In November I reported on an Unherd article by the estimable Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a piece called “Why I am Now a Christian,” that announced her “conversion” from atheism to Christianity. This took many people aback, as it seemed so counterintuitive. Ali, as an opponent of Islamism, seemed like the least likely person to turn Christian. Her explanation was that Christianity and its values were the only way to stave off the tide of encroaching terror, corruption, Islamism, and despotism. As she said:
So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?
Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.
We endeavour to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools: military, economic, diplomatic and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease or surveil. And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground. We are either running out of money, with our national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, or we are losing our lead in the technological race with China.
But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
I disagreed, as I think secular humanism can fight off those “formidable forces, too”, and the world is turning less religious as it is.
Richard is going to interview Ayaan soon on his Substack site, but he has just written about Hirsi Ali’s religiosity, concluding that she’s not really a Christian.
Click below to read:
Richard makes a distinction between three types of Christians, which also holds, I think, for Jews, and perhaps for other faiths as well.
I want to make a three-way distinction. You can be a Cultural Christian, a Political Christian, a Believing Christian, or any combination of the three. People may disagree about which of these constitutes being “A Christian”. For me it has to be Believing Chistian.
I am a Cultural Christian, specifically a Cultural Anglican. I was educated in Christian schools. The history of my people is heavily influenced by Christian tradition. I like singing Christmas Carols, and am deeply moved by the sacred music of Bach and Handel. My head is full of Biblical phrases and quotations. And hymn tunes, which I regularly play by ear on my electronic clarinet.
I think Ayaan Hirsi-Ali (who is one of my favourite people in the world) is a Political Christian. She was brought up in the culture of Islam and is well aware of the horrors that that religion is still visiting on Muslims around the world, especially women. She sees Christianity as a relatively benign competitor, worth supporting as a bulwark against Islam. Just as most of us support a political party without agreeing with all its policies, because we prefer it to the alternative, a Political Christian may support Christianity without being a Believing Christian, because it’s better than the main alternative. Ayaan is a Cultural Muslim, and it is this that has driven her to be a Political Christian.
Believing Christians believe that there is a supernatural creator at the base of the universe called God. They believe a First Century Jew called Jesus is the son of God. They believe Jesus’s mother was a virgin when she gave birth to him. They believe that Jesus came alive again three days after he died. They believe that we ourselves have an immortal soul which survives our bodily death. They believe that God listens to our prayers. I strongly suspect hat Ayaan doesn’t believe any of these things. She is not a Believing Christian.
Richard made a similar pronouncement in an earlier “open letter” to Hirsi Ali.
Well, we don’t know if Hirsi Ali’s really a believing Christian, as she doesn’t explicitly describe her beliefs in the UnHerd piece (true Christian ones are instantiated in the Nicene Creed). But we’ll know when she and Richard have their talk. Apparently, she at least has what Dennett called “belief in belief”: a feeling that belief is good for society even if its tenets aren’t really true. Cultural Christianity (or Judaism, for that matter), doesn’t come with “belief in that belief”), as cultural forms of religion are merely forms of belonging to a community and don’t make assertions that others have to believe.
As I said I think Dawkins’s tripartite classification holds for Judaism as well. I am a cultural (secular) Jew, but I don’t think we need to embrace the tenets of Judaism to make society better or more resistant to corruption. We simply need secular humanism. And, of course, I don’t worship or adhere to what’s in the Old Testament, which I think was a purely human document reporting on a fictional world. (There is, of course, some historical truths in the Bible, but that’s about it.)
After considering whether he is a cultural Christian (Anglican) or political Christian, Dawkins decides he’s a Political Christian because he despises the actions and of believers like pious Muslims, and so concludes this:
If I were American I would vote Democrat because, in spite of their idiotic stance on the male/female distinction, they are hugely preferable to the Republican alternative. Similarly, if I were forced to vote for either Christianity or Islam as alternative influences on the world, I would unhesitatingly vote Christian. If that make me a Political Christian, so be it. I am perhaps as much of a Political Christian as Ayaan is. But does that make either of us a Christian?
