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Christian author 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.”

I’m sure Rice is not alone in thinking that the belief structure set out by organized religion runs counter to the reality we call life. Here is a well-meaning but nonetheless condescending response by Pastor Mark Driscoll.

We should also pray for her. My guess is that she’s simply struggling with what it means to be a Christian while hurting. She lost her daughter Michele to leukemia in 1972, buried her gay best friend John Preston, who died of AIDS in 1994, and in 2002 she buried her husband of forty-one years, Stan Rice. Her son, bestselling author Christopher Rice, is a gay rights activist whom she loves even while she reads the Bible’s denial of his lifestyle as a God-honoring one. So, let her fellow Christians pray, love, and wait for Jesus to keep working on her as he is on us, thanking him that at least our struggles are not as publicly scrutinized as hers.

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