On Facebook,
Ann Rice has announced that she continues to follow Christ, but is no longer a
Christian. On July 28, she said, “For those who care, and I understand if you
don't: 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.
Five minutes later, she elaborated, “Christ, I quit
Christianity and being Christian. Amen."
The next day
she said this: “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.”
The response
has been enormous. Thousands responded in one way or another on Facebook. The
United Church of Christ invited her to become a member, because it believed its understanding of
Christianity matches hers. But Rice has arrived at the conclusion that
organized religion is not for her.
Joseph
Bottums at First
Things heaped sarcasm on her decision. In a post that exuded superiority,
Bottoms criticized her for exhibiting a sense of superiority. I cannot help but
thinking that Bottom’s post exhibits a form of argumentation that is itself not
Christian.
It would be
the rare Christian liberal who did not understand the impetus for Rice’s
position. Although conservative Christians are a minority of Christians – at least in the United
States, the media has constructed an image of Christians that is decidedly in
the conservative mold. Conservative Christians and the mass media have given
Christianity a bad name – at least from the perspective of progressives. For
them, it is necessary to say, “I am a Christian – but” Or, as I am often forced
to say, “I am a Catholic – but.” In the case of Catholicism, the ordinary
citizen and the traditional Catholic thinks that what the Vatican says defines
Catholicism – even though the vast majority of American Catholics as a matter of conscience reject many
solemn Vatican pronouncements and the ordinary citizen is generally unaware of the Church's many Christian commitment's to social justice or the Church's non-resistance to science.
In the end,
although I admire Rice, in the end, I do not agree. I do not think the term
Christianity should be ceded to anti-feminists and anti-gays. Enormous progress
has been made in this area within Christian sects in the past few decades
(although, if I may resort to euphemism, Rice’s former Catholic home has
registered less progress on both fronts). The tide of history runs against
conservatives on these issues.
Even more
important, a major strand of Christianity from the progressive perspective is
to fight for social justice and in most cases that is best done with others.
Moreover, Christianity is all about loving, supporting, and helping others.
That is less easy to accomplish in an isolated mode.
All of this opinion and commentary is well and good, however, human beings seem to have short memories and allow others, usually ignorant of the facts, to define things. In order to understand what Christianity is, I would suggest a reading of the book of Acts to get the true picture.
Posted by: Kelly | 08/02/2010 at 01:00 PM