you change your mind based on new information, like you're supposed to stay very, you know, entrenched in your opinions and your beliefs, and this embodied evolution was really remarkable at the time. It's become even more remarkable as the years have
Joshua Johnson:gone by. That point struck me yesterday, we went to see Hamilton yesterday, and then there's a there's a space in the unimaginable song that Eliza and Alexander Hamilton look each other, and the song says forgiveness, and they start to hold hands again, after immense pain and grief loss because of infidelity, like getting your son shot and killed, like there's a whole bunch of horrible things, but then coming together, and my wife and I were actually weeping at the moment, and it hasn't really struck us, But I think because we're in a time now where we don't see that anymore. We don't see the Hey, you did something wrong. I hate you. You're like, you're done. You don't actually see any humanity. What I love, even in most of her essays and a lot of her essays, one of them she has, you don't hate me. You hate my brand. She talks about, like, the brand of Rachel Harold Evans, people are hating her, but not her herself, because they don't they didn't really know Rachel. But she also, then in that, talks about Mark Driscoll, like, I don't really like what he's saying, but I don't know him, so how could I hate him as a person? And that seems to be pretty radical, right? Like, thinking about today, like that seems really radical and amazing. Like, what do you what did that do for people to give permission to see the humanity even in their harshest critics, the people that like you disagree with and you don't believe they're telling the truth.
Sarah Bessey:It's so true. And I think that that that's the aspect of Rachel's work and legacy. I think that really does stick. With you in a way, like there's another essay that she wrote that we included in the book about why she turned her hate mail into Oregon origami. I was trip over it, and want to say it like a Canadian origami, you know. But I'm learning.
Joshua Johnson:I'm behaving. You can say origami, it's okay.
Sarah Bessey:No, you can't, and so. But in the essay, she writes about how she was inspired to do this thing of taking something that was hurtful and damaging, like her hate mail, whether it was through email or comment sections, sometimes physical letters that were sent to her in her home, threats, you know, things that are really speaking from experience. They're deeply hurtful and harmful to your soul. And she decided for Lent one year, that she was going to print all of those off and fold them into origami, swans and foxes and little bears and things. And it became this communal experience with her friends and her family, and then learning how to pray for people that had cursed you, learning how to hold this opinion and understand even the fact that your words last so much longer in people's souls than the time it took for you to type it out and press Send right. And so I think that it was that deeply humanizing work, whether it was holding herself publicly accountable for not always doing it right, for being quick to say I screwed up, I've been drawing with a pretty broad brush. Here I have, you know, misspoken. I've made enemy. I've cursed enemies instead of praying for them, like whatever like she was pretty quick to understand when she was wrong about some of those things, which in itself, sometimes felt pretty revolutionary. But then you had moments like this where it was like, Okay, this is what it means as you move through your life. This is what it means that if you are going to insist on mercy and love and gentleness and self control and goodness, then that has to, has to be across the board, and yet, she never shied away from naming what was true. Either it's just there. There's something about being faithful, to name what you are against or what you need to call out while still moving forward in love and in forgiveness, and so both of those things are, it's a pretty, pretty hard line to walk, right? It's, it's one that I think ends up being deeply spirit led, because there's times, times to do either one
