The trouble with political Christianity – UnHerd

In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who (either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, say, Christianity, but fail to act in accordance with its demanding message of love and compassion. They love the tree, but cant quite swallow the fruit. More recently, however, a strange reverse phenomenon is emerging: a class of thinkers who, unable to rationally assent to the actual truth of Christianity, and yet disillusioned with the politics of new atheism, and fearful of the various religious and pseudo-religious ideas that have filled the vacuum it created, find themselves in the tough spot of being hungry for the fruit but unable to believe in the existence of the tree.

These so-called cultural Christians are appearing in droves: Douglas Murray, Tom Holland (not that one), Konstantin Kisin, Jordan Peterson (depending on what you mean by Christian and cultural and and); even Richard Dawkins the archetypal modern atheist who has done more to confront organised religion than perhaps any other identifiable person in a generation happily adopts this paradoxical moniker for himself.

Paradoxical because, of course, Christianity is more than just an affinity for evensong, disappointment with secular architecture, and suspicion of Islam. St Paul wrote in no uncertain terms to the Corinthians that if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith, and the vague, la carte approach to the religion displayed by the cultural Christian which doesnt seem to care about, much less affirm, the historicity of the extraordinary events of Easter Sunday is the kind of attitude that would see you condemned as heretical by the founders of the orthodox church.

Yet Christianity is experiencing a popular makeover, from an affirmative doctrine of truth-claims to a sort of protective garment to be worn as a practical measure against the equal and opposite destabilising forces of radical political religiosity and cynical nihilism which continue to claw away at the souls of those without a firm spiritual conviction.

In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who (either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, say, Christianity, but fail to act in accordance with its demanding message of love and compassion. They love the tree, but cant quite swallow the fruit. More recently, however, a strange reverse phenomenon is emerging: a class of thinkers who, unable to rationally assent to the actual truth of Christianity, and yet disillusioned with the politics of new atheism, and fearful of the various religious and pseudo-religious ideas that have filled the vacuum it created, find themselves in the tough spot of being hungry for the fruit but unable to believe in the existence of the tree.

These so-called cultural Christians are appearing in droves: Douglas Murray, Tom Holland (not that one), Konstantin Kisin, Jordan Peterson (depending on what you mean by Christian and cultural and and); even Richard Dawkins the archetypal modern atheist who has done more to confront organised religion than perhaps any other identifiable person in a generation happily adopts this paradoxical moniker for himself.

Paradoxical because, of course, Christianity is more than just an affinity for evensong, disappointment with secular architecture, and suspicion of Islam. St Paul wrote in no uncertain terms to the Corinthians that if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith, and the vague, la carte approach to the religion displayed by the cultural Christian which doesnt seem to care about, much less affirm, the historicity of the extraordinary events of Easter Sunday is the kind of attitude that would see you condemned as heretical by the founders of the orthodox church.

Yet Christianity is experiencing a popular makeover, from an affirmative doctrine of truth-claims to a sort of protective garment to be worn as a practical measure against the equal and opposite destabilising forces of radical political religiosity and cynical nihilism which continue to claw away at the souls of those without a firm spiritual conviction.

This metamorphosis of the Christian religion in is many ways indebted to Tom Holland not the actor, though perhaps an actor, in that he seems content to live as if Christianity were true whose Dominion thesis has convinced a not insignificant number of intellectuals that the bulk of our celebrated Western ethics is ultimately the product of Christianity, an ideology which has so successfully embedded itself in our culture that we do not even notice it anymore.

This leads our cultural Christians, often those with a special interest in safeguarding Western civilisation, to cozy up to an ideology that they cant quite adopt without qualification due to their rather inconvenient conviction that it isnt true.

Enter Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Re-enter, I should say, as this brave apostate from Islam won successful prominence as an atheist writer and speaker for many years since the early 2000s, before recently announcing that she had embraced Christianity. Indeed, she had originally been scheduled to participate in that famed discussion in Washington D.C. in 2007 which gave birth to the four horsemen of new atheism Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. So news of the almost fifths conversion was met with widespread surprise, joy, and speculation.

Perhaps the most widely read response came from Dawkins, in an open letter whose first sentence contained a rather less than charitable: Seriously, Ayaan? You, a Christian? You are no more Christian than I am.

Why? Because Hirsi Alis article, while passionate and detailed, suffered from the exclusion of anything resembling an argument for the existence of God, or for the theological supremacy of the Christian religion over others (or even over atheism). Instead, it is a political treatise: it begins with her experiences as a Muslim, touching on 9/11, the Muslim Brotherhood, and antisemitism, before asking: So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?

She answers: Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces, which she identifies as Russian/Chinese authoritarianism, Islamism, and wokeism. All of which are distinctly political considerations and so hardly serve as a theological defence of Christianity. Then, referring to Tom Holland, she tells us that the story of the West is a civilisation built on the Judeo-Christian tradition. That is to say, She is ticking all the boxes of a merely cultural Christian.

Strangely, then, they could find initial agreement on one point: their being just as Christian as each other.

Yet she later writes, as if anticipating this objection, I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. Its a promising interjection, which seems to ready us for an apolitical testimony that might justify her exclusion of the cultural in labelling her new Christian identity.

Here, Hirsi Ali begins to describe her personal struggles as an atheist. I have found life without any spiritual solace unendurable, she writes, claiming that the God hole left behind after her deconversion was not filled with reason and intelligent humanism, as atheists like Betrand Russell had predicted, but instead left painfully vacant.

