Posted on 07/30/2010 8:37:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
NEW YORK – Anne Rice has had a religious conversion: She's no longer a Christian.
"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," the author wrote Wednesday on her Facebook page. "In the name of ... Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."
Rice, 68, is best known for "Interview With a Vampire" and other gothic novels. Raised as a Catholic, she had rejected the church early in her life but renewed her faith in recent years and in 2008 released the memoir "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession."
In a telephone interview Thursday, Rice said she had been having doubts for the past two to three years. She was troubled by the child abuse scandals in the church, and the church's defensive reaction, and by the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, a nun and hospital administrator who had approved an abortion for a woman whose life was in danger.
"I believed for a long time that the differences, the quarrels among Christians didn't matter a lot for the individual, that you live your life and stay out of it. But then I began to realize that it wasn't an easy thing to do," said Rice, speaking from her home near Palm Springs, Calif. "I came to the conclusion that if I didn't make this declaration, I was going to lose my mind."
Rice said she is a Democrat who supports the health care legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama and believes gay marriage inevitably will be permitted throughout the country. Although no longer part of any denomination, she remains a believer and continues to read theology and post Biblical passages on her Facebook page.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
No question about it. But you are being unfair to yourself, I think. How can one expect the "average, hardworking people" to stand up to a sophisticated machine? It is only natural that a normal person would be at best confused by the sophisticated jargon promulgated by in academia (and the leftists often invent new jargon and change the meaning of the words, don't they?)
But what about the conservative professors of the same Columbia? It was conservative at some point, was it not? Princeton University started out as a seminary, what can me more traditional than that? The problem was that the new ideas were seductive enough to the conservative elites, which did know better. But all this sounded "Cristian enough" for them: equality, dignity of a working person --- who'd be against that? But the conservative thinkers knew better and did nothing nonetheless. That is how our educational systems, media and Hollywood got hijacked: they were taken not from the average, hardworking people but from the elites that previously occupied those spheres. We can fight only with the weapons we have. An average person cannot convincingly fight a curriculum-setting faculty. But the donors, supposedly average hardworking individuals, do have influence and choose not to exercise it. And "average" people, too, contribute to the deterioration of the culture. Thirty years ago you did not hear swearing in a restaurant (and in rare cases of violation by some rowdy fellow, management steppe in at once). Does anybody reprimand teenagers swearing left and right in the streets? No advanced degree is needed for that.
By morality both you and I mean Judeo-Christian morality. Seems to me that morality has been retreating together with religion itself ever since the Enlightenment. That retreat of religion has left moral vacuum, which is being filled by all sorts of substitutes: socialism, moral relativism, multiculturalism, etc. Which brings me back to the original point: it is we conservatives who retreated and left the battlefield to the left. Professors left academia to be taken, actors and producer left Hollywood, and the average people left the rest of the culture -- good manners, respect to the individual and the public, etc. --- to be taken over by the Left.
>> NEW YORK – Anne Rice has had a religious conversion: She’s no longer a Christian.
Christianity is NOT a religion. Damn idiots!
[All evil begins with the indifference of the otherwise good people.]
The otherwise “good” people? LOL.
Original sin not on the menu at your cafeteria, bishop?
Where did the pathological behavior manifested in Chuckie Manson & Company originate?
What I meant in the article was that the Progressives understood the psychology in creating an environment that “molded” the child into the model that the Progressives wanted. They created forced public schooling and lowered the ages for indoctrination of children to get them away from the influence of family because their minds were more “plastic”.
Parents, even very religious ones, did not understand the covert psychological conditioning that was put into the Prussian school models of single grades which used humiliation as a way to get children to conform to the “one way of thinking”.
Skinner, Freud, and Pavlov, etc... were just coming out with their theories and most people had never heard of them while their ideas were incorporated into schools by the elites who had infiltrated the Universities.
True, there was a moral vacuum which was very evident in the roaring 20’s, but with the Great Depression, people populated the churches again. What they didn’t realize at the time was that schools were undermining their values for six hours, five days a week. The schools were increasing the time that children had to be held captive in the schools so that parental influence would be less pervasive.
I think you are discounting the incredible influence that teachers (esp. when using psychology) have over captive children who seek approval and are among peers. Even adults in group situations can be manipulated. Children are much, much easier to mold.
Too much do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do in the church leadership tends to do that. They're not exactly leading by example, here.
Leaving the Faith?
Hardly:
“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me,” Rice wrote. “But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”
Wishful thinking by the I-wish-she-would-just-write-about-vampires-instead-of-that-icky-religious-stuff crowd.
RE: But following Christ does not mean following His followers.
Anne forgot to add the important word -— following Christ does not NECESSARILY mean following His followers.
If His so called followers are not following His commandments, in what sense are they his followers ?
