“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.”

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:34-38)

Anne Rice Is Actually Quitting Merely A Progressive/Liberal Caricature Of Christianity

This is a follow up to Anne Rice, You Can’t Quit Christianity Unless You’re A Christian where I discussed the continuing sad saga of author Anne Rice, which she herself set in motion by making the statement below on her Facebook page back on July 28th. Via a screen shot, in the aformentioned post here at the online apologetics and discernment work Apprising Ministries, I showed you that Rice had announced to the world:

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.

The Guardian report Anne Rice ‘quits being a Christian’ gives us some more, and important, background as to this saga concerning Anne Rice and homosexuality:

Twelve years after she converted to Christianity from atheism, bestselling author Anne Rice has “quit being a Christian” because of the religion’s attitude to birth control, homosexuality and science… Rice posted on Tuesday revealing her distress about a news story in which an American “punk rock ministry” said that “executing gays is ‘moral'”…

Later that day, she linked to a report about the Westboro baptist church in Kansas, which “spreads the message that because the United States condones homosexuality, abortion and divorce, all Americans are going to hell”, according to the story. (Online source)

Quickly, Rice is absolutely right to find these things repugnant; however, neither is even remotely consistent with the historic, orthodox, Christian faith professed by the genuine Christians within the Church of Jesus Christ. Then the Guardian goes on to inform us that Rice said:

“This is chilling. I wish I could say this is inexplicable. But it’s not. That’s the horror. Given the history of Christianity, this is not inexplicable at all,” Rice wrote, pointing to Gandhi’s statement: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” (Online source)

Interesting; it would seem that Rice uses those two egregious accounts, which even the average professing Christian in the church visible would agree are clearly outside anything taught within evangelical Protestantism, in order to set up her preconceived notion of how bad “the history of Christianity” supposedly is. And then she trots out the tired old chestnut concerning the deceased pagan Mohatma Ghandi, which is so often used by the progressive/liberal types slithering around within the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emerging Church; apparently what follows below from Ghandi is supposed to bring us to our knees.

You may even recall that I discussed this about a year ago in Jay Bakker And Fixing Ghandi when gay-affirming “pastor” Jay Bakker, who heads up a bawdy brood of largely Biblically illiterate self-described Outlaw Preachers in the Emergent Church, tweeted out that same quote:

(Online source)

So, for your edification, I’ll take a quick moment and put this quote—from a man who never believed Who Jesus is and as a result died in his sins (see—John 8:24)—into a proper context and fix it, once and for all. Here’s what Ghandi, and these progressive/liberal types like Anne Rice, are really telling us:

“I like the Christ whom I have made up in my own mind; I do not like Christians who remind me of the doctrine, i.e. Christianity, that He actually taught. Your Christians are so unlike the teachings of the imaginary Christ that I happen to like.”

This is the proper backdrop upon which to understand the following from Anne Rice, who is what Dr. John MacArthur rightly refers to as a defector from the faith. As an example of a defector, another apostate who’s in a place quite similar to where Rice now has placed herself, MacArthur points out:

You have seen a very clear illustration of that in the ordination of the Episcopalian Bishop [Eugene] Robinson who is a blatant and outspoken homosexual who is a licentious, lascivious, ungodly man denying our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ who has come into the church, the unwitting, stupid and ignorant visible church has ordained him to Christian ministry. And he is a man marked out for condemnation by God.

Not everybody in the visible church is as blatant as that. That’s fairly easy to spot. It’s the subtleties that we sometimes miss. It’s the nuances on the person of God, or the person of Christ, or the gospel that we can’t really discern because the church has such a deficient immune system. (Online source)

It doesn’t bring pleasure to say so; however, the fact remains that we’re in a war for the truth; this is not a drill, and the stakes are eternal. With all of this in mind, let me tell you that yesterday Anne Rice tweeted:

(Online source)

Being Committed To A “Jesus” Who Exists Only As A Figment Of Your Own Imagination

The above link takes us to the HuffPost Anne Rice On Her Decision To Quit Christianity (VIDEO), which contains the video below where Rice tells us she’s “been living as a Christian for twelves years and living as a ‘public Christian’ for at least five.” She speaks of her “moral discomfort” concerning some alleged aspects of Christendom, and says she wanted to “exonerate myself”; as well as tell the world that she “wasn’t complicent in all of the different things that Christians are doing publicly.” So she tells us her “commitment to Christ” demands that she now moves “away from this group of His followers.” So, we’re left wondering; would this be all Christians in general? Nope.

