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Funeral held for influential Christian writer Rachel Held Evans

(WISH) — A funeral was held Saturday for influential Christian writer and speaker Rachel Held Evans, who died last month at the age of 37 after complications of the flu.

The funeral took place at First Centenary United Methodist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Evans gained notoriety after her book “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” became a bestseller. In the book, Evans takes a year to follow “all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible.” Her other books explore faith and doubt from the perspective of Christian fundamentalism and the American evangelical movement. She also kept a popular blog and social media presence.

Evans was hospitalized in April with the flu and a UTI and then suffered a severe allergic reaction to antibiotics. Her husband, Dan Evans, told Slate in May that she developed sustained seizures, and doctors to put her in a medically induced coma. When doctors tried to wean Evans off the medications keeping her in a coma, her seizures worsened, and her medical team found severe swelling of her brain. 

On Saturday, Evans’ funeral, a requiem eucharist, was streamed live on her blog.

Watch the full funeral below: