Vampires and Jesus and Politics!

Check out Cindy Crosby’s recent Christianity Today interview with a penitent Anne Rice. It makes my blood chill as Anne tells how she moved from fascination with vampires to renewed faith in Christ.

Anne Rice, who developed a cult following with her novels of witches and vampires, warns her fans they may not want to follow her into the light of her new subject - Jesus Christ. Her new book, entitled Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, is narrated by Christ himself as a seven-year-old boy. The best-selling author of 26 books is already planning three sequels for her new character. Dedicated fans beware!

Rice made news with her testimony that she has returned to the Roman Catholic faith. Consider this update on the Rt. Rev. Doug LeBlanc’s recent post about the religious revival in the life of this controversial author. She said she needed a more inspirational subject: "I mean, I was in despair."

In the afterword of the new novel, she boldly refers to Christ as "the ultimate supernatural hero . . . the ultimate immortal of them all."

Some more details are found in a lengthy report in the New York Times. A feature story about Rice’s new home in California by reporter Laura Millier gives us a little insight:

In 1998 Ms. Rice rejoined the Roman Catholic Church for the first time since suffering a “total breakdown of faith” at age 18. “That was in 1960, before Vatican II, and I was a very strictly brought-up Catholic,” she explained. “I lost my faith because what I had been taught was so wrong.” An overwhelming desire to “return to the banquet table” and assurances from a priest in New Orleans that she didn’t have to resolve all her differences with the church (most notably over the issue of homosexuality) led to the reconciliation.

Pardon me, but did you say homosexuality? Now there is a dark topic that seems to shows up everywhere these days. Terry Mattingly over at getreligion.org says: “I would not be surprised in Rice’s series turns out to be a major event on the Christian left.”

He may be on to something. Rice's own website, http://www.annerice.com/, is a platform for everything from impassioned updates on the needs of post-hurricane New Orleans to Democratic politics and her views on controversial issues (her son, Christopher, also a novelist, is homosexual, and Anne is "an advocate for Christian and Jewish gays and their right to worship and to take the sacraments").

The darkness did not occult the Light!