Who Will Be Our Rachel Now?’ Progressive Christians Reflect on Movement Without Held-Evans

(RNS) — When the Rev. Emmy Kegler heard her friend Rachel Held Evans had died earlier this month after a sudden illness, she offered a prayer.

Then Kegler got together with other friends who had known Evans, a popular progressive Christian writer and speaker, to share their memories and process their grief.

As she walked to her car afterward, she wondered what the future would hold. Who would fill the void their friend had left behind?

“Who is going to be our Rachel now?” she asked.

Kegler isn’t the only one asking.

Since Evans’ untimely death on May 4 at age 37, her readers and friends have shared stories of her impact and her kindnesses toward them online — sparking renewed interest in her work and putting her 2015 book “Searching for Sunday” on this past weekend’s New York Times bestseller list.

Along with them, progressive Christian scholars are also considering Evans’ legacy and what’s next for their movement without one of its most prominent and beloved leaders.

It’s the same universal question people ask any time “people who have brave and strong voices who emerge as leaders” die, according to Diana Butler Bass, an independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture.

“When they pass away, the people who look to them for guidance have always asked that same question: ‘What should we…