I read Anne Rice’s recent renunciation of Christianity, and I thought, “I’m SO there.”

And then I read all the inane and cruel comments below the news article, and my heart sank.  Really, people?  This is what you say to someone who is telling her truth?  [Playing devil’s advocate here: do you think anyone wants to emulate the hatred and arrogance you’re exuding?  I certainly don’t.  And FYI.  Jesus wasn’t a Christian.]  Okay, I think this is the harshest I’ve gotten on this blog…

Rice seems to be taking the backlash well.  You can read her running comments on her blog.

She mentions that the Huffington Post article by Michael Rowe says it best (and I agree):

“While Rice says her faith in God remains intact, her repudiation of Christianity is a threefold clarion call, one that should not be written off as a publicity stunt by a bestselling author, or condescendingly dismissed by the Evangelical establishment.

“On one hand, her announcement is a profoundly courageous personal declaration of spiritual intent. On another hand, it’s a wakeup call to believers who sit by while unimaginable evils occur in the name of Jesus and say nothing other besides defensively whining that “all Christians aren’t like that,” or that the person reacting in grief and outrage is simply “persecuting Christians” because he’s a “nonbeliever” (whether he’s a nonbeliever or not.)

“On yet another hand, it’s a rallying cry for any of us who have held onto our faith by bloody tendons, only to feel the agony when it finally snaps and breaks on the rack that contemporary, virulently politicized Christianity has become.

“Like Rice, our belief in the purity of Christ’s teachings has chained us to a body of believers who no longer represent anything of what we believe, and indeed represent the very opposite of what Christ’s teachings are. There seems precious little Christ in Christianity as it’s understood in America today.

“Long accustomed to making excuses, to ourselves and to others, for the actions of our nominal co-religionists, we come to realize that there is no possibility of identifying ourselves as Christians any longer, not because of what we’ve become, but because of what Christianity itself has become. When the word “Christian” has been so thoroughly co-opted that it means something entirely different than what we believed it meant, from how we had always self-identified, it becomes a moral, ethical, and yes, spiritual, choice whether to continue to cling to ‘Christian’ as a title, or leave it.

“At the risk of speaking for her — and without knowing someone else’s heart, one shouldn’t — it seems reasonable to say that, in leaving Christianity and rejecting its contemporary manifestation as codified ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance, Rice has paradoxically moved herself closer to the essence of Christ’s teachings than perhaps at any other time in her life.

“As she has said, she rejects Christianity in Christ’s name, and will follow Christ instead. In the words of John 13:35, ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’

“The title ‘Christian,’ in short, is meaningless in and of itself, especially without love.

“Whatever backlash Anne Rice might eventually receive from her Christian readers, or from the Evangelical establishment itself, the undeniable fact is that the decision of this sensitive, passionate, and devout woman to leave Christianity is one that Christ himself would likely understand, even applaud, even as He would likely weep at the holocaust of hatred, bigotry, and collateral carnage that has devolved from the grimy, shopworn religion to which His glorious name has been affixed.”

I think we all need to offer up a little grace to our fellow sojourners.  We’re all in different places.  We’re all searching for truth, wherever that may lead us.  It would help it we were given the space to do so.

I, for one, vow to have my blog be that safe place for those of you wondering (or wandering), just like me.  Welcome.