Anne Rice: Loves Christ but Not the Church

Another fine post by Collin Hansen on The Gospel Coalition today on the Anne Rice story circling the blogosphere.

Using today’s news medium of choice, novelist Anne Rice announced July 28 on Facebook that she has quit being a Christian. Rice, the famed author of Interview with a Vampire, says she still loves Christ. But it’s the rest of us she can’t stand.

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.

Once a “pessimistic atheist,” Rice famously resumed confessing and celebrating Mass in the Roman Catholic Church several years ago. The world learned of her change of heart in 2005 when Knopf announced they would publish Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Rice’s novel about the 7-year-old Jesus. Researching the book, she studied N. T. Wright, Augustine, John A. T. Robinson, D. A. Carson, and Craig Blomberg, among others.

Rice’s story was never tidy, however. Her son and fellow novelist is openly gay. Doubt remained over how she would regard the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings where she plainly disagreed. This week Rice removed all doubt.

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.

Rice’s defense of “secular humanism” is particularly puzzling for someone who says she remains committed to Christ and argues for the historical validity of the Resurrection. Indeed, Rice says she continues to believe in an active, loving God.

My faith in Christ is central to my 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. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

So it seems Rice has joined the loud and growing chorus that sings, “I love Jesus, just not the church.” Yet when we read Scripture, we see that Jesus Christ loved the church. In fact, he gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). It’s not like Jesus loved us naively. He who was betrayed by one of his closest friends and abandoned by others during his time of greatest need surely understood human failings.

All true Christians belong together to the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27), purchased by Jesus’ blood shed on the Cross. “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-6). Nobody who belongs to a local church will say that it’s always easy to love fellow Christians who have been justified and yet continue to sin. At the same time, no Christian who knows himself believes it’s always easy for others to love him, either. And yet we’ve been called to love one another according to the example of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. A maturing disciple of Christ learns to love when it’s hard and submit to the Word’s authority when we’re tempted to disagree.

Well, we can condemn Rice's choice all we want, and bemoan her lack of maturity. It does seem to me that we can easily slip into thinking of the "ideal" church, you know the one, the one where we all agree, where we are all mature, where it is easy to love one another because we are so, um, lovable. Well, that is not the church. In the church, we are all redeemed sinners. But we are all in process towards maturity in Christ. Some are well on the way, some are barely out of the gate. To love Christ is to love those whom Christ loves.

I understand the deep disappointment Rice has with the church. But she also seems as if she has picked and chosen those things about the church she wants. We all have these issues to some degree or the other. But to follow Christ is to submit ourselves to His Lordship and discipline.

My prayers go out to Anne Rice and her family, as she wrestles with this decision. [SDG-JS]