Anne Rice, the author of The Vampire Lestat, Interview with a Vampire as well as Christian novels has announced that she is no longer a Christian via her Facebook account.  The writer claims that she views Christianity as “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat” and she refuses to be identified with any of those.

She further stated that: 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.

 Since she made the statements last Wednesday, Anne Rice’s Facebook page has received several comments, most of which are overwhelmingly positive. The author has also used her Facebook account to make a few clarifications about her change in beliefs. In one status update, for example, the author reports to her fans that, “Following Christ does not mean following His followers”.

When reading through the comments on her page, it’s amazing to see how many of her fans are in support of her decision, which seems to have been prompted by a story from earlier in the week; apparently, an American ‘punk rock ministry’ publicly stated that the execution of gays would be “moral”.  Rice called the statement horrifying and quoted Ghandi who once stated that he liked Christ, but not Christians. Rice then speculated that maybe a commitment to Christ means, “not being a Christian”.

After announcing her decision to change her faith, Anne Rice chose to share some of the letters of support that she received on her Facebook profile in the notes section; a constant theme throughout the notes and comments was that it was difficult for those raised in Catholicism or in other Christian faiths to extricate themselves from religion without giving up their faith in Christ or their belief in Christ as a perfect being.

One writer wrote about her own struggle to separate herself from religion as she learned more about faiths outside of Christianity from a scholarly perspective. The more she discovered on her path through school, the more she distanced herself from religion by deciding to focus on her own path to God. She found that the origins of the religions taught love, but were often distorted for use by God’s followers.