Anne Rice quits Christianity
On July 28th-29th, Anne Rice wrote on her facebook page about quitting Christianity, but not quitting Christ. Lestat may be her Beatrice, but there’s no place for vampires in heaven:
“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being “Christian,” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."
"As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth-control, I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular-humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”
Rice’s problem is not with Christ, but his followers. She wrote:
“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.
“Ghandi famously said: ‘I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.’ When does a word (Christian) become unusable? When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?”
In a telephone interview Thursday with “The Christian Science Monitor,” Rice said she had been having doubts for the past two to three years. She was troubled by the child abuse scandals in the church, and the church’s defensive reaction, and by the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, a nun and hospital administrator who had approved an abortion for a woman whose life was in danger.
“I believed for a long time that the differences, the quarrels among Christians didn’t matter a lot for the individual, that you live your life and stay out of it. But then I began to realize that it wasn't an easy thing to do,” said Rice, speaking from her home near Palm Springs, California. “I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t make this declaration, I was going to lose my mind.”
Rice said she is a Democrat who supports the historic health care legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama and believes gay marriage inevitably will be permitted throughout the country. Although no longer part of any denomination, she remains a believer and continues to read theology and post Biblical passages on her Facebook page. She has no immediate plans to write about leaving the church and will continue with her metaphysical fiction series, “Songs of the Seraphim.”
Rice said she will not be writing about vampires again, but she said she is a big fan of the HBO series, “True Blood,” and is interested in seeing her most famous character, the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, return to the screen.
Sources: Anne Rice Facebook - www.facebook.com/annericefanpage (July 28, 2010, July 29, 2010), Christian Science Monitor (Hillel Italie, July 30, 2010), Post Chronicle (Mitch Marconi, July 30, 2010).