So, next question comes up -— This same Christ, who is God, who gave us His commandments to follow, Who said : “If you love me keep my commandments”, also condemns Homosexual behavior.
Anne Rice does not think Homosexual behavior is sinful, other Christians do.
WHO IS THE REAL FOLLOWER IN THIS CASE ?
Yes, I guess I have to agree with you. There certainly is a moral vacuum and Chambers in Witness pointed out the war that was going on in the 50’s for the souls of men....it was communism vs. God.
But he also explained how the Communists infiltrated every area that formed policy and opinion in the US during the 20s, 30s 40s and currently. People were lied to and part of the problem was that they wanted to believe in the goodness of people.
People, like McCarthy, and there were those that did try to fight the encroaching socialism (progressivism), were destroyed by the combination of media and government (Blacklisted—the untold history of Senator Joseph McCarthy)
Propaganda was a staple in the media since before the 30’s and people did not know the extent to which they were being lied to.
Thank you also for your posts; I very much enjoyed our discussion and look forward to seeing you on other threads.
If I inadvertently gave you that impression, I am sorry. Most certainly, I agree with you. But there is still a different (and harder) question, who let those teachers in, who opened the door to them?
You say, for instance, that "with the Great Depression, people populated the churches again. What they didn’t realize at the time was that schools were undermining their values for six hours, five days a week." Very true. But that applies, as you point out, to their children. Those parents, however, voted for FDR who promulgated fascist policies (control of the industry, rather than ownership, as communists prefer) that were in fashion at the time in the West. (You may like "FDR's folly," if you have not read it already). They voted in the "progressive" Wilson even before WW I. What teachers are responsible for that?
When I tried to answer such questions, I go back in time in order to find those "teachers of teachers," and end up at a point I mentioned in the previous post: the Enlightenment. Religion started to retreat, and each "enlightened" generation served as teachers for even more "enlightened" children. The more vacuum was left, the more it was filled, generation after generation, by various forms of the ideology to which we now refer as "leftism." When looking at the current situation, therefore, I cannot help but feel as if I am looking at the tip of an iceberg, merely the latest stage of a long, long process. McCarty probably felt the same: it could not be allowed to get any worse, that process must be stopped at any cost. But it did get worse.
Having said this, I realized that this too has roots in psychology. Some Germans felt similarly during the rise of Hitler: it cannot get any worse. But it did. The purges and other atrocities perpetrated by Stalin have also left some Russians (even the initial believers in Marxism) wonder: can it possibly get any worse. And it still did. "It's not the worst of times if we can say it is," said Shakespeare (in King Lear, I think, but I am not sure).
I have faith in this country and think that a revival is possible. It may take, however, some unimaginable catastrophe --- a civil war, a dictatorship or some such thing that now seems so remote.
Yes, I agree with you, and think that people have stepped backward and allowed evil to dominate in many areas. It is so bad now that we are forced to take a stand or dissolve into total tyranny. We have allowed government to interfere in every aspect of our lives and take over the raising (and programming) of our children.
Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind, chronicles the philosophy of the Enlightenment and how it shaped Europe and was brought over to the United States. It is one of the best books I have read on the subject.
So who cares about this unstable wackadoodle?
"Praised be he who permits the forbidden..."---Tsvi Sabbatai, circa 1666
Exactly.
One should never “hand their children over” to anyone to be indoctrinated into beliefs which one knows to be false.
Their formative years are crucial in “forming” their perception of the world and the two people who created that child are the ones who were meant to guide and teach him, along with their extended family.
But what is the Truth?
So far in America we are supposed to have the right to decide for ourselves within the parameters of the Constitution and be able to inculcate our children with our belief system. The State wants to usurp the role of parents and get control over younger and younger children to reeducate them to become dependent secular humanists.
BTW, I do believe in conspiracies—ever since JFK and reading Witness by Whittaker Chambers. Wonder why the MSM always tries to marginalize “conspiracy” believers.
The Quantum Mechanical Cosmology (the Big Bang) postulates/observes that in the beginning, there was nothing - and then an instant later, all the energy (and mass) in the Universe was.IOW - "Let there be Light!"
"The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true."
--Albert Einstein
"Hey, Moses has been up on that hill an awful long time; he and his God must be dead. So hey, screw Moses, his god, and His Law - let's throw all our gold into the fire and worship what comes out (again)!"
In other words, homosexual propaganda is sending yet another person to hell. There isn't a more evil agenda than the one being pushed by those seeking to normalize homosexuality.
A Democrat, that is pro-life, considers homosexuality sinful, perhaps. Can a liberal that supports those things be? No.
The media does because it fits their agenda to bash Christianity. I doubt we could go back and find the story reported when she allegedly became a Christian.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.