(RNS) — After her unexpected death at age 37 at the beginning of May, Rachel Held Evans’ loved ones gathered Saturday (June 1) to remember her in a funeral service.
The service was held at First Centenary United Methodist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. Many of the writer’s friends followed along from a livestream of the service hosted on her website.
During the service, Twitter was filled with remembrances and outpourings of love for Held Evans under the hashtags #becauseofRHE and #rememberingRHE.
Held Evans’ casket, topped with a bouquet of yellow flowers, was carried up the aisle of the church at the beginning of the service, followed by her husband, Daniel Evans, and their two young children.
“She made me better than I was before I met her,” Daniel Evans wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “She left the world better than how she found it. For that, I will always be grateful.”
The service was ecumenical but drew from the Episcopal Church’s funeral liturgy, Held Evans’ adopted church.
The funeral eulogy was delivered by Rev. Brian Ward, Held Evans’ youth pastor in high school, who knew her when she was “a goofy and brilliant teenager.”
Ward said that being her youth pastor was not easy because Held Evans was constantly asking questions and challenging him.
“She had zero tolerance for inauthenticity,” Ward said.
He…
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