Author Topic: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity  (Read 25833 times)

Marge_Innavera

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #10 on: August 04, 2010, 12:47:15 pm »
I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control

Where has Anne Rice been?  The Catholic Church has been this way for sometime.  Like centuries.  Yet she rejoined a few years back, knowing this full well.

Did she forget?

 ???


IMO this is something that legitimately puzzles a lot of people -- how someone could stay in a religious institution that blatantly opposes their ideals and morals.  The idea that one particular human insitution is the exclusive road to enlightenment and union with the Creator is still alive and well.

As far as "who would care" about her religion, I'd guess that some of her readers would care, and she does  have a very large readership. People who aren't interested just don't have to read about it.

Never been an Anne Rice fan, but I find the hostility here toward this news more than a little disappointing.  Maybe people would like to contact NPR expressing disapproval of their interviewing her about this recently.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #11 on: August 06, 2010, 01:38:51 pm »
I saw this in my local paper, but don't have the URL to the original Miami Herald column.

Masses find
religion a bit less soothing


It's less a crisis of faith and more a
crisis of confidence in the
organizations.

By LEONARD PITTS JR., Miami Herald



"Today, I quit being a Christian."

With those words last week on Facebook,
Anne Rice delivered a wake-up call for
organized religion. The question is whether it
will be recognized as such.

"I remain committed to Christ as always," she
wrote, "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 10 years,
I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My
conscience will allow nothing else."

You will recall that the author, famed for her
vampire novels, made a much-publicized
return to the Catholicism of her youth after
years of calling herself an atheist. Now, years
later, she says she hasn't lost her faith,
but she's had it up to here with organized
religion.

"In the name of Christ," she wrote, "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."

If that was not nearly enough for Rice's
atheist observers -- one of whom berated
her online for refusing to completely give up
her "superstitious delusions" -- it was surely
plenty for people of faith. But Rice is hardly
the only one who feels as she does.

According to a 2008 study by Trinity College,
religiosity is trending down sharply in this
country. The American Religious
Identification Survey, which polled more than
54,000 American adults, found that the
percentage who call themselves Christian has
fallen by 10 since 1990 (from 86.2 percent to
76 percent), while the percentage of those
who claim no religious affiliation has almost
doubled (from 8.2 to 15).

Small wonder atheist manifestos are doing
brisk business at bookstores and Bill
Maher's skeptical "Religulous" finds an appreciative
audience in theaters. Organized religion, Christianity in particular, is on the
decline, and it has no one to blame but itself:
It traded moral authority for political power.

To put that another way: The Christian Bible
contains numerous exhortations to serve
those who are wretched and poor, to anger
slowly and forgive promptly, to walk through
this life in humility and faith. The word
"Republican" does not appear in the book.
Not once.

Yet somehow in the last 30 years, people of
faith were hustled and hoodwinked into
regarding the GOP platform as a lost gospel.
Somehow, low taxes for the wealthy and
deregulation of industry became the very
message of Christ. Somehow, hostility to
science, gays, Muslims and immigrants
became the very meaning of faith. And
somehow Christianity became -- or at least,
came to seem -- a wholly owned subsidiary
of the Republican Party.

Consider that, after the election of 2004, a
church in North Carolina made news for
kicking out nine congregants because they
committed the un-Christian act of ... voting
for Democrat John Kerry.

Who can blame people for saying, "If that's
faith, count me out?" Has atheism
ever had a better salesman than Jerry Falwell, who
blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on the ACLU --
or Pat Robertson, who laid Haiti's earthquake
off on an ancient curse?

But what of those who are not atheists? What
of those who feel the blessed assurance that
there is more to this existence than what we
can see or empirically prove? What of those
who seek a magnificent faith that commits
and compels, and find churches offering only
a shriveled faith that marginalizes and
demeans?

Its response to those seekers will determine
the future of organized religion.


Offline brokeplex

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #12 on: August 06, 2010, 01:48:42 pm »

"In the name of Christ," she wrote, "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



but ---- has Rice found the grace to refuse to be angry and to find peace in her life?

and has Pitts found the integrity to be "unbiased"?

