As you've likely heard, Anne Rice, renowned author of novels about vampires, has boldly declared that she is no longer a Christian. On her Facebook page yesterday she wrote:
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. ... 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.
So, let's ignore the unfortunately clarion pretentiousness of her "I'm an outsider," "My conscience will allow nothing else," and that awful "Amen."
Let's also ignore that "I've quit being a Christian, because I'm too committed to Christ" is a waffle so huge that it'd give Mrs. Butterworth a coronary.
And let's definitely ignore that her entire statement is based on the assumption that being a Christian and being anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science, etc., are virtually inseparable. It's like saying, "I renounce my American citizenship, because every American is an insufferable jerk!" Well, sure, some are. But what about those who aren't?
Finally, let's ignore that this statement couldn't be more perfectly timed to coincide with a novel Ms. Rice has coming out in November, "Of Love and Evil," the second in her "Songs of the Seraphim" series. It's too cynical to wonder if she chose this moment to publicly renounce Christianity because she knew perfectly well it would bring her exactly the kind of media attention it has.
So. If we remove from Rice's statement its pretentiousness, prevarication, illogicality, and (possibly!) shameless opportunism, is there anything left worthy of our attention?
There is for me, and it's that I, too, have grown wary, and weary, of calling myself a Christian. The word simply connotes too much that doesn't describe me or what I believe. In a lot of ways, calling myself a Christian makes me feel like a Jew who's gone into some crazy universe where he has to identify himself as a Nazi. Right after the last time I wrote in one of my blog posts the simple sentence, "I am a Christian," my fingers hovered still over the keyboard for a long time. I thought of how to modify that articulation, how to change it, work around it. I thought of deleting it.
But in the end I left it. Because ... well, fuck 'em. (Those of you who read my recent "Just Married" will recognize the official Shore family motto.) From the moment of my conversion, I have written and said, "I'm a Christian," because I refuse to cede that term to those whom I feel are perverting and ruining it. I'm too ornery not to call myself a Christian.
My conscience (whaddaya know!) will allow nothing else.
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Visit my personal blog at JohnShore.com. You're also invited to join my friends and me on my Facebook page.
My last piece here on HuffPo -- which I'm afraid has pretty much nothing to do with this piece -- is "Ah, Love. It's So Like a Tapeworm." You might also enjoy/hate my "Beyond the Christianization of Abortion."
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Michael Rowe: Why Anne Rice Has Never Been More of a Christian
While Rice says her faith in God remains intact, her repudiation of Christianity is a clarion call, one that should not be written off as a publicity stunt by a bestselling author, or dismissed by the Evangelical establishment.
AnneRice.Com: The Vampire Chronicles
Anne Rice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anne Rice: 'I Quit Being A Christian'
Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity - Yahoo! News
The great dishonesty of many religious in the abrahamic religions is their unwillingness to acknowledge that the core texts of their traditions advocate violence towards the "other", homophobia and misogyny.
These problems don't appear miraculously in the religious institutions like loaves and fishes, made out of nothing. They are woven into the warp and woof the the texts that are taught to everyone, from the youngest children to the seniors.
When violence, homophobia and misogyny are legitimized by the core text defining a spiritual path followed by millions, the karmic results are inevitable. That's what is troubling to Anne Rice - and troubling to many of the rest of us as well.
The problem for people like you, and Jim Wallis, and others is that you are attached to those parts of your text that you find uplifting, comforting or whatever. But like it or not, you're stuck with a package deal - a price fixe spiritual not-so-happy meal.
Rather than snarking on someone who just can't force it down her gullet anymore, you might want to spend your time and energy examining more critically what you're shovling into yours.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are happy to see her step away from the table and stop gagging on spiritual food that is clearly inedible by anyone with a dollop of common sense.
Um. I'll let you know when you know me.
Um. I'll let you know when you know me.
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You mean, know you as well as you know Anne Rice?
I'm already there, bruddah. It's your lucky day.
He says that non-celibate homosexuals are damned, and women should keep silent in the church.
As I said above, the behavior and doctrines of the church didn't spring out of nowhere. And its not just a problem for American fundamentalists (as so-called progressive Christians like to pretend).
It's just as much the problem of the big, historic denomination: the Roman Catholic church that defines and still dominates Western Christianity, and the Orthodox Church which does the same in the East.
