Anne Rice Leaves Christianity But Not Christ?

A few weeks ago, Anne Rice, a famous author who purportedly converted to Christianity late in life, caused a webosphere stir when she wrote this on Facebook:

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.

Now some of her “reasons” are clearly laughable–for instance, her refusal to be “anti-secular humanism.” Secular humanism denies both the existence of God and the supernatural basis of morality. Christianity affirms both. To affirm any proposition is logically to deny its opposite. Therefore, to affirm Christianity is to deny secular humanism. To want to affirm both is to maintain a perfect contradiction.

Perhaps the desire to do so is born out of the desire not to be “quarrelsome, hostile, [and] disputatious,” but one’s stance on this issue need have no relation to the gentleness or hostility of one’s character. Oftentimes, in lieu of rational argumentation, and without any awareness of hypocrisy, an unbeliever will accuse a Christian of quarrelsomeness or intolerance for no other reason than because the latter disagrees with the former on some issue. That fallacy is called an ad hominem, and it seems nowhere more prevalent than on the lips of journalists and celebrities.

One can’t address each point without writing a multi-volume book, but some of her rhetoric is simply untrue. Not all Christians are (nor need be) anti-artificial birth control, anti-feminist (depending on the definition), anti-Democrat, or anti-science (unless she means anti-macroevolution or anti-cruelty in the name of science, which are argued against on scientific and ethical grounds respectively).

As for “anti-gay,” in light of the strong insistence on sexual morality in the Bible and in particular the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6, the burden of proof falls on the one who condones such behavior “in the name of Christ.” Note, significantly, the conspicuous lack of textual argument whenever this claim is made, substituted instead by the question-begging assertion that homosexuality is not perversion and the emotionally charged and irrelevant appeal to love and accept others.

In both instances–both in Rice’s affirmation of positions which the Christian cannot support and in her assigning positions to Christians which they need not support–Anne Rice betrays the fact that her “faith” is something of her own creation, like her fiction, not something which requires her to change in accordance with it. Such “Christians” make God in their own image.

So, yes, we do care that you are no longer calling yourself a Christian, Ms. Rice. And we are grateful. Now that the mislabeling is done with, we urge you to repent and believe.

Travis Lambert

Interests: Apologetics; Classical and Medieval Latin, Literature, and Philosophy; Epic Poetry; C.S. Lewis; chess; travel; writing (novel, short fiction, creative nonfiction, essay, Latin composition, translation).