Joshua Johnson:we need that and we need that example, and we we need to step into that today. I don't know any other way to do it than I know right embrace the Jesus ethic of of loving our enemies and right loving our neighbors like I don't know of any other way to do it, and I don't know if the world can move on unless we we we figure out how to do that together. Rachel was not just loving enemies or seeing the humanity in others. She was giving voice to those that were voiceless. And she was saying, Come along with me. I'm going to highlight you. I'm going to highlight your voice. You're not being heard here in the church here, I'm going to help you out here. She seemed to be like, hey, pointing pointing people out, like, hey, come along with me, and let's do this together. What did that mean for you personally? And then, as you saw her do it with others,
Sarah Bessey:this was a quiet and yet very major part of Rachel's life. It's not something that maybe a lot of people from the outside would know, and yet, she was deeply committed to amplifying, honoring, even in a lot of cases like opening opening doors, and, you know, advocating for writers and speakers and activists who had been marginalized or misrepresented or oppressed within the industry of, you know, Christian publishing in particular, and so a huge aspect of her blog at the time, but then even her quiet, kind of behind the scenes work, and even what we ended up doing a lot at evolving faith was kind of this idea of, like, there's a lot of people worth listening to that the gatekeepers don't want you to really hear right, and so, you know, she, she did that work a lot on the blog, not only, you know, in terms of interviews, guest posts, you know, shining a spotlight on folks, but even in other ways, of just, you know, constantly recommending people for speaking engagements, you know, making sure that she endorsed books or introduced people to publishers, that sort of thing. So from personal experience, you know, I'm just some you know, mum in Western Canada, who starts a blog in 2004 you know, and Rachel's path intersected with mine is a very common story. For a lot of people who became friends with Rachel, and I was in the midst of a bit of a I don't know, I can't remember even what it was about, but there was, I had written something about a conference that didn't have very many women speakers, and I got caught kind of in the crossfire of a lot of defensiveness and anger about naming that. And sure enough, there, there was Rachel. She was at my side, she emailed me, reached out, and just kind of tucked me into her circle. And was like, Okay, well, now we're friends, right? And that is a very common story for a lot of us, and it did feel like a community then at that point. And so sure enough, when it was time and I wanted to write a book, Rachel introduced me to her literary agent, her speaking agent. She sent me her very first book proposal as a model for what I should put together when I was writing Jesus feminist. She wrote the foreword for it. She endorsed every like just the amount of labor and work she did for a lot of us, because that's not unique in that that was the experience for a lot of us. And so it was this kind of, like embodied friendship and very practical, pragmatic, like amplification for voices that she felt were missing in the conversation. And it turned out that there were a lot of us worth listening to, whether it was, you know, at the time, a lot of women's voices were not being, you know, published in quite the same way that they are now. Or it was LGBTQ plus Christians. It was people of color. It was, you know, just across the board, there were voices that needed to be heard and published. And the internet kind of helped us all find each other and after each other a little bit.
Joshua Johnson:Rachel, you know, started out really speaky, moving from, you know, an evolving faith, from her really conservative evangelical faith, into what she started to evolve in, and it continued to evolve. A lot of it was speaking to the conservative evangelical crowd of like, hey, let's move past a lot of what's happening here. You know, I interviewed Ronald rohlheiser, is great Catholic writer of the spiritual life. And when I asked him what books he recommends, he recommended Rachel Held Evans. And it seems, in one sense, a big jump from, you know a Catholic writer on the spiritual life to recommend, Rachel health Evans, but on another hand, it's not she's writing about universal themes and not just one pocket of the church. Why do you think what she said transcended that conservative evangelical moments into something else, into really the broader, Big C church around the world.