So you end up with so-called reconstructed Christian contributors like Frankie Schaeffer, who is not on an anti-fundie crusade, but has become a member of the Orthodox church which has the same misogynistic and anti-homosexual stance. Or Jim Wallis, who makes big noise about so-called progressive Christianity, but still doesn't want to allow homosexuals the right of civil marriage.
I'll say it again: the root of the problem is the text - the supposedly sacred text that drives too many otherwise decent people to take on opinions that are noxious and ultimately harmful to the social fabric.
Defending Paul in 1 Cor 14:34-35 against accusations of misogyny, you claim “Let your women keep silent in the churches” is an unfortunate translation. You say three alternative translations for “silent” are found elsewhere: “peaceable,” “quietly” and “without contention.”
However, “peaceable” is an adjective, “quietly” is an adverb and “without contention” is a prepositional phrase. The English words “Let…keep silent,” comprise only one Greek word: the 3rd person plural active imperative verb “σιγάτωσαν” which accurately translates to “keep them silent!”
Regarding women, Paul commands, “keep them silent in the churches” (ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις σιγάτωσαν) for three reasons. First, he asserts that they are “subordinate” (ὑποτασσέσθωσαν) to men [1]. Second, Paul strengthens his position by invoking “the law” (ὁ νόμος). Finally, he claims that it’s a “shame” (αἰσχρὸν) for women “to speak in church” (ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ λαλεῖν).
Paul does allow women to address “their own men at home” (ἐν οἴκῳ τοὺς ἰδίους ἄνδρας). The Greek words for “women” (γυναῖκες v 34, γυναιξὶν v 35) don’t specify marital status. The word for “husbands” (ὕπανδροι) is absent; only “ἄνδρας,” a word that doesn’t specifically identify marital status, is used.
Actually, the marital status of either the men or the women is wholly immaterial within this context. For Paul, women are to be silent at church and subordinate to men.
I’m glad YOU don’t think Paul was a misogynist.
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[1] “the head of the woman is the man” 1 Cor 11:3
I seriously doubt she is after more money, they sell her books at the supermarket! Thats the big time!
Refusing to be anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-science, etc. etc. Do some research on contemporary theology. As a working class, transgendered gay, I can affirm that those negatives are not at all requirements. Opposing them therefore does not take heroic effort.
Also do some historical research. In the classical world, spiritual transformation was the province of elite members of mystery cults. And in another way, of pagan rites tied to ethnicities
and specific locales. The idea of catholicism (small "c") was a declaration that all humans had souls and were capable of spiritual evolution. The Eastern Orthodox Christians retained the concept that all of creation, from plankton to planets, is to be included.
Humanism arose in the 1100s. Philosophy regarding how God was present as a human incarnate in history. Science also a product of medieval Roman Catholic universites. The physical laws of the universe were a way to understand God. Defending humanism and/or science is not terribly radical or novel.
Delve into postmodern theology rather than assail the windmills of aged traditionalism. Pass through deconstruction theology and shake loose every easy assumption. Then see if that artificial distinction between commitment to Christ and rejecting the name "Christian" makes sense.
Quench that Spirit...f*ck yeah ...you people know she struck a chord , why not talk about that.
I worry that Rice's oh-so valid points may be lost in the condemnation by the Red Letter Christians and Christian Lefties. (Just ignore the response of the Christian Right and Evangelical Atheism.) We RLCs and CLs, those who refuse to leave our name alone in the hands of those who abuse it, now, sadly, look upon our sister in the faith as a deserter, abandoning an abused friend, who could have used her protection.
If her son's treatment is her primary motivator here, well, it's hard to condemn a mother defending her own. I've done some pretty outrageous things to protect my boys, now grown, and might again. Beyond that, however, her reasoning displays two of the worst faults of the American Church she detests--chauvinism of place and time. Christians across the globe and 2000 years are discounted.
Markham's Outwitted has a lot to say about this in a very few words.
a) Anne Rice's 'born again' declaration was lapped up by Evangelicals as meaning all manner of things, even beyond some rather annoying things she said about people she didn't know a thing about in the first place.
b) All she ever did was make Goth-flavored ice-cream sundaes that most people could only get about three quarters through. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in light of a) ...she was never an authority on what she 'renounced' in the first place. And it was frankly a lot better than this 'Twilight' saccharine.
