Rachel G. Hackenberg

Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land

History & Biography

“Like George Gershwin's American in Paris, Ruth Everhart's memoir of an American Protestant in the Holy Land trips through a whirlwind of sights, sounds, conversations, questions, and revelations. The pace and first-person perspective effectively convey the disorienting (and holy) mess that results from putting our sanitized faith into tangible context -- where dust and dispute, pomegranates and politics, armed soldiers and traveling pilgrims coexist. Everhart lays bare her struggles and assumptions so that we have room to examine our own, and offers us her journey so that we might witness the mobility of Holiness as it contrasts with our desire for a locatable Jesus. Ultimately, Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land teaches us again the value of seeking, losing, and rediscovering the Divine every day.”