Sarah Bessey:Yeah, I think that's very true. I mean, even from my own perspective, like, I don't think I really knew what a Southern Baptist was until Rachel explained it to me, right? Because that just wasn't my story, that wasn't my context, that wasn't the background that I was from. And yet I felt like despite how different our experiences were and our upbringings were, the voices that dominated our becoming the more particular she got, the more universal it felt. And so I think that that was the experience for a lot of us, where maybe the exact thing that she was speaking about, like a big part of her first book, evolving in monkey town, was the original title. I think it's called Faith unraveled now, how a girl with all the all the right answers learn to ask questions, or something like that. But a big kickoff point for her was around science. It was around creationism and it was around evolution. And that was highly specific to Rachel, because she lived in Dayton, Tennessee, the home of the Scopes Monkey Trial. And so this was the thing that had deeply formed her own becoming, and yet for a lot of of people who maybe would not really understand why. This was the thing that kick started your deconstruction. Kick started seasons of doubt and disillusionment and questioning with the church. The truth is, is that most of us, if you live longer than a hot second, and you're just a little bit honest, usually you do get there, right? If you, if you haven't, kind of experienced a season of wilderness or doubt or disillusionment or cynicism or a loss of hope, usually means you're not paying attention really well, right? Like just if you're paying attention in your life, these are intersections we all come to. And so her being able to name that and journey through that in public, I think, was the part that was so universal for people. And so even when the blog continued to grow and her voice continued to travel to corners that you never really would have quite expected. And you know she her books became more and more widely read and bestsellers, and you know she was part of President Obama's faith Council, like just you know her in. Influence continued to grow, and yet there was this core thing of naming that experience that seemed to keep her very honest and keep people connected to the story. So like, I'm particularly thinking of like, I remember one essay we included in the book was called I don't always tell you, and it was one her, her basically saying, I don't always tell you when there's days that I really don't believe any of this, you know, or that I'm not sure where I fit, or if this is even worthwhile, and even her insistence on not tying that essay up in a little bow of not coming back to it with like and so here's the three things I do in order to make sure that I, you know, stay in line, you know, or whatever else, she just let it sit there in the discomfort she had a lot of honor and respect for her her readers, and even just refusing to solve that for them. And so I think that's where, no matter whether you were, like her, Southern millennial woman, big Alabama college football fan, like whatever it was you know, or someone you know very different, this universal experience that she spoke to meant that you felt like you found yourself in her story somewhere, and that courage that it took to name that, to pay the price of naming that both professionally and communally, but also to make sure people felt just a little bit less alone. It really mattered. It made it made a really big difference for a lot of us.
Joshua Johnson:As you were looking back on these essays and her blog posts, what struck you today that was different than 15 years ago, or, you know, whenever she was writing these blog posts, what impacted you differently today?
Sarah Bessey:Oh, a lot of things, to be honest with you. I mean, I hadn't spent as much time with her blog since she since she died, and it was a heavy lift. You know, there were a lot of days where we're just, you know, face down on the carpet, having a good cry. But I think the thing that surprised me was how much hopefulness was woven through almost everything that she was writing. There was a profound like, faithfulness to Rachel's work that really spoke to me for the moment of time that we are in. You know, people used to say that use the word profit a lot for Rachel, and she always was kind of like side eye about that. Like, never really quite, you know, we took that mantle on for herself. She had a lot of suspicion around that, to be honest. I think most of you know, the fact that the book is even here would probably be like, okay, you know, for her, but there was this incredible awareness. Also, there was a lot more laughter than I remembered. You know, there were stories that I'd forgotten, origin stories, people that whose lives interacted, you know, at a moment in time, and then things shifted and changed. I think for a lot of folks, they'll be surprised by how much things that Rachel was writing 1015, years ago are incredibly relevant for us, and how we rise to the moment of our time. And I think that's the part that surprised me, was this sense of like hopefulness and faithfulness, and what that actually looks like in embodied in a real life.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah. I mean, we live in a time where it feels like despair is, is maybe the primary emotion going forward, and we're we're seeking any sort of hope or and we're seeking people that are faithful, as you started to gain some more hopefulness and faithfulness. In her writing for you today, what would you say to us that are in full of despair, and we're struggling right now. How do we hold on to some of that hope, and how do we stay faithful in the midst of the chaos that we find ourselves in?