I'll pray for them both.  :)

Offline delalluvia

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #13 on: August 06, 2010, 02:43:14 pm »
"In the name of Christ," she wrote, "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



but ---- has Rice found the grace to refuse to be angry and to find peace in her life?

and has Pitts found the integrity to be "unbiased"?

I'll pray for them both.  :)

Who said Rice was angry?  One can be fed up without being angry.

Biased...well, truthful, might be another way of looking at it.  ;D

Offline serious crayons

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #14 on: August 06, 2010, 03:05:58 pm »
and has Pitts found the integrity to be "unbiased"?

Why would you equate bias with lack of "integrity" for a man whose job it is to offer his personal opinion?

Of course Leonard Pitts is biased, just as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow are biased. They're supposed to be. Of course, it's fair to criticize the nature and content of those biases if you disagree with them, but makes no sense to criticize them for exhibiting bias in the first place.

Or perhaps you misunderstood, as I failed to supply the URL, but Leonard Pitts is a newspaper columnist who writes for the opinion page, not a news reporter. If so, I apologize for the my part in the confusion.

Feel free to pray for Pitts and Rice if you like, but I believe there are others on the planet more in need of your prayers than a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and a best-selling novelist.  :)


 

Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #15 on: August 06, 2010, 03:12:40 pm »
Who said Rice was angry?  One can be fed up without being angry.



I don't even think there's anything wrong with being angry or expressing anger sometimes (especially in this case where the anger is directed at an intstitution or entity rather than an individual).   As long as it isn't hurting someone else, I think well-directed anger can lead to productive change sometimes.

the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Marge_Innavera

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #16 on: August 06, 2010, 04:16:49 pm »
"In the name of Christ," she wrote, "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


but ---- has Rice found the grace to refuse to be angry and to find peace in her life?

and has Pitts found the integrity to be "unbiased"?

I'll pray for them both.  :)

I'm sure they'll both be thrilled -- but for the record, Leonard Pitts is a columnist.  He hasn't made any claims to being "unbiased" and his expressing an opinion is no evidence of a lack of integrity. 

Ms. Rice would do better to continue looking for a resolution than "finding peace" by backtracking.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #17 on: August 06, 2010, 06:50:33 pm »
I don't even think there's anything wrong with being angry or expressing anger sometimes (especially in this case where the anger is directed at an intstitution or entity rather than an individual).   As long as it isn't hurting someone else, I think well-directed anger can lead to productive change sometimes.



Ideally, following Christ is all about forgiving and forgetting offenses.  Hence Bill's comment about anger.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #18 on: August 09, 2010, 10:26:07 am »
Who said Rice was angry?  One can be fed up without being angry.

Biased...well, truthful, might be another way of looking at it.  ;D
she sounds angry to me, I could be wrong, but that was my impression. and it seems that she herself is interjecting politics into religion in a way that the author of the commentary piece about her is objecting to in the Republican party. so I would add hypocritical to biased in regard to the author of the op ed piece.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: AP: Novelist Anne Rice says she's leaving Christianity
« Reply #19 on: August 09, 2010, 10:33:27 am »
Why would you equate bias with lack of "integrity" for a man whose job it is to offer his personal opinion?
Of course Leonard Pitts is biased, just as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow are biased. They're supposed to be. Of course, it's fair to criticize the nature and content of those biases if you disagree with them, but makes no sense to criticize them for exhibiting bias in the first place.
Sure I am familiar with Pitts, some of his columns occasionally appear in the local Startlegram. And yes its an Op-Ed piece and yes its biased, and yes its also partisan and hypocritical, and no it isn't fair to compare a Dinosaur media journalist with pretensions of "evenhandedness" to someone like Limbaugh who is openly biased and eschews the MSM. Now Rachael Madcow is an excellent example of a mainstream journalist who has become extremely partisan and biased, a bit like Pitts.

People like Pitts and Madcow want to have their cake and eat it too, sorry but you can't be regarded both as a professional journalist and turn out biased partisan hit pieces, or in the case of Pitts make it his mission to promote Obama back in 2007 / 2008.