Out Of The Spire
Anne Rice has left Christianity. It seems to have created a stir. She wrote on her Facebook page:
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.
I'm not a Christian, so this isn't my fight. But I'm not sure you need to be against any of these things to be Christian. The only one I'd think you'd have to disavow is secular humanism. I suppose you could be a humanist, but secular?
She adds:
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.It's fine if she wants to follow her conscience, and I suppose there's a clear difference between being Christian and "committed to Christ," but I do have to wonder what group of Christians she fell in with. They sound pretty unpleasant.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:08 AM
8 Comments:
Good- she can get back to writing about sexy vampires - the franchise has taken quite the creative tumble into teen romance in her absence.
Does she have a new book coming out? Sounds like a publicity stunt. For the person who cares to search, there is every flavor of Christianity out there. How she could possibly find the UCC (United Church of Christ, I think) to conservative is beyond me.
Maybe she is saying that because there are so many disputing sects of Christianity, she's swearing off organized christianity. But in a few days she will have thousands fo followers, and - tada! - a new Christian sect will be born.
Very cynical, Denver Guy. I see no reason to believe this is a publicity stunt.
I think this illustrates the gulf between different cultures in the United States. I knew that Ann Rice left the Catholic Church this month -- after rejoining it in 1998 -- but the idea that it has "caused a stir" seems bizarre to me.
But then I realized that this probably means "caused a stir among artsy folks who pay attention to what novelists do". Okay, maybe "artsy" is not the right word for Anne Rice fans, but the literary world -- including the artsy parts -- gave Rice's conversion to Christianity far more press than they gave to the conversions of a lot of other people during that same time-period. So maybe these people are shaken up. But the Christian world didn't seem particularly affected by either her arrival or her departure.
Whereas the Catholic blogs I read seem to find the whole thing somewhat amusing.
For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider.
Actually, for ten years she attempted to re-make the Church she had just recently rejoined. She wrote two blockbuster novels about the life of Jesus, which were orthodox in many ways but eccentric in others.
There was a kid in a Flannery O'Connor story who said "I'm not a Christian, but if I ever became a Christian I would be the leader of my church." I'm not saying that Rice went that far. And perhaps this is a temptation that all intellectuals suffer from, to some degree. But the flip-side of this attitude is the temptation to drop out of the church / synagogue / whatever when you discover that the myriad of people who have been in this religion longer than you don't actually leap at the opportunity to refashion their faith the moment you tell them what it ought to be.
During Bob Dylan's Christian phase, he penned one spectacular album (followed by one-and-a-half mediocre ones). I like nearly all phases of Dylan, but I can listen to Slow Train Coming both as a Dylan album and a Christian album. Will Christians still be reading Anne Rice's two Jesus books three decades from now? Time will tell.
So you're saying joining a religion is all about submission?
No, definitely not. On the other hand, it's not all about doing and believing whatever you want, either. If you decide to become a Buddhist and then invent your own beliefs and doctrines rather than learning anything from Buddhist teachers and scriptures, you may invent a great new religion -- but it won't be Buddhism.
The same applies to learning science. If you take a college physics class, you shouldn't approach with an attitude of complete submission, because your professor might make a mistake from time to time, and you need to think for yourself. On the other hand, in most cases your physics professor will be right, and will have studied science much longer than you have, and therefore learning does require a certain amount of submission: if you respond to every single statement he makes with a strongly skeptical attitude, you won't actually learn anything from him.
Perhaps, but the difference is science offers actual evidence, while the numerous faiths available offer a history of believing in the supernatural.
Sure. I'm not saying that religion and science are exactly the same. I'm just saying that in both cases, becoming a "member" requires a certain amount of submission and a certain amount of independence. If you want to become a physicist you have to accept the vast majority of what is taught in physics textbooks, or you won't get a Ph.D. And if you want to become a Catholic or a Marxist or a Mormon or a Buddhist, you have to accept the fundamental tenets of these faiths, or else you will not by definition be a Catholic or Marxist or whatever.
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