Sarah Bessey:It's a good one. I'm flipping through the book because I'm thinking the one in particular, but there was this essay that she wrote about a plan for faithful resistance. And this was was one that ended up, I think, I don't know that she quite understood the way that it would be necessary over the long term, but one of the things that I remember finding really interesting about about it. She was talking about how, like, everything that's happening right now is not like the normal ebb and flow of, like liberal and conservative shifts in power, like we are actually in, you know, kind of very unprecedented, quote, unquote, overused word, you know, kind of time. And so she was wanting to kind of take a look at, say, you. At her honesty of saying, you know that I'm someone who tends to get, like, incredibly passionate about a thing, throw all my energy at it, burn out quickly and then just disappear, because nothing changed immediately. And so she wanted to look at this idea of, like, long term resistance that was not for days, not for weeks, not for months, but like, years. What is it gonna look like if your life for the next period, this next era of your life, is going to look like faithfulness, then here's what that might look like. And that was something that I found incredibly helpful and and like it is very practical. I mean, Rachel was always like, pretty, pretty pragmatic around like, community and activism and that sort of thing. But the thing that she ends off with is talking about, like, the importance of, like, planting onions, like, and it's quite, you know, she, she borrowed the idea from Madeline gal. She had written the forward for, I think, the Genesis trilogy it was, but it was this idea of, like, there's this importance of remaining committed to, and I'm reading here those slow, growing, long term investments in my family and my community in the world, no matter what happens. And so this idea of like those after school tutoring sessions may strike you as low impact when you survey the great needs of the world, but the investment of your time and energy and care can alter the trajectory of a kid's life forever. And so like, even when you get discouraged, it's like these little pieces of Earth where you are cultivating your hopes and your dreams matter, right? And so it was incredibly helpful, I think, especially for those of us who feel at times the powerlessness of our place in this moment. Like, what is it that I'm really doing? It's like, well, you have all these things that you can do, and they're important, and you need to do them. But also, here's, here's your life. What is it going to look like to love it, and what is it going to look like to be faithful to it and to show up for it, and to not surrender goodness in this patch of earth,
Joshua Johnson:we need to not surrender goodness and patch of earth, man, that's a, that's a great word to figure out how to actually live that out. You know, the your first section in the book, and the theme really doubt, asking questions. I think it's a, it's non dualistic thought. Is really a lot of what she was getting at, probably at the beginning of her blog as well figuring out, you know, a lot of either or thinking, I find that we're still having those arguments now, like we can't get out of this space in his hands. I know we can't, we can't see nuance. We both are are nearing 50, right? And so we're looking we're looking back. I feel like sometimes I'm this old crotchety guy, like, like it's getting worse. It's worse now than it ever has been. But it's not like we've been dealing with these things for a long time. We're still dealing with them, which is unfortunate. But when you think of something like non dualistic thinking, like, what did that do for people? What permission did it give people to to live out? I think some of this actually had a major impact on the church world and on faith in the last 20 years, like there's been a huge shift in moving from dualism into something with more nuance. What do you think that shift started to look like, what is it? What did it do for the church?
Sarah Bessey:Yeah, I think that there's, there's a couple things that I can point to, and I think that that Rachel's story ends up being very emblematic of, which is, there was this moment in time when, given the nature of the internet, voices that had not really been heard, were being heard, and people who had felt previously incredibly alone and isolated found each other, and you realize you're not quite as alone or as quote, unquote sinful or broken as you know the people around you would maybe Say, for doubt, for asking questions, for saying, well, but what about this? Or well, actually, there's a lot of different ways to read that part of the Bible, and maybe our way isn't the only way, and you know, so that sort of thing, which, you know, was incredibly freeing and empowering. I don't think that the notion of faith deconstruction is new by any stretch of the imagination, but it was the first time that I'm aware of that it was being talked about so openly and honestly, let alone being embodied. Even this notion of like being able to push back or question authority was like really different, right? Right? Like it was just to have these kinds of public square arguments and conversations and discussions and, you know, think pieces, it was very electrifying, and it felt new. And, I mean, and even speaking, I think, in some nativity around the time, you felt like you were maybe changing the world, right? There was this sense