"This is a conversion story on the level of Augustine," said Christian columnist David Kuo, a former aide to President Bush who was the deputy director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "Anne Rice was a daughter of darkness."
"Rice sold [millions of] books that explored the darkest realms of the spiritual world," Kuo wrote in an online column for beliefnet.com. "She dressed all in black. She glorified the night and her atheism. But look at pictures of her now.... Look most of all at the sparkle in the eyes -- at the light. It isn't the Bible, but it is inspired by God."
But St. Augustine renounced his earthly "sins." Rice, 64, isn't renouncing anything. She's proud of her son, novelist and gay activist Christopher Rice, who lives in West Hollywood.
The Broadway-bound musical of her work, "Lestat," opened in San Francisco the weekend before Christmas, with a score co-written by AIDS activist Elton John, who exchanged vows with his longtime partner in London last week.
To Rice, the path from the Vampire Chronicles to Jesus was steps on a continuous lifelong spiritual quest, which, like a seemingly predestined love, has led her to this moment, to fulfill her role as a modern "apostle" of Jesus.
Her God, she said, "is all-merciful, all loving."
Fascination with Jesus
AS Rice immerses herself in Scripture, many of the things she finds there do not jibe with the dictates of the Vatican or conservative Christians. Like many modern scholars of the Koran, Rice is pointing to her religion's holy book itself to criticize what she views as its misuse to justify long-held cultural practices.
For example, she said, there is no biblical dictate forbidding women to use birth control.
"I think that's a mistaken notion," she said. "There's a lack of vision about how much better the world would be if women could control their reproductive rights. We have all these street children in underdeveloped countries. We have to bring these countries into the modern era. I think the church has been sex-obsessed too long."
Rice says her fascination with Jesus began with a devoutly Catholic girlhood. Born Howard Allen O'Brien in October 1941, Rice grew up on the edge of New Orleans' Garden District, where "my environment was just saturated with religion," Rice said, her gaze direct and forceful under a gray bob reminiscent of silent movie star Louise Brooks. "The great thing about a childhood like that was everything had meaning."
