Anne Rice doesn't get it:
“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.”
She says she loves Christ, but she hates his people--whom he loves despite all of their imperfections. Christ died for these very people that are the body of Christianity. This is a very confused woman.
CS Lewis, in "Screwtape Letters," writes of a demon's attempts to distract his Christian patient from seeing what the church is: a fellowship pf people alike in their desire to worship Jesus.
Instead, he draws attention to human failings. Pettiness. Quarrels over theology. Personality differences. Human beings in all their individual ugliness.
Anything that might distract the patient from seeing the church as a group of people in accord with one another in following Christ, despite their fallen human natures.
She doesn't see the church the way Christ does. A precious gathering of those that he saved on the Cross.
Let's face it, also, she is a political liberal. She wants a church that is politically liberal. She looks at the church through the lens of 21st century US politics. The politics will change. The politicians will all die. The ideas will change. She will die too, one day.
The church will still be there.
The Humanitarian and Social Gospel are not new but Ann saw its importance in her own spiritual journey.
See an adopted baby? The parents are probably Christian. See a business person that gives up half his income to help the poor? Probably Christian. See a woman who gave up her career to help the poor in another country? Probably Christian. See an NGO that rushes supplies to a disaster site? Probably a Christian group. And so on.
BTS