of, like, where we're doing something and we are seeing hearts and minds change, and organizations shift, and people finding freedom. And it was really beautiful in a lot of ways. But what ended up happening is, is also what comes along with any sort of growth or change or progress, which is, there's always like this immediate, overwhelming backlash. And I maybe should have seen it coming more than I did, I think especially because there were times when I would talk to women who were leading and, you know, for instance, in, you know, in biblical equality and Christian feminists that were second wave feminists who saw a tremendous amount of progress in the 70s. And the number of times I spoke to those women on whose shoulders that most of us stood, and they would talk about how much grief they had that it was still a battle for us because they were like we thought we were solving it. For you, I had this conversation with multiple older women, and then came the 80s and the Moral Majority, and the backslap backlash and all these other things. And we ended up losing, actually, a lot of ground in people's lived experiences within church and marriage and the dominant voice that that kind of emerged, you know, that was very politically motivated. And so at the time, I think in the late 2000s early 2010s I was like, well, that's okay. We're gonna fix it now, you know, which is incredibly naive. And I mean, again, you're young, right? And so now seeing, I think, the reality of that cycle, and understanding that we're in another moment of things being clawed back, whether that's rights, freedoms, ideas, notions, even the idea of, like, pathologizing things like doubt and empathy you know, or or compassion, and somehow trying to, like spiritual hermeneutical gymnastics your way out of, like the sermon on the mount you know, or whatever else it is. This is a moment, I think, when voices like Rachel's at that moment in time, or voices of our elders from previous moments, who are still here and more than happy to have these conversations with us. There's this real profound sense of like, Okay, now what and then? What does it look like to borrow some bravery? What does it look like to continue to practice faithfulness. What does it look like to, you know, to embrace love and goodness and even peacemaking in a very ordinary sort of way that kind of does not capitulate to the powers and principalities of our of our moment in time, even if they come dressed up in a big gold cross around their neck. Like there is something really important about understanding that cycle and then the importance of like, here's where these voices are really important, and what you need to kind of be equipped for.
Joshua Johnson:What's ahead is that cycle inevitable? Is there always progress and then backlash and we lose ground? Is it inevitable, or is there something that we have missed? Is there wisdom in something where we could actually move it, where it's not a huge pendulum swing back towards other direction, but maybe it's a smaller one, and we're like, going down the more narrow road. Is there any wisdom there, like I don't know, or is it just inevitable? Is this just how the world works, and we just have to deal with it, and we just have to keep braving the truth and speaking,
Sarah Bessey:oh, that's that's way more cynical than I usually let myself feel. To say that it's inevitable. I don't think that it is. I think one of the things that that has emerged in the midst of all of this is the deep value and importance of understanding that it is a narrow road, and that I think, I think the thing that can sometimes be a bit difficult is when you feel like the church is the author of sometimes, and I'm using big C church, right, like the movement of, you know, Even what Rachel would call like, kind of that unholy American Trinity thing, where there's a profound sense of betrayal, right? And so I think that that's where the cynicism is understandable. I think the disillusionment is understandable, and even the despair and the loneliness, and even there's no part of me that doesn't understand why people kind of say, You know what, I'm out like, I just, I can't, Jesus, I love, I love this way of moving through. I cannot be aligned with this any longer. And I deeply understand that decision. And honestly, you know, have made that one myself a time or two before, you know, kind of circling back around. But there is this sense. Of like possibility in embracing your role as the remnant and saying, You know what? This they don't nobody gets to take Jesus away from you, and you are still just as much a part of the church and the way that you want to that you are engaging in peacemaking and making things whole and bringing goodness to the world. Those are all things. Those are all things that are making a difference and that are shifting powers, right? And I think some of even the screaming that we see around us from the alternative is precisely because it is making a difference and it does matter. And I think you see these pockets and outposts of faithfulness that help you realize you're not quite alone as as it may feel at times. And you find each other you know, and you keep you know, having these moments of like rest and respite, and then you're up and you're on your move again, right? And so I think that all of those things are kind of cumulative, but this notion that somehow it ends and everything's great is maybe a bit naive at this point. It's what is it? What does it look like to be faithful now with what I've been given?