And so he tells Hirsi Ali that they don’t really differ in substance.
The only disagreement is a semantic one. I am a Cultural Christian but not a Believing Christian, which, in my language means I am not a Christian. You, Ayaan, are a Political Christian, which in your language, but not mine, makes you a Christian. But we are neither of us Believing Christian. And this, in my language but not yours, makes neither of us Christians. So, dear Ayaan, let’s not agree to differ. Let’s agree that we don’t really differ.
Stay tuned for the discussion!
Just so long as Richard is not losing his marbles. He is exactly the same age as me! I would not be caught dead claiming to be any kind of Christian. If asked to elaborate on being an “atheist”, I would call myself a Secular Humanist and Naturalist.
+1
Richard has described himself as a ‘cultural Christian’ or a ‘secular Christian’ for at least 20 years. Long before any marbles might have become misplaced!
I might add that I share his affection for some of the old hymn tunes (the words…not so much), especially the Welsh ones such as Cwm Rhondda, Blaenwern and Hyfrydol. A week ago some Christians will have celebrated St Patrick’s Day. When I was a choirboy, we used to sing ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, an 11-th century Irish hymn set to a stonking tune by CV Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUrERen9Vyc I have often thought that, jazzed up a bit, this tune could be the basis for a great folk-rock anthem.
I have affection too for some of the words. One verse in particular of Charles Wesley’s “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (1739) has special resonance for me after a recent medical “miracle cure”:
Agreed. Christianity, de facto through its institutional arm, comes with a caravan of toxic baggage, reflecting in times past a mindset not dissimilar to that which started the latest of 4 wars in Gaza since 2007. Its core model of inherently flawed Man redeemable only through the Almighty, via the monopoly services of the Church, is a fictional but deadly self serving “power structure”. We don’t need Popes to lecture us about love and being nice to each other. It’s self evident universal common sense.
Yes indeed, Christopher Hitchens reminded us many times what the Christian Church did when they had the power and importantly, what they would still do if they had the power.
Yes indeed. The second part of that sentence is the one to really keep in mind. It reveals religious institutions for what they really are.
There is something important to acknowledging one’s upbringing, one’s geworfenheit (Heidegger, “flungness”), and the uncertainty in what effects that could lead to as an adult.
And for Dawkins’ current position, it seems neither deism nor theism apply.
One wonders how many Christian leaders, congregations, etc. are in fact just what Dawkins describes.
I have read Richard’s original post on his Substack, and I must admit that I don’t get his idea of a three-way distinction being useful. It seems to me that once you slap a religious appellation onto any concept, you are stating that this concept is determined by the truth claims of that religion. Thus, to me, a political Christian means that one’s political philosophy has to somehow derive from and accord with the supernatural beliefs of Christianity.
I’ve moved in Buddhist circles, where there is a new “sect” called secular Buddhism, a term created by Stephen Batchelor. Here again, the terms “secular” and “Buddhism” seem contradictory in that one must believe in some supernaturalism–rebirth, karma, etc.–to be a Buddhist.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31143057-secular-buddhism
There’s interesting literature from Christian religious writers that isn’t about the supernatural schtick, such as the following :
Abuse Of Language, Abuse Of Power.
Josef Pieper
San Francisco: Ignatius Press
1992, ISBN 0-89870-362-X
… he has a bunch of apologetics too though, which is probably … you know, tiresome.
… and I didn’t know he was so prolific ’til now :
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Pieper
I have a Buddhist meditation practice and I disagree. The Eightfold Path (right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi*) and the Four Noble Truths (the Truth of Suffering, The Truth of the Cause of Suffering, The Truth of the End of Suffering, and The Truth of the Path that Leads to the End of Suffering) do not require belief in rebirth or other supernatural ideas.
