Anne Rice, the famous author of the wildly popular “Interview With A Vampire,” and other novels, says she is done with Christianity. "For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out," she said on her Facebook page this week. “I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."
Her comments reminded me a bit of Edward Gibbon’s comments on the nature of early Christians, which has been romanticized by many, but who held (at least in the latter stages of the Roman Empire) many of the same qualities that Rice cites above.
With Christianity as organized religion facing stiff challenges from, among other things, materialism, time-mania, entertainment obsession, jadedness, disconnection, and apathy, not to mention questions about Biblical accuracy/applicability and a surging Islam, what is its likely future? Will its central tenets of the written example of Jesus remain, and the rest be modified or even discarded? Will it transform into something the present day would not recognize? Will it itself resurge? What is its likely progression through history? And what of the central monotheistic nature and connectedness of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which to an alien from another world would seem like one religion with 3 main divisions and many sub-divisions?
I’m not sure which, if any, of those questions can be addressed and in what fashion. They are just my musings for today! :)
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