{"id":4587,"date":"2025-04-29T09:32:27","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T13:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4587"},"modified":"2025-04-29T09:32:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T13:32:27","slug":"a-fierce-devotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/a-fierce-devotion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fierce Devotion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Anne Rice stunned the literary world in 1998 when she announced she had become a Christian.

As a self-described \u201cpessimistic atheist\u201d and the author of the supernatural thriller Interview With the Vampire<\/em> and its sequels, Rice seemed to be one of the least likely celebrity converts.

She acknowledged that many of her novels \u201creflected my quest for meaning in a world without God.\u201d

Her search led her back to the Catholic Church she had abandoned as a teenager.\u00a0In Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession<\/em>, she writes:

\u201cIn the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from [God] for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I’d been, all of my life, missing the entire point.\u201d Then she added, speaking of the Church\u2019s track record, \u201cNo social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him.\u201d

The author who had sold nearly 100 million books, and who had helped transform Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt into two of the best-looking vampires of all time, had crossed the line of faith.

It seemed to be a happy public vindication for the Church.\u00a0

Then, in 2010, Anne Rice became one of the best known celebrity de-converters.\u00a0She announced on her Facebook page:\u00a0\u201cToday I quit being a Christian.\u201d\u00a0

What was going on here?

Rice provided an important clarification:\u00a0\u201cI remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being \u2018Christian\u2019 or to being part of Christianity.\u00a0It\u2019s simply impossible for me to \u2018belong\u2019 to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group.\u00a0For ten years, I\u2019ve tried.\u00a0I\u2019ve failed.\u00a0I\u2019m an outsider.\u00a0My conscience will allow nothing else.\u201d

Like countless others, Anne Rice was drawing a line between Jesus and his followers.

She was more than happy to surrender her life to the former, but weary of trying to make life work in the company of the latter.

Right up until her death in 2019, Rice stated that she remained \u201cabsolutely committed to the core of Christ\u2019s teachings.\u201d She added, \u201cFollowing Christ does not mean following His followers,\u201d and, \u201cMy devotion to Jesus remains fierce.\u201d A fierce devotion<\/em>.

But as many have gently pointed out, one of the core teachings of Jesus is to \u201cdo life\u201d with others who are also trying to follow him as best they can \u2013 even when they seem to get everything wrong.\u00a0

Let\u2019s face it:\u00a0A number of people who follow Jesus do indeed present themselves as quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous.\u00a0

Americans, when asked, make it clear they have few problems with Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0He is endlessly fascinating and inspiring.\u00a0His followers?\u00a0Not so much.\u00a0

Author and activist Brian McLaren observes that many of those followers try to save the day with adjectives.\u00a0

Maybe I can get off the hook if you just realize that I\u2019m not one of those<\/u><\/em> Christians. I\u2019m a real Christian.\u00a0Or a born-again Christian.\u00a0Or a Spirit-filled Christian.\u00a0Or a Catholic Christian.\u00a0Or a social-activist Christian.\u00a0Or an evangelical Christian.\u00a0Or a missional Christian.\u00a0

I\u2019m, you know, the right kind<\/em> of Christian.\u00a0

And what kind would that be?

Anne Rice spent virtually all of her life searching.\u00a0She yearned to resolve the mystery of what it means to know God and walk with God.

What the world needs now are Christians who can actually help searchers find what they are longing for, without accidentally sabotaging the search along the way.\u00a0

And what kind of Christians can do that?

The ones who are grace-filled<\/em>, hopeful, humble, <\/em>and increasingly aware that they will be always be unfinished.\u00a0<\/em>
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Anne Rice stunned the literary world in 1998 when she announced she had become a Christian. As a self-described \u201cpessimistic atheist\u201d and the author of the supernatural thriller Interview With the Vampire and its sequels, Rice seemed to be one of the least likely celebrity converts. She acknowledged that many of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[493,918],"class_list":["post-4587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church","tag-conversions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4589,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions\/4589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}