In a recent article written for CNN Belief Blog, renowned author and speaker Brian McLaren detailed exactly why Rice had his fullest sympathies but that he could entirely go along with her decision to ‘break up’ with Christianity.
In his opinion piece, McLaren stated that her choice and reasoning is far too fascinating and complex to “simply be praised or blamed, agreed with or quarreled with.”
McLaren details Rice’s faith path from an upbringing in Roman Catholicism before spending most of her adult years as a reasoning atheist. Her decision to return to Christianity in her fifties culminated in a drastic change in her writing career as she moved away from her vampire novels to writing about Christ.
McLaren mentions that the Rice break up with Christianity has been jumped on by the media because of its sensationalist angle. Rice’s disillusionment though is not with God, but with his followers. Rice makes it very clear that she has “quit Christianity.” She asserted that she just could not belong to the “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group” known as Christians unless she becomes “anti-gay … anti-feminist … anti-artificial birth control … anti-Democrat … anti-secular humanism … anti-science … anti-life.”
In McLaren’s opinion, the sensationalism of the story is hiding some of the more interesting facts behind it all. He writes: “Her (Rice’s) brief announcement raises lots of fascinating questions. For example, when a person quits Christianity in the name of Christ, what do you call that person? If Christianity means “following Christ’s followers,” what do you call someone who wants to skip the middlemen? Some might say you call such a person a Protestant: Anne’s reasons for leaving Catholicism aren’t terribly different from those of Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago.”
McLaren goes on to assert, however, that in his own personal experience, being a Protestant does not solve these problems. This is because there as just as many “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous” Protestants as Catholics, if not even more, and their theological prejudices exclude many. The differences between both Protestants and Catholics often seem far removed from the radical compassion espoused by Christ.
McLaren says that, “I reached a conclusion very close to Anne’s in my book A New Kind of Christianity: “I do not believe in Christianity the way I believe in Jesus. I am a Christian who does not believe in Christianity as I used to, but who believes in Christ with all my heart, more than ever.”
It is for this reason that McLaren feels that he can in no way “condemn or criticize” Rice in any way and feels that her stance may influence various church powers to listen more carefully to how ordinary people in the street feel about faith.
However, McLaren asserts that he cannot go as far as Rice has in formally leaving Christianity, although he is often tempted, citing last week’s decision by a major church to stage a ‘Burn a Quran Day’ as being a case in example. McLaren balances his feelings of disappointment in other Christians with a recognition of his own shortcomings, prejudices and blind spots. Secondly, McLaren feels that there is no religious effort which offers an improved alternative on Christianity’s best efforts. McLaren believes that all religions needs to acknowledge and learn from their many failures.
Thirdly, McLaren states that “… if I’m going to have solidarity with one failed religion, I might as well have solidarity with them all. So rather than surrendering my identity as a Christian, I’ve redefined it so it doesn’t mean that I feel superior to anybody. Instead, it means that as a failed member of a failed religion, and I’m in solidarity with all other failed members of failed religions … and with people who have dropped out of failed religions as well.”
McLaren concludes his article with the following thought: “Perhaps it’s this truly catholic (small-c) solidarity in failure that really counts most, for Catholics, Protestants, and everybody else. Those who leave religion and those who stay can work to expand that gracious space of solidarity, which, I think, is what Jesus called ‘the kingdom of God.’”
(Brian McLaren is a popular Christian writer, speaker, networker and ‘emerging church’ thinker. He has authored books such as “Generous Orthodoxy,” “Everything Must Change,” and most recently "A New Kind of Christianity.").
(To read the full article, please go to http://religion.blogs.cnn.com).