So is Anne Rice a Christian or not?
The novelist—author of Interview With the Vampire and other supernatural bestsellers—says she’s not. Though Rice made a very public return to faith a few years ago, ditching her vampire trope in favor of some imaginative bios on the early life of Christ, she made a public, and highly publicized, break with the faith late last week. “Anne Rice ‘Quits’ Christianity,” read one headline.
But after I read what she actually wrote on the subject—which we republished in our Culture Clips file—it seemed the issue wasn’t quite so clear. On her Facebook fan page, she wrote:
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. … 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.
And she later added this:
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.
Does it sound like Anne Rice is leaving Christianity? Or is she just experiencing the same sort of tension that I sometimes feel in my own spiritual walk, too?
My pastor rarely uses the word “Christian” anymore: He calls us “followers of Christ.” He says we’re not a part of a “religion,” but a way of life. He’s trying—not unlike Rice in some ways—to hold firm to the message of Christ while shedding the baggage. So are Rice’s struggles with “Christianity,” at least in part, linguistic? It seems to me like the name makes her uncomfortable, and she’d like to find a different one—just as folks traditionally labeled as “liberal” now call themselves “progressive” and used-car salesmen now show “pre-owned” cars.
Still, to be a follower of Christ—to be Christian—means to live in community. Rice says that community makes her uncomfortable—too uncomfortable to stay. What do you do when it makes you uncomfortable?
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