In 1822, the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, predicted the death of traditional Christianity. “I trust,” he wrote to a friend, “that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” By this he meant that no one would believe in the divinity of Christ and accept the authority of a Church.
Two centuries are enough to prove how wrong he was. Despite scandals, quarrels and confusion, Americans remain more or less religious. And Christianity still has just as much power to attract intelligent, sincere converts.
The latest sign is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s announcement that she has become a Christian.
Hirsi Ali is one of America’s most impressive public intellectuals today. Over the weekend, she published an essay in Unherd, a British online magazine, under the title “Why am I now a Christian“. This was a conscious reference to Bertrand Russell’s famous 1927 essay “Why I am not a Christian”.
His intellectual journey was astonishing.
She was born in Somalia in 1969 and grew up Muslim in Kenya. In high school, she joined the Muslim Brotherhood and found meaning in their fierce interpretation of Islam. She abandoned Islam when her family emigrated to Europe. She moved to the Netherlands, learned Dutch, and eventually became a member of the Dutch Parliament.
After September 11, she became an atheist and criticized the treatment of women in Muslim societies. She wrote the script for a short film on the subject but the director, Theo van Gogh, was brutally murdered by a Muslim fanatic. Her own life was in danger, and she eventually moved to the United States where she built a career as a critic of Islam, woke culture, and a champion of free speech. She was presented as a star of the “new atheists”.
I also discovered a whole new circle of friends, as different from the Muslim Brotherhood preachers as one could imagine (she writes in Unherd). The more time I spent with them – people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins – the more I felt like I had made the right choice. Because atheists were intelligent. They were also a lot of fun. So what has changed? Why do I consider myself a Christian now?