"Vampire" Novelist's Announcement Draws Support, Criticism

Novelist Anne Rice-whose novels about the supernatural include the famed Vampire Chronicles, which reportedly translates a gay demimonde into a fictional world of immortal beings sustained by blood-announced that she was leaving Christianity in a July 29 posting at Facebook.

Rice, who remains a devout believer, said in her announcement that she did not wish to continue to be part of a faith that is "quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous," and cited the anti-gay stance of many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians among her list of reasons why she felt the need to renounce the faith.

At the same time, Rice made it clear that she was not renouncing God-only those who strike out at others in God's name. "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," Rice wrote. However, Rice continued, "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay." Added Rice, "I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity."

Rice is the mother of openly gay activist and writer Christopher Rice, noted Catholic News Agency in an August 2 article.

Since her announcement, Rice has been the subject of a great deal of support, as well as some criticism. The author herself noted in a subsequent Facebook post that, "one thing is clear: people care passionately about belief. They care about living lives of meaning and significance. And that is a beautiful and reassuring thing."

Rice also posted feedback she received, such as a note from one individual who told her, "Without people like yourself and allowing God to work through you I fear where people like me would end up." Added the note, "In the end, you are right, Christians do suck. We are all terrible examples of what we are called to be. When we try to like Him, we fail and we will always fail, that is why we need Jesus. We need Him to save us through His Cross."

Another individual wrote the author to say, "Although, I get it, I wish you would reconsider. We need strong, intelligent, courageous women such as yourself. I wanted to leave many years ago but found I am catholic from the top of my head to the bottom of feet. I love God but could not tolerate those that worked for Him (the clergy). But God is my God and no one will deny me entry to his church."

The debate has taken life outside of Facebook, as well. CNN.com ran an Aug. 2 op-ed piece authored by author and speaker Brian McLaren, who commented, "Her brief announcement raises lots of fascinating questions. For example, when a person quits Christianity in the name of Christ, what do you call that person? If Christianity means 'following Christ's followers,' what do you call someone who wants to skip the middlemen?

"Some might say you call such a person a Protestant," McLaren, the author of the book A New Kind of Christianity, continued. "Anne's reasons for leaving Catholicism aren't terribly different from those of Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago.

"But speaking from personal experience, being a Protestant doesn't solve the problem," McLaren went on. "You can find as many 'quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous' Protestants as Catholics, if not more, and they enforce the same list of 'antis' as boundary markers."

Referencing what he called "the radically compassionate way of Christ," McLaren went on to quote from his own book: "I do not believe in Christianity the way I believe in Jesus. I am a Christian who does not believe in Christianity as I used to, but who believes in Christ with all my heart, more than ever." This, he wrote, was his own conclusion, which McLaren said was not dissimilar to that arrived at by Rice.

Even so, McLaren said that he was not a former Christian, but that he continues to "hang in there" and count himself a Christian. "[R]ather than surrendering my identity as a Christian," wrote McLaren, "I've redefined it so it doesn't mean that I feel superior to anybody. Instead, it means that as a failed member of a failed religion, and I'm in solidarity with all other failed members of failed religions ... and with people who have dropped out of failed religions as well."

Rice Weighs in with Links

Rice herself posted links to some on the articles, pro and con, that have appeared in the media since her announcement. One link led to an Aug. 1 essay at Athanatos Christian Ministries web site St. Johnny.com, where the executive director of Athanantos, Anthony Horvath, wrote, "Suffice it to say that I believe the central problem is that Christians don't know how to love as the Scriptures lay it out."

Added Horvath, "The difficulty in dispensing with the Church and keeping Christ is that it is impossible and can't be done.... You can step away from denominations and congregations but if you really stepped outside of the Church, you'd step out of Christ, because the Church is his body." Added Horvath, "In short, if Anne is to follow Christ and not his followers then Anne must, according to conscience, be prepared to stand within the Church and help it 'grow into him who is the Head, that is Christ,' " a quotation from the Book of Ephesians, 4:15.

Another link led to a July 30 article at The Huffington Post in which Michael Rowe addressed the controversy, writing, "Ironically, author Anne Rice may have been more of a Christian yesterday than she ever was, when she announced, on Facebook, that she was quitting Christianity and renouncing any claim to the title 'Christian.' "

Rowe went on to recount that Rice was horrified by a Christian punk rock band called You Can Run But You Cannot Hide that had declared that gays should be put to death. Rice also had been revolted by news that a young boy of seven had been brought into the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, the congregants of which carry hateful placards and picket military funerals, claiming that war-related deaths and natural disasters are signs of God's disfavor with America for not doing more to persecute gays.

Rowe also referred to the passage of Proposition 8, the 2008 anti-gay ballot initiative that rescinded marriage rights for gay and lesbian families in California after a bitter, divisive, and hugely expensive campaign that saw people of faith level extraordinary accusations at the state's GLBTs. "What must it have been like for Anne Rice to watch and listen as her community of believers spent tens of millions of dollars in California making sure that her son remained a second-class citizen, denouncing LGBT Americans in the vilest, cruelest, ugliest terms, bookended with hearty 'Amens?' " wrote Rowe. "How could she have listened to the hours and hours of gratuitous cruelty and hatred from the various churches and the politicians they've purchased for forty pieces of silver in adjusted dollars and not wondered who these so-called Christians were, and how it was--given their bigotry and rage--that she shared a title with them?"

Rowe went on to say that Rice's declaration was "a wakeup call to believers who sit by while unimaginable evils occur in the name of Jesus and say nothing other besides defensively whining that 'all Christians aren't like that,' or that the person reacting in grief and outrage is simply 'persecuting Christians' because he's a 'nonbeliever' (whether he's a nonbeliever or not.)"

Moreover, Rowe wrote, Rice's announcement was also "a rallying cry for any of us who have held onto our faith by bloody tendons, only to feel the agony when it finally snaps and breaks on the rack that contemporary, virulently politicized Christianity has become."