Anne Rice's Reversion

New Oxford Review links to the story — Anne Rice quits Christianity -- but not Christ. "I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity," said the authoress. "It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group." She writes:

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.

Yawn... May Christ be with you, is all I can say. What a tiresome statement! I've never read Miss Rice; she's too popular for me to waste my time with her. If her books are still around fifty years after she's dead, maybe I'll give them a try, but I'll likely be dead, too.

I do read Miss Flannery O'Connor, however, and am currently reading the Catholic authoress's posthumous Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Miss Rice's religious convictions are far more commonplace and far less convincing than those of Hazel Motes, founder of the "Church Without Christ" in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, or those of Onnie Jay Holy's "Church of Christ Without Christ" in the same.