Anne Rice, vampire novelist, 'Christian' 'secular humanist,' dead from stroke
Novelist Anne Rice died from complications from a stroke on Dec. 11th. She was 80. Her son Christopher announced her death to "the people of the page," Rice's favorite salutation for her Facebook followers. I was once one of the people of the page, and as such saw her gradual apostasy from the Christian faith with great sadness.
I read the three books which came out of Rice's conversion back to Christianity. She wrote a spiritual autobiography, Out of Darkness, and two novels about the life of Christ as part of a planned Christ the Lord trilogy. She never completed the third. I interviewed her about the books and kept in touch afterwards. Her faith seemed genuine. She understood the case for the resurrection of Christ, and read widely. We spoke about our mutual regard for the work of N.T. Wright and she made clear that his arguments for the resurrection and the historicity of the Gospels were an important factor in her return to faith.
She pledged that for the rest of her life she would only write "about the Lord." Later, she claimed that her pledge was that she would only write "for the Lord." But it was not too long before she stopped writing about, or for, the Lord and went back to vampires and soft porn.
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Her pronouncements to the people of the page showed an increasing frustration with both the faith and with her relationship with the faith community. She was disappointed by the response to her books by Christian readers. They undersold the big Vampire hits. As of today, her Christian books are 19th, 20th and 24th on her Amazon page. Her top sellers are vampires, vampires and vampires and a bit of witches and her erotic trilogy based on the Sleeping Beauty fable - that was the trilogy she did complete.
There were two other factors that seemed to drive her away from the faith. She felt pulled between love for her gay son Christopher and the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality. Of course, Christianity doesn't force one to choose between loving God and loving one's gay child. In fact, it commands love of both. Of course, the church can love people and yet still not endorse their sexual behavior or identity. Rice wanted endorsement.
She also publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008 and she caught a fair amount of flak for that from her growing Christian fan base. You might not be surprised to hear that they weren't always gentle in dealing with this issue, and in a fit of frustration she denounced Christianity.
For justification she seemed to reach for familiar boilerplate tropes such as the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch trials, as though these were some kind of new evidence that was leading her away from the faith. I pointed out to her that the Spanish Inquisition was an institution of the state, not of the church, and that the Salem trials were not countenanced by the church, but rather were something that coincided with the absence of Christian clergy. The most up-to-date research, even from secular scholars, shows that the Inquisition has been greatly exaggerated, partly as Protestant propaganda against Catholicism. Scholarship has also shown that historically the church did not invent witch trials. The killing of accused witches was common in paganism, but the church actually acted as a break on folk religion witch hunts.
She became irritated that I would even bring these things up, seeing them as irrelevant to the discussion. In a deeper sense than she meant, I think that she spoke the truth - arguments and evidence were not relevant. It is clear she had made up her mind for reasons that had nothing to do with historical evidence, otherwise better historical evidence would have swayed her. Christians did not give her books the response she'd hoped for. Christians did not join her in her support for Hillary, quite to the contrary. The church did not change its position on same-sex relations to accommodate her son.
Initially, she decried Christianity but said positive things about Jesus. But before long, she was calling herself a "secular humanist," and then, instead of talking about writing only "about the Lord" and then "only for the Lord," she started talking about going back to her earlier roots and writing soft porn. Presumably, that is what became her erotic retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story.
By that time, she had made it clear to me that she was uninterested in hearing answers to the arguments she was making. Since there was no more discussion to be had, I signed off, having no desire to be a spectator to her flight from faith.
I spent a few hours going through her people of the page commentary this weekend. She gave no evidence of a return of faith. She was almost entirely silent on it. Most of her page was rallying the troops to various left-of-center causes and candidates and running commentary on favorite TV shows. One post asked tantalizingly whether physics could prove God. Once after a public shooting one of her few remaining Christian followers pointed to Christ as the answer. Anne said that though she respected the poster's right to faith, "historically that hasn't worked," and then stood by as her other fans released a torrent of hate against the commenter. One other post linked to an article that made a very strained case that the Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality were based on a mistranslation.
When she was still a professing Christian we talked about her vampire novels and Christ. She said she was not disavowing those novels, they were part or her journey. I pointed out that she when she chose Christ over Lestat (her best known vampire character,) she was choosing someone who gave His blood to give other people eternal life over someone who took blood from other people in order to give himself eternal life. She said she hadn't thought about it that way, but it made sense. But the largest audiences wanted Lestat, not Christ the Lord. The vampire films made much more money and garnered much better reviews than the film about her first book about Christ. Her long-time, fashionable and highly devoted gay fan base prevailed over her new, fledgling fan base of suburban Christians. The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of wealth apparently choked out the seed.
Still, none of us knows what happens deep in someone's heart, especially as death approaches. Her faith was originally kindled during a brush with death due to an earlier health condition. The Book of Common Prayer has a prayer as part of its remembrance of the dead. It's Protestant enough that it does not offer a prayer for the dead, but Catholic enough to want to say something to God about the departed. "Let Your loving-kindness be upon those who put their trust in You."
As for the rest of us, still in the valley of decision, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Jerry Bowyer is financial economist, president of Bowyer Research, and author of “The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.”
