Anne Rice, the novelist who kissed vampires goodbye and rededicated her life to Christ last Wednesday used her Facebook page to announce another important decision:

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. 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.”

A few minutes later Rice explained, “As I said below, 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.”

Today the author followed up with “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. 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.”

Anne Rice has left New Orleans and its creatures of the night behind. She tells Chris Ayres about her new faith and her new passion – Jesus Christ

Over the course of 25 novels, Anne Rice has comfortably inhabited the worlds of vampires, witches, ghosts and mummies, but her latest subject is not of the fanged, evil, supernatural sort. With Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (Knopf, $25.95), Rice has nailed shut the coffin on her Vampire and Witching chronicles as she embarks on a Christian proselytizing mission marked by good-spiritedness and a candidly liberal nature.

After stupendous sales for her tales of vampires, witches and lust, novelist Anne Rice has turned to Jesus — personally and literarily.

La Jolla (San Diego County) -- The eucalyptus leaves manage to droop impressively on a rainy October afternoon, but they aren't Spanish moss. This manicured, affluent Southern California town, with its sea-scrubbed air, seems more than a continent away from the humid, venerable, and now devastated streets of New Orleans. Yet this is where the novelist Anne Rice, one of that city's best-known daughters, now lives, perched in a 12-year-old, 12,000-square-foot Tuscan-style villa halfway up a hill from the beach.

The queen of the occult has been gone awhile. What's Anne Rice been up to? Getting healthy, finding God—and writing her most daring book yet.