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational, she continues. We cant withstand China, Russia and Iran if we cant explain to our populations why it matters that we do. In explaining, then, her reasons for becoming Christian apart from her desire to defeat her political foes, she tells us that she was struggling with a nihilistic vacuum that was insufficient for defeating her political foes. Once again, the motivation seems political.

Thus Richard Dawkins and his assessment, you are no more a Christian than I am. The funny thing is, Ayaan Hirsi Ali endorses this sentiment. Dawkins has, of late, been airing his misgivings about gender theorists and Islamists, and constantly reaffirms his admiration for Christian art, architecture and music. These political and aesthetic preferences inspired her to refer to Dawkins at one point as one of the most Christian people that she knows. Strangely, then, they could find initial agreement on one point: their being just as Christian as each other.

This uneasy equilibrium provided the mise en scne for an eagerly awaited conversation between the two, which took place in Brooklyn last month. Dawkins tells us at one point that he showed up fully prepared to explain to Hirsi Ali why she is not a Christian: The idea, he says, that the Universe has lurking beneath it an intelligence a supernatural intelligence that invented the laws of physics it invented mathematics [] is a stupendous idea (if its true) and to me that simply dwarfs all talk of nobility and morality and comfort and that sort of thing.

He was, therefore, taken quite unawares, as were many of us, when he asked (or rather told) her, You dont believe Jesus rose from the dead, surely? and she confidently replied, I choose to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And that is a matter of choice. This, for Dawkins (as for me), changes the game. While throughout the event she had no hesitation in repeating her political grievances, in New York, she finally addressed the truth claims of Christianity, and appeared to confess a belief in them. I came here prepared to persuade you, Ayaan, youre not a Christian, Dawkins told her, before correcting himself: I think you are a Christian, and being Richard Dawkins he added, and I think Christianity is nonsense.

This extraordinary event began with Hirsi Ali recounting her conversion: I lived for about a decade with intense depression and anxiety self-loathing. I hit rock bottom. I went to a place where I actually didnt want to live anymore but wasnt brave enough to take my own life. Through prayer, she managed to escape that hole. My zest for life is back, she declared to a healthy applause, indicative of the one thing that everyone can agree on: it is wonderful to hear that Ayaan is happy again.

After finishing this personal narrative, she could only look at Dawkins and shrug slightly. The audience laughed, in anticipation of something of a shift in tone. I did think there was something comical about following such a moving story of escape from depression and anxiety with, But do you really think Jesus was born of a virgin? Dawkinss decision to do so, however, can hardly be blamed: as touching as his former colleagues story may be, if he is right that Gods existence is a scientific question, then we should remember that bringing personal narrative into the laboratory is as inappropriate an approach as bringing a microscope into a poetry seminar. It should be no more an insult to say that Hirsi Alis emotional struggles are irrelevant to the question of Gods existence than it would be to say to say that scientific observations are irrelevant to the study of Keats.

As Dawkins himself put it, responding to Hirsi Alis fear that an atheistic universe doesnt offer us any way to connect with each other and the cosmos: Suppose it were true that atheism doesnt offer anything. So what? why should it offer anything? Further applause.

Faith offers you something, obviously. Thats very very very clear, he says at one point. But it doesnt make it true. It doesnt make the existence claims of Christianity true. More clapping. Given that such a claim is hardly extraordinary or controversial, this reception seemed to be less in support of the point, and more of Dawkinss willingness to make it plain.

Yet it is worth remembering that believing something for non-rational reasons is not unusual. Our beliefs are quite often formed by our surrounding environment, rather than some kind of perfect logic and analysis of abstract syllogisms. Most people know this. Hirsi Ali is happy to admit it. You may think it imperfect, but it is not unique to her.

The kind of Christianity adopted by Hirsi Ali goes further in asserting its truth, but not very much further in its justification.

This means that any surge in Christian interest we may notice among our public intellectuals is unlikely to be due to a renewed interest in Biblical scholarship or the figure of the crucified Nazarene. It is instead likely a product of their environment. Cultural Christianity, then, is in many ways a political movement disguised as a religious one, reacting not to arguments for Gods existence, but concerns about the practical shortcomings of atheism and alternative religions. The kind of Christianity adopted by Hirsi Ali goes further in asserting its truth, but not very much further in its justification.

Therefore, those celebrating some alleged resurgence of Christianity ought be cautious: it would certainly be a happy day for them if their favourite intellectuals began discovering a relationship with Jesus, but if they begin converting to Christianity principally as an ideological bulwark, we may witness the return not of a meek and mild community of believers, but of a more strong-armed, aggressive Christianity that has historically been a touch more controversial.

But Ayaan does seem genuinely transformed by her new faith: she looks happy, speaks humbly, and seems genuinely uninterested in point-scoring or winning any arguments. It troubles me not at all to admit that I found myself applauding her more than Richard Dawkins. It transpired in Brooklyn that her conversion, which at first appeared mostly political, was more a result of her personal battle with nihilism. This is hardly going to convince anybody else to become Christian, but such personal experience isnt ever supposed to.

Atheists are often told that they are plagued with a God-shaped hole. Hirsi Ali appears to have developed for herself a hole-shaped God. But despite the probability of at least an element of motivated reasoning in this conversion, Im genuinely happy for her. We should keep in mind, too, as her story evolves, that our ideas are the most unclear to us when they are new, and Ayaan is a new Christian. While we are all trying to work out what she really believes, she is probably trying to work out the same thing. She, however, has the unusual courage to do it out loud.

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The trouble with political Christianity - UnHerd