* Meditative awareness
I understand, Patrick. Stephen Batchelor phrases this in a similar way. In compliance with Da Roolz, I won’t engage in any lengthy back-and-forth with you on this, and I’ll let you have the last word here. My view is that the Four Noble Truths are founded on the belief that there was a life before this one and that there will be a life after this one if you die before becoming fully enlightened. What happens if you don’t reach the End of Suffering–nirodha, nirvana, or Enlightenment–in this lifetime? If you don’t believe in a future life that affords you the opportunity to continue along the Marga, then your Buddhist meditation practice, whatever good it did for you and others in this life, failed to achieve its objective. I guess I’m asking you and other secular Buddhists to consider the pretext and context of your practice. IMO, one can benefit more from meditation practice without wrapping it in any religious terminology.
I strongly agree with your last sentence.
Bertrand Russell wrote a slim polemic, ‘Why I am not a Christian’. I mislaid my copy ages ago, but I dimly remember he came across as a secular humanist. One book about him contained a photograph of Russell with a young new wife at home, with a Xmas tree in the background.
Ramesh 2% cultural Denisovan, aspiring secular Buddhist.
I don’t know how things were in England in Russell’s day, but in the US when I was born and raised the holiday of Christmas had distinctly secular and distinctly religious aspects to it. Christmas was a big holiday for our family, but there was no religious aspect to our celebration of it. I’m perfectly comfortable with having taken this holiday from Christians and disposing of those aspects of it that I don’t have any use for.
Like Russell I am not a Christian, but any photo of my home at Christmas time is very likely to include a Christmas tree in it. I think Dawkins would say that I am, at least to some degree, a cultural Christian. I’m fine with that too. Kind of hard to avoid when you exist within a culture that has been nearly uniformly Christian for thousands of years.
I am not sure if Dawkins is grateful to Christianity for having shaped his self, to one degree or another, but I am not. I don’t think Christianity brought anything so special to our culture that wouldn’t have been brought anyway.
Many ideological disputes about language and terms boil down to “yeah, I get it, but if you put it that way you WILL be misunderstood and we don’t want that — so my way is more accurate.” Sometimes these arguments masquerade as actual arguments about substance, tho they’re really about style.
Today, when so many people are trying to bypass controversy by manipulating language to settle an issue by fiat (“should this girl be allowed on the girls’ team?”) arguments on whether “God” should be used as another word for Nature or “political Christianity” should be another way of saying “Islam can be a problem” might take on a new relevance.
+1
I don’t worry too much about the truth claims of Christianity or Judaism. They can display the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse for all I care.* I just want our people to believe in something strongly enough to go to war to prevent it being taken away from them. Secular humanists might be willing to die for their beliefs, rather than convert to Islam or submit to totalitarian Marxism at the point of a sword. Fine. But will their young men kill for their beliefs, to prevent that submission being forced on them and on other secular humanists? Or will they leave that terrible inhuman job to the observant (or at least political) Jews and Christians and hope to free ride? You do you and all that? If young people have been taught to hate their unworthy country, will they fight for it? Are we feelin’ lucky?
————————
* Or maybe not. A Manitoba courtroom is being decked out in full-dress indigenous religious paraphernalia with sacred objects, smudging, and ritual incantations. Why? Because a white man has been charged with murdering two (or possibly more—no bodies have been found yet) indigenous women. In law, this case is between the Crown and the accused defendant. Yet the assumed religious beliefs of the victims are being privileged over whatever his might be, with obvious intent to prejudice the proceedings against him.
“Secular humanists might be willing to die for their beliefs, rather than convert to Islam or submit to totalitarian Marxism at the point of a sword.”
There’s a Michael Houellebecq novel in there, somewhere.
Thankfully, I’m not being compelled to vote for any form of any religion. This absence of compulsion along with its corollary positives are why I think so many people are dying to live here. I know I would not profess to be something simply to oppose something else. I’m also not a member of any recogized political party.
So where do Hindus fit in all this? There are a billion of them, after all. Our navel gazing seems to forget that.
This “political” / “cultural” Christian stuff is simply illogical, inconsistent.
Leaving it as sentimental nostalgia?
