I'm going to argue no. I will say that many people I have met who call themselves Christians are followers of Christ, but I will simultaneously argue that you cannot both be a follower of Christ and a Christian. Say what you like, but I believe the two terms are mutually exclusive. Follow me below the fold to see why I believe this is the case.
No matter how you cut it, to be a Christian is to advocate tribalism. And to be an advocate of tribalism is to advocate the exclusion of other groups over others. This directly entails that you will not loveother group. So long as they are not members of the tribe you will be unable to love them. This is why Christianity is the greatest of conspiracies against Christ. Christianity demands membership in a tribe, Christ demands love of the stranger and the other. The two are mutually exclusive.
There is Biblical support for my thesis. From the standpoint of the New Testament, who is it that we see Christ denouncing and defending? We see Jesus, a Jew, denouncing the Pharisees and supporting the Samaritans. Yet the Pharisees are the most respected religious figures among the Jews, while, during this period, Jesus defends the lowest of the low, the most hated of the hated among the Jews, or the Samaritans. In other words, Christ defends the stranger, the other, he who does not belong to the tribe, why denouncing he who belongs to the tribe. Likewise, in Luke, Christ says that in order to be his follower, you must hate your mother, father, brother, and sister. In other words, Christ thoroughly diminishes the importance of all kinship or tribal relations or precisely those relations that have the greatest importance in the ancient world. Finally, in the Pauline epistles, we continuously read Paul saying Jew and Gentile alike. Remember, Paul is a Jew and a, prior to his conversion, a persecutor of heretics (gentiles).
For Paul to say "Jew and gentile alike he is making a tremendously radical claim, announcing an entirely new form of society beyond tribe. When Paul announces the possibility of love as a moral ground, beyond law, he is claiming that the tribal codes defining membership for Jews, Greeks, and Romans are null. Put differently, he is claiming the possibility of a new form of social relation that is no longer dependent on tribal affiliation or the following of certain cultural codes. In the wake of Christ, Paul argues, we must encounter each and every person as a singularity without requiring that they have a certain type of belief (what is currently called "faith"), without requiring that they follow a certain kind of faith (in it's current signification), and without requiring that they follow a certain dietary code revolving around certain dietary laws, sexual laws, or kindship laws.
This is what Paul means when he says "the law is dead to us". Now, he says, you can be a Roman, a Greek, a Jew, a Buddhist, an atheist, a pastafarian, etc., etc., etc., and still be a part of this community. There is no dogma required. After all, says Paul, God quite literally died on the cross. There is only the Holy Spirit left which is this strange community without law, dogma, or code that's perpetually being built. This is what faith means in its original, pre-Lutherian, signification. Faith is the activity of forming a community of strangers, without code or dogma. Those who today come closest, in this regard, to being followers of Christ are the Unitarians, who require no dogma in membership in their community. They recognize that community is invention, rather than obedience to a code and a set of beliefs... Up to and including resurrection and the ten commandments.
The moment, then, that you spout the Nicene Creed you have already and immediately advocated your commitment to Christ. There are few things that are more contrary to the nature of Christ than commitment to a creed, a dogma, or a set of beliefs. No, such things are the highest betrayal of Christ. They might be Christian, but Christianity is a conspiracy against Christ. Christianity is a defense against what Christ announced morally and politically. If you wish to follow Christ you need to abandon all creed, dogma, code, theology, and, above all, tribe, and welcome the stranger as your neighbor. This entails that the most Christian of Christians is the person that refuses to name him or herself as Christian, for the person who does name him or herself as such immediately reintroduces tribe and therefore refuses the aleatory demand of love. Yet love is only possible where it is love directed towards the absolute stranger or that other that is not a part of tribe. There can be no hiding here behind loving the sinner but not the sin, for once again this is the law which is now null.
Remember, Christ says that the kingdom of heaven is already here in numerous places. Such a kingdom is not elsewhere. It is not in the afterlife. It is not supernatural. No, if it is already here it is purely secular and is a new form of community beyond tribe and law (code). It is a form of community where difference is recognized and where community is to be formed out of recognition of difference, not identity of following tribal codes. The only resurrection that took place was the resurrection of this community, not the person or body of Christ. The immortality of community, of this infinite project of love, is the only immortality that exists. There is no heaven or hell as a place or a reward or a punishment. There is only this infinite work of forming a community of difference or alterity. This is why all organized religion is a betrayal of Christ and why every form of Christianity, based as it necessarily is, on a dogma, and the formation of a tribe, is a betrayal of the new political and ethical option that Christ announced. Wherever there is the aim of forming a tribe and orthodoxy there is a betrayal of Christ's vision.