(b1: Vampire stuff is associated with 'The Occult,' but it's a very Christian modality to begin with: fears of not having eternal life, sublimated sex, blood being a particular sort of vehicle for that, mix in repression, shake. Ms Rice popularized it by playing into just those things. You should see her BDSM stuff. Same thing. Sweet, but sickening in quantity. :) )
c) People who were in such a hurry to believe her when she said she was 'Born Again' should re-examine what she 'taught' you about what she ostensibly renounced the 'last' time, especially if you don't want to believe her *now.*
d) If she's sincere about any of it, you ought to listen.
The Vatican and Evangelical hypocrites don't get that bit, either. But maybe that's why she says what she says.
But, you know, I think that if progressive Christians got together and collectively stopped calling ourselves "Christians" and started calling ourselves something else (Followers of Christ, perhaps), THAT term would start getting a bad name because people who dislike things like the very *idea* of "God" would just lump us in with our former affiliation, anyway, no matter how liberal and loving we were. Also, if a few of us made mistakes or acted genuinely cruddy, that would taint the new name forever becuase the public *loves* to see people who claim to and try to "do good" fall and accentuate the negative - ignore anything positive.
As I see it, saying "I still believe in Christ but have decided to stop calling myself a Christian because I'm a big-shot public figure who feels self-important enough to make such annoucnments"... it's like saying "Hey, I'm a coward. I'm running away."
It may just be semantics, but damn it, I love words. I want "Christian" to become more of what I see it as - "person who believes in and follows Christ." "Christian" used to be such a *good* word and now it's, well, to a lot of people, particularly if you're among the more left-leaning, almost like saying "Hey, I'm a Klan member!" I've thought of abandoning the term. Usually I wind up just saying "I'm a Christian, but I'm not like most others/not like the sterotype."
But, in the end, I'm too onrey to run away. I will continue to say "I am not a Republican nor a Conservative. I enjoy science and support the seperation of Church and State. I think gay people are people too - and in all this, I AM A CHRISTIAN and will NOT apologize for it!
It's not really even rational. To know there is no god(s) requires omniscience-- itself a definition of divinity. A common argument is that belief should be rejected since it cannot be falsified the way a scientific hypothesis can be. Okay, fine. Then logically, the same is true of non-belief. To assert atheism as true is to take a leap of, well, non-faith.
The folks who like to blame religion for every failure in history want to bully us into back-pedalling. It reminds me of when I was young in the 60s and 70s. I'm transgendered and gay, and a blue-collar worker. When young, I was female-bodied and lived through the denegration of women. Not too unusual then to have some guy ask "you one of those wimmen's libbers?" Deliberately condescending words. The expectation was a response either of no, or of qualifying statements like yes, in some things, but I'm still for (insert soothing statement here.) Instead, I would say "well, yeah!" The implication being: of course, who isn't, it's natural. The inquirer would then have nothing more to say. To he77 with the apologies.
I suppose no-one has ever told you that most of us atheists don't claim to know there is no God, but that we just fail to see evidence that there is one.
Actually I don't suppose that. What I actually suppose is that you've been told that repeatedly, and that for some reason the message isn't getting through.
"The folks who like to blame religion for every failure in history want to bully us into back-pedalling."
I also dislike people who blame religion for absolutely everything. They give us atheists a bad name. Fortunately, there aren't very many such people.
I don't think it would even *matter* if progressive and non-"traditional' Christians started calling themselves anything else. Even when we use qualifiers like "progressive" and "non-traditional" we *still* get lumped in with the the worst of the current "celebrity preachers" and the worst of history. (The Crusades happened centuries ago, people. Get. Over. It. ) For a lot of people, simply "Theist" is a byword.
So, I think, if we all started calling ourselves "Followers of Christ" or even started calling the "bad-ones" something like "Leviticans" we'd still get lumped in with them denegrated because, you know what? If people hate you for your *core beliefs* they aren't going to hate you any less just because you change your name.
It's kind of like the words "religious" vs. "spiritual." I'm a non-churchgoer and not concerned with the rules and structures thereof, but I'll call myself "religious" just out of honesty. I believe in supernatural things. I believe in God. To me, that's enough to say "I'm religious" rather than the "softer" term of "spiritual" which people who don't like such things lump in with "religious," anyway.