An optimal universal creed by definition cannot be sheeted to any particular religious view of life, from the countless concocted candidates.
Like the whole debate over “democracy”. Democracy – real democracy not the shams claimed by insecure autocracies – happened to emerge in the old West for many historical reasons but its “message” is universal, by definition, because the beauty of it is that all “identities” [by birth / tribe / clan / nation, race, religion, gender, football team etc] are equalised, equal before the collectively, democratically fashioned Rules.
Notwithstanding such Rules may presumably in practice admit agreed recognition of some “identities”.
The model arose slowly in the West [fleetingly in old Greece then later starting in old Britain, finally erupting 20th C], among a melee of “identities”, but “belongs” to all, to humanity.
There is something unsettling about joining up with Christians to “fight” Islam. It just seems that doing something like this leads to a slippery slope and maybe there are several stops before Handsmaid’s Tale station but why should we get in this train at all? Believe what you want but doing so for strategic reasons seems dangerous.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. That’s why up above I said I wouldn’t become one thing just to oppose something else.
Well, women and we old men won’t be opposing an armed enemy anyway. We can sit out the conflict or flee, holding to our own values. No one will think worse of us for it. Like in Ukraine preparing for the worst, the women went west to Poland. The men went east to meet the Russians. I was musing about what motivates those young men to pick up a rifle, join a group with a cohesive ethos, and then shoot the enemy so he doesn’t rape and enslave helpless atheists who in peacetime were complaining about the Ten Commandments in courthouses. Will secular humanism suffice for that? Are there enough of us? I don’t know. Riflemen fight for their buddies in the infantry squad. As you go higher, some larger social construct takes shape. I suppose it depends on the nature of the threat. Could you surrender to Islam but not to Putin, or vice versa? Might want to keep the lines of communication open to all those with Enlightenment values, just so we know whose side we’re going to be on when it comes time to choose.
It’s a guy thing, I guess. All men know that if our country needs us existentially, we will get drafted because that’s what men are for: to safeguard the wombs of women.
“riflemen fight for their buddies in the infantry squad” Always in the movies! The first thing you learn when under training in a military organisation is that the carriage of weapons whether by hand, machine, or aircraft etc is that these weapons are for killing the enemy. The protection of your comrades is a secondary consideration, important? yes very, but in different scenarios, for example face to face or urban warfare but in my experience in an ASW aircraft difficult, plus saving another friend/crewman could disrupt your own responsibilities and risk the aircraft. I suggest also that a voluntary commitment to serve in a capacity to protect your country is a very difficult decision for much of the current generations who have lived through long periods of global peace without large national wars which affects the population directly. Many serving military personnel, not all, in my experience today view “service” as just a job with possibly, maybe, some inconvenience.
I am long retired from military service but that ethos lives in me still and I would definitely fight for my country, and my community, physical ability depending, regardless of age .
I would not surrender to Putin and absolutely not to Islam.
Macron or it could have been the French defence minister is said to have suggested that the real time to worry is when large numbers of young muslims join the armed forces. Personally I do not think they would.
I think it depends on what it means to “join up with Christians.”
Christians and atheists can happen to be on the same side while making it clear that their reasons are different (“Islam is of the devil” vs “Islam is false because there’s no god”) — or they can consciously set aside differences to stand on common ground (“Islam is threatening our rights.”) The slippery slope would I think be helping Christians defeat Muslims because Christianity is preferable.
I think of the US putting “In God we trust” on money and doing other Christian things to unite against the godless Russians. I don’t think that worked out in the end. It’s one thing to fight in a common cause, it’s another to change who you are to show who you aren’t.
I agree. I’m unsure whether that comment was serious, sarcasm or satire.
+1
Many remain dogged, deluded, by false empty anachronistic ideas.
It started in the ancient near east – urbanising since the mid 4th millennium BCE – with the self-serving delusion of agential anthropomorphic gods.
The appealing tidier notion of monotheism arose in the 1st millennium BCE, especially among the Jews after their intimate engagement with the imperialist Assyrian and Babylonian regimes, though curiously they have never been theocratically expansionist. Unlike the other two.
