Quitting? Really?

A few days ago, Anne Rice, the popular novelist responsible for An Interview With A Vampire, and the whole series of literary vampire novels it spawned, publicly announced  via Twitter that she was “quitting” Christianity.

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.

Blogger, E.D. Kain, pushes back:

One wonders how one quits Christianity in the name of Christ. The only good reason to actually leave one’s Christian faith would be if one were to quit believing that Christ was the Son of God. Culture war issues, feminism – the tawdry politics of our day to day lives – these are not good reasons, or even really reasons at all, to stop being Christian. There are countless Christian denominations which are not evangelical or conservative or politically active…

Certainly Christians can be terrible Christians. Certainly I disagree with much of what is said and done in the name of Christianity. Certainly I get a knot in my stomach every time the Catholic hierarchy bungles yet another sexual abuse crisis, and the more revelations of how un-Christian so many priests and pastors and others have been while peddling the words of Christianity the more angry and saddened I become over the whole state of affairs. But then I go to mass and everything is different. There are no politics. There is no divisive language, no hell and brimstone, none of this. There is the message of love and redemption and community and charity that drew me back to Christianity in the first place.

It seems to me Rice isn’t doing this in the name of Christ at all. It seems she’s given up on Him altogether. And if that’s the case, then why dress it up in the language of politics? Why kick sand in the eyes of all those Christians who are pro-science, pro-gay rights, pro-feminism, pro birth-control?