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Has Christianity lost its good name?
Whoa. Stop the presses.
Anne Rice is quitting the church. Not only that, but Anne Rice is quitting Christianity.
She's not alone. According to a story from Christian Newswire, nearly 8 million Americans leave church annually. And they do it for a variety of reasons. Some just lose the habit of Sunday attendance. Others are put off by judgmental and hypocritical people in the pews. Some see church as a financial rip-off while others always feel like outsiders, even inside the building. Some simply don't believe in organized religion.
Do those 8 million who have left the church also leave Christianity? Has Christianity, with all of the baggage it has picked up along way, somehow become a bad word? And if it has, then what of Christ?
Anne Rice's departure is news largely because of her status as a celebrity. Disenchanted with Catholicism in her teen years, Rice embarked on a atheistic journey, along the way gaining great fame and fortune writing vampire stories, most notably "Interview With the Vampire."
She returned to the fold in 1998.
In a followup interview with NPR following her stunning announcement on Facebook, Rice explained that her problem isn't with the person of Christ, but with the face of Christianity and, particularly, with the Roman Catholic Church.
Her dismay and her decision are largely based on the divisive social issues of our day, including gay rights, which the Catholic Church has vehemently opposed. Rice has no quarrel with the church denying the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples, she simply didn't see that the church had any business interfering with what she sees as a wholly secular issue, the battle for the civil rights of gay people.
To be clear, Rice is not abandoning Christ, nor her devotion to him. In that same NPR interview, she said, "I'm not going back on my belief in God. I'm not going to go back on my faith in him. That's what changed for me in 1998. I found what the characters in the vampire novels were looking for. They were groping in the darkness. They lived in a world without God. I found God, but that doesn't mean I have to be a supporting member of any organized religion."
In 2008, the American Religious Identification Survey showed that 83 percent of American adults identify themselves as Christian. However, another survey that same year, by the Barna group, indicated that only 20 percent of Americans attend church on any given Sunday.
So. Can you be considered a Christian even if you don't attend or belong to a church?
Not according to the Rev. Raymond J. de Souza, a columnist for the National Post and the parish priest of Sacred Heart of Mary Parish on Wolfe Island, Ontario, Canada.
In response to Rice's Facebook statement "I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being 'Christian' or to being a part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group,"de Souza wrote, in part, "to anyone who wants to be committed to Christ the institutions of Christianity are essential."
According to de Souza, Jesus Christ is a historical person, "who does not live in 21st century New Orleans as Rice does," so to know anything about him means to encounter Christianity, and by extension, the "Church."
Russell D. Moore, the dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, writing for Baptist Press, agrees -- at least in principle -- as he wrote "Anne says she still loves Jesus but she doesn't love Christianity. Yes, I know it is impossible to love Jesus without loving his church. I have preached that for years and I still believe it. But can't you see how someone could wrestle against that? I am thankful that I had been a Christian long enough to have gained some kind of maturity before I saw just how vicious 'Christianity' can be."
In the first place, Jesus Christ is much more than a historical person, some 2,000 years removed from humanity. Secondly, vicious is a mild word when describing some of the deeds done in the name of Christianity.
In these latter days, Christianity has, I believe deservedly so, earned the reputation of being a "quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group," as Rice pointed out. After all, Fred Phelps wears the label "Christian" proudly as he denigrates the sacrifice of America's soldiers as they are being laid to rest. Wielding the power of the boycott, Christianity has weighed in against private enterprise's support of anything they deem "morally reprehensible." Yet, for all of our political lobbying, for all of our placards, signs and public prayer demonstrations, we continue to see our culture and our country in a moral free fall. "Keep Christ in Christmas" will soon compete with the soothing strains of "Silent Night," again. So much for peace on Earth. The "Founding Fathers established the United States as a Christian Nation," is a constant call to arms, though the Founding Fathers specifically eschewed any mention of one religion over another, leaving each man free to worship, or not.
Rather than impacting our culture, Christianity has -- no doubt exhausted by all of its rhetoric -- ended up embracing the very mores they so vehemently opposed, going so far as to ordain homosexual clergy and experiencing the same level of divorce as that endured in the secular society.
Christianity and by extension the "church" is fast approaching an untenable position culturally. We have, for the most part, so blackened the name of Christ, so sullied the title "Christian," that our witness of Christ and his Gospel is almost destroyed.
"Oh, you're one of those," is a common response from those unafraid to voice their opinion at first blush. More likely, it is heard as an aside, as eyes roll, "She's one of those, so be careful what you say."
Perhaps our Lord's cause would have been better served if we had better understood his statement to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world," in John 18:36, and learned to live as aliens taking our rightful place as "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.", as Peter said in 1 Peter 2:9, thereby shining that light so that others might, seeing us, also desire to see our Christ, in his pure glory; whether at church, at work, in the marketplace or at home.
"Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds, and glorify God on the day he visits us." 1 Peter 2:12
I don't have all the answers, but I know the One who does. Let's walk together for awhile and discover Him; together.
Dawn