The boy priests dreaming all this up thought if there’s only one god then obviously it’s a boy.
Christianity repackaged, universalised, these ideas and half a millennium later its success inspired Islam to adopt the same model.
This informed societal hierarchies, through the Christian Church and beyond, to this day 7th October 2023.
Which all looks ridiculous now we we know we are evolved life forms on a planet which is one of squillions in an improbably vast universe.
Spinoza fingered it in 17th C Hague, Netherlands.
PS: “He [Frans de Waal] was bemoaning the fact that psychology students invariably begin their research projects by creating questionnaires for their subjects (something that should …..ring alarm bells, given the human propensity for self-delusion), rather than deciding to try to understand humans by watching their behaviour.” Krauss, Lawrence M., 2024. Of Monkeys and Men, The Extraordinary Life and Work of Frans de Waal, QUILLETTE, 23 Mar 2024
Hello. I bookmarked the article from Quilette (didn’t know it was written by you or what it was about but, was curious) and it was great. I’ve added de Waal’s books to my “for later” list. I was so impressed by his TED talk that Jerry posted the other day upon de Waal’s passing. It was a nice memorial. He must have been a joy to know and learn from.
Article by L. Krauss. Agreed. I knew de Waal’s name but not much more. That quote nailed it. So hard to stay detached, not check your pre-conceptions at the door in.
You are a Christian if on Sundays you sing the hymn “Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear”
Or “I will make you vicious old men” ( fishers of men)
Or “Our Father, Which art in heaven, Harold be thy name…”
From my perspective Christianity is not true, Jesus very clearly didn’t do what the Messiah was supposed to, restore the Kingdom of Israel and institute a worldwide reign of rightness and justice. However Christianity has left a wonderful legacy of art, music and architecture, very worth celebrating and preserving.
Secular Humanism, at a time when Eurocentric perspectives are being challenged, looks male, pale and stale; basically Christianity with the fun bits taken out.
My experiences point me towards pantheism, a universe that is not only living but possibly sentient. Unlike Christianity pantheism is compatible with science, it doesn’t demand any belief in miracles or revelation. In contrast to Secular Humanism pantheism allows for the numinous, and the knowledge that however insignificant I am as an individual I am part of something all powerful and immortal. Finally at a time when we are increasingly aware of Indigenous perspectives pantheism is compatible with the Dreaming and other Indigenous perspectives.
This is a joke, right? You think the Universe is somehow sentient, based on “your experiences”. My experiences say otherwise. As for the “male, pale, and stale,” that’s racist.
Well said!
To round out the argument, Christianity was a reactionary throwback to old time Mesopotamian agential gods, particularly to the monotheistic imperially aggressive Neo-Assyrian Empire [cf Eckart Frahm’s recent book], which overreached and crashed and burned by c600BCE.
So they leapfrogged the radical insights of the Homeric old Greeks, who ditched agential gods and the literal afterlife, and also achieved the one and only meaningful experience with democracy in 5 millennia, until today, alongside radical advances in science, philosophy and drama.
It just occurred to me, the “cultural” things Dawkins notes are a good way to highlight the distinction between :
exoteric (or worldly)
vs.
esoteric (otherworldly):
exoteric : Christmas carols, the bells in the church, Bach, maybe some of the holiday kitsch like Easter eggs, maybe the philosophy to treat others as you would want to be treated, etc…
esoteric : the soul is contacted by hymns, the voice reaching God, God is watching over our thoughts and actions (treat others as you’d want…), demons and Satan possess and tempt humans through objects, the soul is released from the prison of the body to be reunited with the Spirit upon death (I think that’s the orthodox Christian interpretation vs. the Gnostics).
The exoteric ideas connect the material world to the esoteric significance behind them (I do not provide an exact one-to-one list, I only named a few). This can be seen all over the place, and I bet examples from “current events” readily come to mind. Wokecraft in particular abuses language according to this pattern, making it frustrating to dispel.