Anne Rice's Spiritual Awakening

Posted on October 31, 2008

Anne Rice has a new memoir out called Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, in which she discusses her early Catholicism, embrace of atheism during college and her recent return to Christianity. She also explains why she left the vampire genre behind to write about Jesus' life on Earth. She talked to CNN about the big changes in her life and what she hopes readers will take away from her new books.

Rice told CNN, "To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was -- to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now."

She also explained her objective with her new writing. She says, "My objective is simple: It's to write books about our Lord living on Earth that make him real to people who don't believe in him; or people who have never really tried to believe in him."

Time magazine loved the book, saying "Called out of Darkness is catnip for devout Christians: Rice's conversion is disorganized enough to sound real, her eagerness to embrace confession and discipleship is inspiring, and her arguments in a passage on 'Christmas Christianity' suggest Rice could rival C.S. Lewis as a popular apologist for the faith."