Metro Weekly

Anne Rice quits Christianity: Novelist of gay vampire, Jesus, and erotica books confounds fans again

Anne Rice

”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.”

”… 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.”

”… 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.”

Series of posts from an Anne Rice Facebook page. One of the world’s most prolific and successful novelists, Rice, now 68, seems to be renouncing her connection to the Roman Catholic Church. It’s big news for her millions of fans since she appeared to drop all of her supernatural and erotic writings in favor of a Christian awakening more than 10 years ago. She dedicating her work to a series of successful novels about the life of Jesus Christ and angels. (Anne Rice Facebook FanPage)

Some fans of her gay- and omnisexual-themed novels (covering vampires, witches, mummies, voodoo, castrati singers, etc) were put off by her decisive breakaway from that beloved fantasy material in favor of a commitment to the conservative Church. Some reports speculated that her “Christian conversion” came after some personal health issues. Rice was married to an atheist poet, Stan Rice, and is the mother of a gay son, Christopher Rice, who is also a very successful author. In a 2006 interview she said she was “very troubled over the fact that my son is gay and the Roman Catholic Church is very opposed to the gay lifestyle. But in that moment, I thought, ‘God will work this out…. I do not have to work this out…. And I got up out of my chair and I went back to the Church.”

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