It turns out it’s just the Bible-believing Christians who are truly committed to the actual Jesus, Who spoke those Words in my opening text, which were recorded by an eyewitness to the event. Now to her credit Joy Behar does ask the tough question concerning Rice’s son Christopher Rice, who is openly gay,[1] when she asks Anne Rice, “Did this have something to do with your decision?” While Rice doesn’t say her son is the cause, clearly when she speaks of her LGBT “gay” readership, as well as how she lived in a “gay neighborhood,” the issue of someone having sexual relations with another of the same sex i.e homosexuality is of foremost concern involving Rice’s own apostasy.  

Behar goes one to discuss Rice’s view on abortion, which Anne Rice says she’s personally not in favor of; but leaving this issue aside, Rice tells Behar that she has received many “very gentle” emails from “Christians” who tell her to “come to our church, we’re not anti-gay at all; we have a gay minister.” Well, I first began covering issues surrounding homosexuality in order to help you see the advance of enemy forces against Sola Scriptura because the case for affirming homosexuality simply cannot be made from the Bible; and those who won’t adhere to Scripture on this issue will also eventually bail on the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. 

As I previously pointed out in ELCA Removes All Barriers To Gay Inclusion, it’s suffice here to say that any church or denomination who ordains someone who’s in willful, and unrepentant, sin has now ceased to even be a genuine church of Jesus Christ. When asked by Joy Behar if there was “one denomination” that she does like, Rice quickly side-steps the question and says, “Right now I would prefer to walk away from the argument, from the confusion.” Well, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible because Rice is now the source for inflaming “the argument” and “the confusion,” for which she is now going to have to answer.

The problem reveals itself when Rice says she’s had lots of discussion with her so-called Christian friends about “what ‘we’ believe; or what we feel we have to believe”; but we must note that not once is what God has said in His inerrant, infallible, Word in the Bible even mentioned. And concerning the kind of people Rice is talking about, who like her are claiming commitment to Christ, Jesus has asked — “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you” (Luke 6:46) because, as He also said — “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). However, this the progressive/liberals [read: unbelievers] just refuse to do.

It says a lot when those whom we would consider as apostate as Rice find obvious her man-centered positions; today William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called Rice out concerning her flip-flopping positions in his piece The tragic Anne Rice:

Anne Rice started as a believing Catholic; then she quit the Church; then she rejoined the Church; now she has quit again… Rice said this week that when the American bishops opposed homosexual marriage, that was the “last straw.” She offered, “I didn’t anticipate in the beginning that U.S. Catholic Bishops were going to come out against same-sex marriage.” Did she think they would be silent on one of the most contentious moral issues of our day?…

Here’s another beauty. She said this week that “I refuse to be anti-gay,” thereby separating herself from all those awful Catholic bigots. But when she was asked two years ago on ABC-TV whether the Catholic Church condemns her gay son to hell, she said, “I don’t think anybody in my church would say that. I think our view is far more compassionate.”…

Rice came back to the Catholic Church in the 1990s, but only the day before yesterday did she learn that the bishops are not fond of guys marrying. She said in 2008 that Catholicism is not anti-gay, but in 2010 it was so anti-gay she had to quit. She is pro-life, knows abortion kills, but sides with the agenda of Planned Parenthood. She wants Christ without the Christianity. (Online source)

Specific to the deviant lifestyle of homosexuality God has commanded — You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22). Let’s cut to the heart of the matter: Exactly what is there to argue about concerning the sin of practicing same-sex sexual relations i.e. homosexuality; if, you actually believe what the Bible says. That this is a sin is as clear as it gets in Scripture; and yes, I’m fully aware that gay affirming—i.e. homopressive—folk, e.g. like heretical quasi-universalist Emergence Christianity “pastor” Doug Pagitt and his equally heretical “theologian in residence” Tony Jones, place Leviticus 18:22 among so-called “clobber verses.”

