Anne Rice: In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian

I was sad to hear about novelist, Anne Rice's, repudiation of organized Christianity on her FaceBook page: "In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian," she wrote there. She doesn't like the way much of the Christian church is "against" things like homosexuality and abortion. I'm sad because I've read, enjoyed and been moved by what she's written about Jesus and his church since she re-embraced Roman Catholicism (see my previous posts here, here, here and here).

I think she and others who believe one can be Christian without Christ's church are wrong. That's where Jesus is to be found; in the midst of his wonderful, awkward, hot, cold, willful, often unkind, community of followers; the church. The difficulty of that is the key to true Christian spiritual formation. It is not easy. It never was and never will be in this life. To say we follow Jesus without living it out within his worshipping, maddening community, is like marrying someone and then having nothing further to do with him or her. Like marriage, church life is a marvellous mixture of joys, sorrows, conflicts, disappointments and challenges.

It seems that instead of Scripture and the teaching of the Church, Rice's own intellect and sense of propriety are now (again?) her highest authority.

Mark Driscoll has done a guest piece on it all over at The Washington Post.

Anne Rice is in a season that many, if not all, Christians experience: the great joy of coming to personally embrace the love, forgiveness, and new life that Jesus offers is then followed by the troubles and trials of learning the teachings of the Bible and living with fellow Christians. Truthfully, both are difficult.

All here.