"Why Is This Guy Preaching Again?": Rachel Held Evans and Feminist Counter-Messaging on Twitter

In the 2010s, Twitter rose in popularity as a digital space for theological dialogue, debate, and grandstanding. For feminist Christians, Twitter activism was a vital form of activism with real-world consequences that was motivated by theological ideas about God’s ethical expectations. I argue that social media platforms were spaces in which evangelical women who were marginalized based on their gender and who grew up with an emphasis on evangelism could “inverse evangelize” conservative evangelicals with progressive theologies and progressive politics. By focusing on one well-known Twitter user, Rachel Held Evans, in her posts relating to two famous men, John Piper and Mark Driscoll, I examine the way that feminist women used Twitter posts to push against the logic of patriarchal theology. This paper shows how Evans, a woman who had less institutional power than either Piper or Driscoll, used Twitter to contradict their viewpoints in view of an evangelical and post-evangelical public.