But I really couldn’t care less; for you see it’s because I love LGBT people, for whom Christ died, that I will continue to tell them the truth. You need to understand that the truth is, unrepentant men and women continuing to openly commit sexual immorality as they live the sinful lifestyle of having sexual relations with another of the same sex, are still imprisoned by their sin. Those who affirm these dear souls in their sin are actually withholding the freeing power of God’s Gospel from them. And by doing, despite all their pious blather about love, the fact remains they leave LGBT people locked away in the chains and darkness of their own personal prison cell of sin.

We hear much whining right now wanting to condemn people concerning their so-called homophobia; but I will ask yet again: Why No Condemnation For Christians Who Are Homopressive? May the Lord grant repentance to those who continue in their grevious sin of lying to LGBT people, and for their cruelty towards them as they withhold the glorious Gospel of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in the Name of Jesus Christ. In closing this out, for now, Rice then reiterates in the video below that:

the appropriate thing for me to do right now is step away altogether. I’m not leaving just the [Roman] Catholic Church, I wanna leave the entire fray; the entire quarrel, the entire, um, public face of Christianity as it is right now. I can’t be commited to Christ and remain in this group.

And that doesn’t mean that I think these people are bad–I’m not saying they’re bad–and there are, as you just pointed out, people who believe radically different things from one another. But I have to step away, I have to sort of go into the wildernes. I have to (pause) talk to God personally; and seek His guidance for what He wants me to do, to keep my commitment to Christ at the center of my life. (6:06-6:50)

As pious as this also sounds, let me first say myself: Being that I’m critical of the wrong understanding by Anne Rice of what it is to be a Christian, and what our profession is to be before the world i.e. Christianity, it doesn’t mean that I think she is bad—I’m not saying she’s bad—and there are, as Anne Rice and Joy Behar have pointed out, those claiming to be Christian who believe radically different things from one another. With that clearly understood then, Rice is absolutely mistaken that the appropriate thing for her to do now is “to step away altogether.” That she should have thought of before she made any type of public announcement.

You see, Anne Rice should have quietly stepped away before she embarked upon her very public attack of the Church of Jesus Christ, and His Christians, such as myself. For you see, we’re not about to sit by quietly as God’s Word and His genuine believers—saved by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone on the Cross, are being maligned in the public arena. All true Christians are to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3); and for one such as I, who is a pastor-teacher sent as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I am commanded by Him to:

preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching…[and] hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that [I] may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (2 Timothy 4:2; Titus 1:9).

This I’ll continue to do as long as Jesus chooses to sustain me. And the honorable thing for Anne Rice to do now is to stand and defend her charges against Christ’s Church and its profession of Christianity; and not to fan into flames “the entire quarrel” only then to simply slink away, all the while claiming that in the Name of Jesus Christ she can’t be commited to “this group” i.e. the Body of Christ—the Church—of which she dares to even consider herself a part of. Here I will also remind Anne Rice she doesn’t need any “wilderness” or private confab with God because He’s already told us that the Christian, who belongs to Jesus Christ, is:

 to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

And it was Jesus Who said — “whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

________________________________________________________________________________

End notes:

[1] http://tiny.cc/z5and, accessed 8/5/10.

See also:

ADELE SAKLER AND KEN SILVA

THE SIN OF HOMOSEXUALITY IS DIFFERENT

JAY BAKKER REFLECTS THE SAD CONDITION OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH

DOUG PAGITT, THE EMERGING CHURCH, AND AFFIRMING HOMOSEXUALITY

TONY JONES BEGGING THE QUESTION RE. HOMOSEXUALITY

HOMOPRESSION IS AT LEAST AS BAD AS HOMOPHOBIA 

ROMAN CATHOLICISM: ANOTHER GOSPEL OF BAPTISM AND SACRAMENTS