Joshua Johnson:So how do we take the baton from from Rachel and brave the truth and walk with faithfulness? Find some hope be an outpost of faithfulness in this world. What does it look like now for all of us to say, Okay, what we're going to take the baton now and we get to run with it?
Sarah Bessey:I think that's maybe the aspect of Rachel's work and legacy that I I find really freeing, is that that ability to say, you get to decide that, you know, I think that the thing that Rachel embodied really well was living that out of her particular context, her particular background, where she was from, so bravery and truth Telling and honesty and speaking truth to power and embodying what you hope is most true about the gospel and about Jesus, that was highly specific to a lot of where Rachel was at. And so to me, I feel like that's almost the lesson you know, or the thing that you kind of pick up, if you know, on the you know baton, if you're picking up that baton like you were talking about, it's looking around your life and saying, Okay, well, what does that mean for me and for this moment in time? Nobody? You know, there can't be another Rachel, right? You've got to be able to be yourself and be working in in the ancestors and the story and the place where you are you know in the moment in time that you are in. And so these larger aspects around bravery and courage and vulnerability and being wholehearted, but like loving people in the midst of all of it, I think there is something that you can carry forward that is not prescriptive, but it is in equipping just the same
Joshua Johnson:those that want to write right now that are writers? How could they do something like Rachel did, use her particular story to then speak to the broader themes of what is happening in the world. What does it look like for a writer to be particular, but speak to a large
Sarah Bessey:theme, the way that Rachel and I started as writers is kind of gone, right, just as the ways that people started as writers 20 years before us are gone, right? And so, you know, I think that the places in terms of writing where a lot of people are finding, you know, community and finding their voice and experiencing that, whether it's on, you know, I see people doing it on social media. I see people doing it on sub stack. You see people doing it in a lot of different methods and meanings and community groups and long form books. And, you know, those are all aspects of, kind of getting your reps in, right of learning what it means to tell your story, learning, even experiencing pushback in public of you know, letting your your critics make you sharper and better and more compassionate and empathetic, those are all all helpful things, right? And so I think, you know, if someone's wanting to write or wanting to lead, you know, kind of at that moment in time. I think there's a lot of different ways you can do that, but one of the best things that served me, and I think, you know, a number of us who were in that era, is not doing it alone. You know, if you can find a community of people, find a few other writers, find some other people who love the things that you love and care about the things that you care about, or you can work on things together and workshop ideas together, and, you know, advocate for each other and speak well of each other in in rooms that you're in, you know, like whatever else it is, however that comes together, writing can be pretty solitary and lonely, and so having someone that makes you feel a little less alone, as you do it is nice.
Joshua Johnson:What is your hope for this book, for braving the truth? What do you hope that this gives to you? Us to the world.
