I can relate...

[acroyear]

Anne Rice leaves Christianity – The Marquee Blog - CNN.com Blogs:

Legendary author Anne Rice has announced that she’s quitting Christianity.

The “Interview with a Vampire” author, who wrote a book about her spirituality titled "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" in 2008, said Wednesday that she refuses to be “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat.”

Rice wrote, “For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... 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.”

Rice then added another post explaining her decision on Thursday:

“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”

To further my respect for her, in her twitter/facebook feed, she quotes some of the very same passages I like to "believe" in, and seem ignored by so many, including,

• "If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." (spoken at almost every Christian wedding in America)
  
• "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. "
  

and a nice quote from Ghandi: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Comments

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

Because I am a pedant, and also had an "h" in my birth name that no one ever seemed to put in the right place, it's Gandhi, not Ghandi.

And I would comment that some atheists are quite cheerful, and not pessimistic at all. Even hopeful.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

In another thread elsewhere i commented that most atheists and pagans I'd met knew the answer to "Who is my neighbor?" and what the parable meant than most of the Christians out there.

[arseaboutface.livejournal.com]

Well, the plural of anecdote is not data.