The stage Anne Rice is going through as she ditches Christianity

This is the water cooler/blogosphere talk among Christian bloggers: (My bolds)

Novelist Anne Rice remains committed to Christ. But she is quitting Christianity.

The “Interview With The Vampire” author, who in recent years has spoken publicly about her faith and written a series of novels tracing the life of Jesus, wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday that she was finished with organized Christianity.

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 outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She followed that post a few minutes later with more details:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. 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.

Then she adds 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.

Oh how I remember believing like this. It was just me and Jesus, baby, and since I believed I had a direct pipeline to Him, nobody external, no church, no human being on earth, was going to tell me what to believe. So for years, I wandered as a lonely pilgrim outside the confines of organized Christianity. Consequently, I also picked up a lot of wonky beliefs, heresies that I was even rather proud of since I thought I was smarter than most people. I too, felt like an outsider, partially because I had to be so spiritually disciplined in order to even approximate normality. But my life was one of almost constant spiritual defeat, though thankfully, I had a deep sense that Jesus is alive and He loves me, so that kept me going and kept me from becoming a bitter person.

Thank God for Pastor Doug Ward at Kanata Baptist Church. I remember my first words to him. "I'm a maverick and a heretic and I've never been able to sign on the dotted line of any church," I announced, though I did tell him that I had asked Jesus to come into my heart and acknowledged Him as Lord and Savior.

"Well, maybe this church is big enough for you," he said.

How wise he was. So I entered in. I was loved and accepted and gently taught by people with a deep evangelical faith but a mission to reach out to seekers like myself. So, for the most part, some of my odd beliefs---Swedeborgianism, Christian Science, Roy Masters (I think in the end, they all kind of cancelled each other out, but that's another story---one friend described me as like someone with several large dogs on leashes all trying to pull me in different directions) were not challenged directly. Instead I was exposed to good teaching, wonderful fellowship and gradually the heresies I clutched began to lose their hold over me. I will be forever thankful for Pastor Doug and the good, good Christian brothers and sisters at Kanata Baptist Church.

I feel bad for Anne Rice, because the lonely pilgrim road is a road to nowhere. It is a road of intense vulnerability to the forces of darkness because you have no spiritual covering, no protection from the hierarchy that Christ instituted. And now I see that that Church is the Catholic Church and I thank God I have been able to see Her with spiritual eyes and not get distracted by the very real flaws of some of her members.

The Anchoress---how I love her--writes (her bolds):

Rice’s angry frustration with what she (and, let’s face it, many others) perceive to be a sort of Institution of No is interesting. She refuses to be “anti-gay,” but the church teaches that indeed we must not be anti-gay, that homosexual inclinations are not sinful in themselves, but that all are called to chastity, whether gay or straight.

So, what she is refusing is not so much church teaching, which she incorrectly represents, but the worldly distortion of church teaching both as it is misunderstood and too-often practiced. I do not know how anyone could read the USCCB’s pastoral letter, Always Our Children and then make a credible argument that the church is “anti-gay.”

But then, I do not know how anyone can read Humanae Vitae and credibly call the church anti-feminist or anti-humanist.

I do not know how anyone can read Pope John Paul II’s exhaustive teachings on the Theology of the Body and credibly declare the church to be reactionary on issues of sexuality or womanhood.

I do not know how anyone can read Gaudium et Spes and credibly argue that the church is out of touch with the Human Person or Society.

I do not know how anyone can read Fides et ratio and credibly argue that the church does not hold human reason in esteem.

I do not know how anyone can look at the Vatican supporting and funding Stem Cell Research, or the even the briefest list of religiously-inclined scientists and researchers and credibly argue that Christianity is “anti-science.”

Anne Rice wants to do the Life-in-Christ on her own, while saying “Yes” to the worldly world and its values. She seems not to realize that far from being an Institution of No, the church is a giant and eternal urging toward “Yes,”, that being a “yes” toward God–whose ways are not our ways, and who draws all to Himself, in the fullness of time–rather than a “yes” to ourselves.

I think the "yes" to herself is in her "I refuse" that she repeats as if she were chanting a litany.

This is so sad, because, having the been there done that T-shirt and bumper sticker, I know how fruitless that kind of trying to be Christian without being "religious." That's such a popular mantra these days.

But I must remember the approach that Pastor Doug took with me and be gentle with these seekers as he was gentle with me.

Earlier this week, I read one of my favorite passages in My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers, my bolds:

July 27

2010

If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine . . . —John 7:17

The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.