New York City, N.Y., Jul 31, 2010 / 06:01 am
The author Anne Rice, who in 2008 announced that she had returned to the Catholic faith in which she was raised, says she is no longer a Christian but remains “committed to Christ.”
“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,” she wrote on her Facebook page on Wednesday. She said it was “simply impossible” for her to belong to “this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.”
She said she had “tried” and “failed,” describing herself as an outsider.
“In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay,” continued Rice, whose son Christopher is a homosexual who writes for The Advocate, an “LGBT” monthly.
“I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat,” she continued, also characterizing Christianity as “anti-science” and “anti-life.”
However, she still described her faith in Christ as “central” to her 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.”
However, she said following Christ does not mean “following His followers.” She described Christ as “infinitely more important than Christianity.”
Rice, the author of several bestselling novels about vampires, reportedly returned to Christianity in 1998 after a conversion experience. She pledged to write “only for the Lord.”
In 2005 she published a book “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a fictional work about the childhood of Jesus narrated from his perspective.