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So I was reading through the latest Anne Rice thing (short version: Anne Rice leaves Catholicism because she can't agree with its leaders), and the thing that really bugged me about the responses to it is that when ranting about her experience with Christianity, she's being criticized for not acknowledging liberal Christianity.
There's two things that bug me about this. The first, and easiest: Dude, you're allowed to dump a religion because you can't handle the gaps between their morality and yours. You're even allowed to dump all organized religion, if that's what you want. If, in your exploration of Catholicism, you have consistently found its leaders to be bigoted, narrow-minded assholes, you're allowed to refuse to associate with it, without having to explore every last liberal church out there as an alternative. If Catholicism is the only religion she's interested in, and she can't agree with it, that's her business.
Two, it bothers me at a very fundamental level when people who identify as Christians tell you that you basically have to pick and choose what you believe from the beliefs your religion tells you are true. I mean, yes, you have to. The Bible was written by countless authors over countless centuries and has multiple translations, and trying to take everything in it as a guide to how you live your life is flat-out impossible. I suspect it would be impossible even if you eliminated the Old Testament as a source entirely, though to be fair, I haven't actually gone through it to look. Catholicism (as far as I'm aware) takes the Church rather than the Bible as as its ultimate canon, but that's even more confusing, since there's arguments and internal power struggles still going on in it and it still changes, while the Bible at least is stable (unless you count new translations and new arguments, but you know. Details.) Plus there's all the outside beliefs, like the whole Satan's rebellion thing that's made it into most of Christianity but you'll never find in the Bible. Trying to boil this down to some kind of core teachings is always going to be a messy task, and no two people are ever going to agree.
One of the big factors in me becoming an atheist is that my mind just doesn't work that way. If you have to approach God the right way, making the basis of the religion that messy and self-contradictory seems...cruel. I can't wrap my head around taking something as fundamental as your beliefs and picking and choosing from what you supposedly regard as the one truth, dictated on high by the God who created the world and continues to guide the people in it. Either he dictated it, at which point, why are you arguing with him and only listening to some of it? Or he didn't, at which point, why are you claiming you regard it as such? I seriously don't get it, and I never have. I suppose my problem with religion in a lot of ways boils down to the fact that its claims are so big that it's impossible for me to take it piecemeal. It's all or nothing, and religion just doesn't strike me as having enough solid ground underneath its grand claims for my answer to ever be all.
And yes, I am totally claiming Anne Rice as my Catholic in my religion-influenced vampire works collection. Or I would if I had ever managed to finish Interview with a Vampire, at least. Man, Anne Rice's prose was purple even when she had an editor. I hate to think of what it's like without one.
There's two things that bug me about this. The first, and easiest: Dude, you're allowed to dump a religion because you can't handle the gaps between their morality and yours. You're even allowed to dump all organized religion, if that's what you want. If, in your exploration of Catholicism, you have consistently found its leaders to be bigoted, narrow-minded assholes, you're allowed to refuse to associate with it, without having to explore every last liberal church out there as an alternative. If Catholicism is the only religion she's interested in, and she can't agree with it, that's her business.
Two, it bothers me at a very fundamental level when people who identify as Christians tell you that you basically have to pick and choose what you believe from the beliefs your religion tells you are true. I mean, yes, you have to. The Bible was written by countless authors over countless centuries and has multiple translations, and trying to take everything in it as a guide to how you live your life is flat-out impossible. I suspect it would be impossible even if you eliminated the Old Testament as a source entirely, though to be fair, I haven't actually gone through it to look. Catholicism (as far as I'm aware) takes the Church rather than the Bible as as its ultimate canon, but that's even more confusing, since there's arguments and internal power struggles still going on in it and it still changes, while the Bible at least is stable (unless you count new translations and new arguments, but you know. Details.) Plus there's all the outside beliefs, like the whole Satan's rebellion thing that's made it into most of Christianity but you'll never find in the Bible. Trying to boil this down to some kind of core teachings is always going to be a messy task, and no two people are ever going to agree.
One of the big factors in me becoming an atheist is that my mind just doesn't work that way. If you have to approach God the right way, making the basis of the religion that messy and self-contradictory seems...cruel. I can't wrap my head around taking something as fundamental as your beliefs and picking and choosing from what you supposedly regard as the one truth, dictated on high by the God who created the world and continues to guide the people in it. Either he dictated it, at which point, why are you arguing with him and only listening to some of it? Or he didn't, at which point, why are you claiming you regard it as such? I seriously don't get it, and I never have. I suppose my problem with religion in a lot of ways boils down to the fact that its claims are so big that it's impossible for me to take it piecemeal. It's all or nothing, and religion just doesn't strike me as having enough solid ground underneath its grand claims for my answer to ever be all.
And yes, I am totally claiming Anne Rice as my Catholic in my religion-influenced vampire works collection. Or I would if I had ever managed to finish Interview with a Vampire, at least. Man, Anne Rice's prose was purple even when she had an editor. I hate to think of what it's like without one.
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Yes, this. You're definitely allowed to keep the spirituality, too, and her decision should be entirely hers.
On the other hand, I do think there are a lot of liberal Christians out there who are less annoyed with Anne Rice specifically and more annoyed with… not getting acknowledged in general. I have mixed feelings on that, but it is really frustrating to hear the repeated subtext of "you're not really [identification] because you don't believe x, y, or z," and that's what Anne Rice is saying with her "I refuse to be anti-[xyz]" diatribe when she claims that being Christian… is being anti-those things. And that's just not true to plenty of other people who do identify as Christian, so in that sense, she's making it not just about her decision, but also about other people's belief systems, which brings hurt feelings.
Or, I should edit to add, it's also not about Anne Rice, but about the fact that the huge public face of Christianity is the anti-[xyz]. Which is why every time something like this comes up, there's a huge protest of "you can still be [x] and a Christian!"
That's how I understand it, at least.
This is my only icon even vaguely related to Christianity, and I could not resist. I have a terrible sense of humor.
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Well, I snerked! XD Whose eyeballs are those anyway?
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Her own, I believe-- wiki tells me they were taken out with a fork.
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SOMEHOW THAT MAKES ME REALLY CRINGE. Though at least it's not a spork. Sporks are so perfectly shaped for eyeball removal that they make me cringe a little more at the thought. My priorities are awesome what