Word: faithful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...queen bat of vampire fiction, shed her fangs and began writing books (two so far) about the life of Jesus. This memoir is Rice's attempt to explain her return to Christianity, moving from the idyllic New Orleans of her 1940s childhood to the renunciation of her Catholic faith - indeed, of all faiths - during her student years and after in 1960s San Francisco. Rice's reminiscences about her ensuing atheist period and the success of her decidedly irreligious vampire novels are tinged with some sorrow; she moves earnestly on to the 90s, years in which, she says, a benevolent deity...
...description...I had come thousands of miles to stand here. And here was the Lord. The clouds quickly closed over the statue; then broke and revealed the statue again. How many times this happened I don't remember. I do remember a kind of delirium...I didn't acknowledge faith in these moments at the foot of the statue. But something greater than creedal formulation took hold of me, a sense that this Lord of Lords belonged to me in all his beauty and grandeur...
...Lowdown: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. For those more interested in learning about what shaped the author of the bestselling vampire sagas and volumes of sadomasochistic pornography (written under a pseudonym), the book is maddening. Rice drops dark hints of severe dyslexia, militant gender ambiguity, alcoholism and bipolarity, but retreats, giving little away. The startling childhood...
...Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: "The pastor's not gonna say, 'Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,' but I have heard, 'Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you - if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you'll get that house or that car or that apartment.' " Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: "It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, 'If you give this offering, God will give...
Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are "worthy of having more and doing more and being...