| | | | Although she was only thirty-seven when she died, the Christian thinker Rachel Held Evans was a beloved figure in the landscape of American religion. The author of several popular books on Christianity, she employed self-deprecating wit and practical exegesis to critique the conservative evangelical subculture in which she was raised. Held Evans embodied a movement that emerged in the two-thousands among people who were becoming disillusioned with evangelicalism. Many were fleeing their churches . . . and, to outsiders, their departure looked like the secularization of America. But the demographic was more varied than it seemed; many evangelicals were leaving megachurches with praise bands and coffee bars, but not abandoning a belief in Jesus. With humility and openness, Held Evans helped reintroduce a mode of spiritual inquiry in America that was based in seeking mystery, not certainty. After she died, she left behind 11,762 words of an unfinished manuscript, which has become part of a new memoir, “Wholehearted Faith,” that posthumously continues her exploration of divine love and doubt. —Eliza Griswold, from “The Afterlife of Rachel Held Evans” Read more of the story, plus Eliza Griswold’s other writing on religion, including how to talk about climate change across the political divide and the unmaking of Biblical womanhood. | | | | Editor’s Picks | Profiles How Patrick Soon-Shiong Made His Fortune Before Buying the L.A. TimesThe billionaire doctor has become one of L.A.’s most prominent civic leaders, after a boundary-pushing ascent in medicine. By Stephen Witt | | Daily Comment Could India Become a Champion of the Climate Crisis?The nation’s call to leadership in this century is decarbonization. By Raghu Karnad | | | | | Dept. of Entomology | It can be tough to make people care about bugs, or to see them as anything more than anonymous pests. Yet, as Elizabeth Kolbert writes, “They’re by far the largest class of animals on Earth, with roughly a million named species and probably four times that many awaiting identification. . . . They support most terrestrial food chains, serve as the planet’s chief pollinators, and act as crucial decomposers.” Kolbert’s piece, from this week’s issue, is about the famed biologist E. O. Wilson and the current pressures facing the world’s insects, which are similar to the pressures facing the rest of us. As Wilson himself once put it, “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” | | | | Culture Dept. | |  Photograph by Ted Soqui / Sipa / Alamy -
Lauren Michele Jackson on the Dave Chappelle controversy at Netflix: “Some might chide the hypocrisy of a company that champions—or, rather, markets—queer characters and actors alongside the work of a comic who relishes antagonizing queer people. But the dissonance makes perfect sense when you consider that, in the Netflix paradigm, ‘Black’ and ‘queer’ stories are just two more among the platform’s toothless commercial categories.” -
“The French Dispatch” is Wes Anderson’s version of an action movie, Richard Brody writes. “For all its meticulous preparation, the movie swings, spontaneous, unhinged, and it’s precisely this sensory and intellectual overload that gives rise to the misperception that it is static, fussy, tight.” -
On Broadway, “The Lehman Trilogy” and “Dana H.” use different tricks of storytelling to explore ideas of success and survival. Of “Dana H.,” the critic Alexandra Schwartz writes, “It is unlike anything I’ve seen.” | | | | Fun & Games Dept. | Name Drop Play Today’s QuizThe fewer clues you need, the more points you receive. By Liz Maynes-Aminzade | | Daily Shouts Presenting “The Bob Mullen’s Life Halftime Report”“We’re at the midpoint of his earthly existence, and to date his performance has been shaky at best.” By Evan Waite and River Clegg | | Daily Cartoon Tuesday, October 26th By Ellis Rosen | | | | | | P.S. The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson was born on this day in 1911. A titan in her own right, she was also the link in one of the essential threads of American music, from Bessie Smith to Aretha Franklin. “Her curving contralto never lost its fullness or agility . . . and she remained, despite her materials, a great jazz singer,” the critic Whitney Balliett wrote shortly after Jackson’s death, in 1972. “She made God swing for the first time.” | | | | Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. | | | | | | | |
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