Sarah Bessey:I mean, I think initially I was hopeful that it would help people understand Rachel's work and why it mattered and meant so much to so many of us at a moment in time. I feel really strongly that if you want to understand kind of this moment in the church, but even everything that's being built on since then. You really do need to deeply understand Rachel and Rachel's work and her witness in the world. But even beyond the looking back aspect of the work for me, and I think I would say too for Dan, for her widower, there's this sense of like it would be a real gift to everyone right now, and it would be a real gift to the Church of the future to also have this, to be able to understand and have this particular story as maybe some shoulders to stand on, you know, a hand to grab someone, to make you feel a little bit less alone as you are engaged in the work. And so I think I'm also thinking of the generations that come next. I mean, you kind of made a joke earlier that we're kind of, you know, like we're closing in on 50, and we're kind of the old dogs now and, and it's funny, because when Rachel and I started off, we were, like, the cheeky young things, right, that were daring to say stuff out loud, and like, you know, part of, like, a cadre of, like, younger people that were doing that. And now, like, when I go out to events, or I'm speaking at a place, or whatever else, I am much more likely to have, you know, university or college age, you know, people come up to me and be like, Well, my mom loves you, you know, which I love, and it's great, because a lot of times we grew up together, right? We had our kids together, and now, like, our kids are all grown up, and they're all getting married, and it's like, it's just, it's a different it's just, it's a different stage of life. But there is this sense of, like, I would love the way that those second wave feminists spoke to my life and my moment in 2012 and 2013 when Rachel was writing a year of biblical womanhood, and I was writing Jesus feminist. And you know, we had this moment. I would love for the girls who and the people who are writing and leading right now to have Rachel's story to serve as like something they can stand on and build off of. And I think that's that's maybe one of the hopes I have for it, is that it would help move the story forward in a way that only Rachel could
Joshua Johnson:well this collection that you have edited, braving the truth, which is fantastic, having her blog post, but not only that, having the reflections of people that have been impacted by Rachel's work, and reflecting on that as just a beautiful, beautiful addition to this, and I think is great for a lot of people. So thank you for your work on this and and, you know, some people think, Oh, it's just a bunch of blog posts and a book. It's a lot more than that. It's, it's highly curated into you, into themes. And it's, you know, those reflections are really thoughtful and helpful as well. It's a great book, so it's available now that people could go and they could get it. It's fantastic. So well done. Good job.
Sarah Bessey:Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. That means a lot to me to hear like that was one of the things that I having other voices in there was, like, really, really important. It also, to be honest with you, like, it made a difficult work feel a little less lonely. Yeah, and that was nice, too. I'm really grateful for everybody who, who you know, lent their voice and their words to us.
Joshua Johnson:Before you go, this has been fantastic. I'd love to get a recommendation or two from you. So anything you've been reading lately that you could recommend? I've read a
Sarah Bessey:couple of really good things, but now all of a sudden, everything's just flown out of my head that I've read recently. There was one I was going to tell you about. Give me one second. Oh, well, one of the fiction books I'll give you first was called Wild dark shore by Charlotte McConaughey, it I never listened to audiobooks. Joshua, ever. I'm always a paper book person, library girl. I did this one on audiobook, and I'm so glad that I did. But it's like this dark and moody, not dark, but it's like, it's a moody, atmospheric it's got, like a thriller element, climate change stuff, but it's really about a family, and there's this core kernel thing around hope and what it means when you're in the midst of the Apocalypse, that I found just, like, incredibly moving. And so I thought that was, like, just an absolutely fantastic book that I really, really deeply enjoyed recently. And then the other one that I read, that I think should probably be required reading, was called one day. Everyone will have always been against this. I want to say Omar el Akkad, correct. Omar Al Akkad, yeah. Okay, good, yeah. So, I mean, it was fantastic. There was another one by monther is. I read Christ, yes, and so both of those, I kind of read together right over Advent, and it was transformative in a lot of ways. So both all of those were very, very good.
Joshua Johnson:Recently, excellent. Well, I think, yeah, one day everyone will have been against this, in my top 20, and then the other two were my top 10 of last year. So good, excellent, common that way. That's right,
Sarah Bessey:so recommendations that were repetitive, but that's okay,
Joshua Johnson:no, but they're good. People need to continue to hear these things, because they're they're fantastic, really, really, really good. Well, Sarah, thank you for this conversation. It was absolutely fantastic to walk through Rachel's legacy her work, the impact that it was like forming into the church early on while she was writing, but also then the impact that it's having today. What does it look like for us to take some of these things, to be actually be faithful, to have some hope, to speak truth, to stand up for what is, what is right, in the midst of things that are obviously being going wrong out there today, and we could actually do some of that work. And as you said, we could be outposts of faithfulness, wherever we are in our nice little posture that we get to call home. So thank you, Sarah, it was a fantastic conversation. Really, really loved it.
Sarah Bessey:Thank you so much. You
