Showing posts with label Mick Brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mick Brown. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 January 2012

"Today I quit being a Christian"

I have just read Mick Brown's (Telegraph magazine 21/01.12) interesting and thought provoking interview with Anna Rice 'the atheist high priestess of vampire lit.' For thirty years she was an atheist, having been brought up as a Catholic. He writes that she then returned to Catholicism and  focussed her  writing on Christ. Last year, she placed this comment on Facebook:

' 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 being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to " belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.'

'I quit. 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. Amen.'

And ... a bit of me wants to say 'Amen' - but I can't. Can you quit Christianity just like that? Can you jump in and out at will. You can stop going to church. You can stop praying - but do you stop praying? Don't you just refuse to accept that you are praying? Or do you live at surface level and make yourself so busy that there is no time to allow God in?
Perhaps it is not Christianity that Anna Rice rejects but 'The Church', organised religion and being told what 'We' must believe. And perhaps I might say 'Amen' to that .