I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
Well. This is certainly a perplexing renunciation. If these are the reasons she can no longer call herself a Christian one has to wonder how deep her commitment was in the first place.
Few Christians, for example, are anti-gay. One is not anti-gay just because one opposes legalizing gay marriage any more than one is anti-youth because one opposes giving 18 year-olds the right to vote.
Nor are most Christians anti-feminist, at least not if we define feminism as the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men, allowing for the physical differences between them. If, though, Ms Rice defines feminism as many modern feminists wish to define it, i.e., as the view that a woman should have the unfettered legal right to destroy her unborn child, well, then, yes, many Christians take exception to that.
In any case, Ms. Rice seems unmindful of the fact that no social force in history has done more to liberate women from oppression than has Christianity. To recant it now because some Christian groups do not ordain women nor support abortion seems to reflect a very pinched view of Christianity's historical influence on civilization.
Moreover, I know of no Christian outside the Catholic Church who is "anti-artificial birth control" - unless Rice is lumping abortion in as a form of birth control - so I don't know why this should be a stumbling block for her either.
She declares that she also refuses to be "anti-Democrat," which is good. A lot of Democrats are Christians (I even know some), so again it's not clear why she should make this a point of contention.
So, too, are a lot of scientists Christians which makes her refusal to be "anti-science" puzzling. Presumably, she doesn't wish to be associated with folks who question the dogma of many atheistic scientists that naturalism gives us a true picture of reality. Naturalism, though, is metaphysics, not science. What Rice seems to be complaining about here is that Christians reject a philosophical worldview that claims that God doesn't exist, and she oddly finds that intolerable.
The same point applies to her refusal to be "anti-secular humanism." Secular humanism is a belief system that maintains that the core miracles of the Christian faith, including the miracle of the Resurrection of Christ upon which the entire belief system of Christianity is based, are frauds and myths.
Thus, Ms Rice appears to be saying that, given her sympathy for views which are inimical to Christianity, and given her shallow understanding of what Christians believe about homosexuality, women, and so on, she can no longer count herself a Christian.
As I said above, one wonders why she ever thought of herself as one in the first place.
RLC
