Hello, normal people. You know who you are. Today, we're going to talk about unraveling and

re-ravelling the Bible. We're going to have a conversation with Rachel

Held Evans. Rachel Held Evans. She's a thing right now. She's definitely a thing.

Or all the things. I think that's the way how you say it now. And she's written the

mini books on faith in general, really, searching for Sunday, which is about the church and loving

leaving, finding the church, the year of biblical womanhood, which we talk about in our conversation

and faith unravel. But I'm curious for you about this unraveling, re-ravelling the Bible. And

what's your experience been with that? You've talked a lot about kind of your personal journey with

that. I've had my own experiences and I know many other people have as well. Mine might be sort

of typical, but for me, it was a matter of just learning to read the Bible closely, which

happened for me in graduate school. I went to seminary, but it wasn't the same thing. There was more

of a protective atmosphere there. But in graduate school, where I was learning from people from

different faith traditions, different backgrounds, who would approach the Bible in very different

ways than I was used to, that opened up for me the possibility that they're actually different

from ways of reading this Bible. And so this Bible that I was holding onto, it just had less

explanatory power for me. It just wasn't working anymore. And so that was a process of unraveling

the Bible, not for me never unraveling a faith as a result, but definitely a transformation.

What do you mean by that? Well, I just, I didn't lose faith because I was being challenged by

reading the Bible. I just thought to myself, boy, I'm pretty dumb. I need to learn some things of how

this Bible worked. And that to me has been, you know, sometimes unsettling, but largely a very

positive experience of getting to unravel the Bible and re-rable it again. And feeling secure

enough in my faith, I guess, to do that. I know that everyone feels that way, but for me, it was never

...