Christendom 2.0 and the ‘God-shaped hole’

Plus: new comments rule, kids flannels from Minnesota, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.

But first, an announcement. Comments on free posts, like this one, will now be open to all subscribers, not only those who pay. That said, by all means, you are still welcome to pay:

Speaking of which, a year’s Substack subscription makes a nice Christmas gift—no wrapping, no plastic, reasonable price. I got one to

Peter Suderman

’s cocktail Substack last year and have really enjoyed it. To that end, here’s a Christmas deal:

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1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere

Christendom 2.0 and the ‘God-shaped hole’

(via)

It’s been nearly a month since the publication of “Why I am now a Christian,” the conversion announcement of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a writer and public intellectual previously known for (among other things) her rejection of the Islam of her youth and embrace of new atheism. The article was widely discussed, and though the larger debate has now died down, it’s still coming up in real-life conversation and my own thoughts, so I wanted to comment on it—belatedly and inconclusively—here.

The first question is this: What exactly is Hirsi Ali’s new faith?

She describes it as Christianity, of course, but many have rightly noted that the word “Jesus” never appears in her essay. Nor does “Christ,” “salvation” (or variants like “save”), “redemption” (or “redeem”), or even “cross,” aside from its unrelated use as a verb (as in, “cross my mind”).

As

Freddie deBoer

summarizes in a post to which I’ll return in a moment, “the piece is entirely silent on what most of the world’s Christians throughout history would have taken to be the only salient question—whether Christianity is true.”

Indeed, reading Hirsi Ali’s account, you could be forgiven for concluding, as many have, that she has not converted to saving faith in Jesus but to embrace of 20th-century Judeo-Christian culture as a mighty political weapon against various unsavory ideologies. Here are her words (bolding mine):

We can’t withstand China, Russia, and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilization that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.

The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage and mobilize the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilization will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.

That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist.

I’ll be honest: This is emphatic enough to push me sharply toward the skeptical view. So does the bit about Christianity “outgr[owing] its dogmatic stage.” Likewise her recent comment in another venue—noted by

Bethel McGrew

—that it was a “waste of time” for the West to debate God’s existence, and we should have instead considered how “the Judeo-Christian story … ends up being a story about freedom,” which she seems to have meant in a political sense, not a Romans 8:21 sense.

But, in fairness, Hirsi Ali does also say this:

Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognized, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.

It’s the closest she comes in that essay to talking about Christianity in a way which would be familiar to most Christians, and perhaps her other framing is simply the voice of a new convert, writing a piece she knew would be picked apart the world over, in a language of faith she is only just learning to speak.

About a week after that first essay, however, Hirsi Ali did a follow-up interview that included this exchange:

A lot of people were also questioning what appeared to be the practical argument for your faith decisions. The argument felt more like a justification of Christianity as a mechanism to resist cultural collapse; it was not so much a personal journey, not so much about your own faith. Is there anything that you would expand on there?

Yes, it is a very personal story. I don’t know to what extent it’s useful, but on a very personal level, I went through a period of crisis—very personal crisis: of fear, anxiety, depression. I went to the best therapists money can buy. I think they gave me an explanation of some of the things that I was struggling with. But I continued to have this big spiritual hole or need. I tried to self-medicate. I tried to sedate myself. I drank enough alcohol to sterilize a hospital. Nothing helped. I continued to read books on psychiatry and the brain. And none of that helped. All of that explained a small piece of the puzzle, but there was still something that I was missing.

And then I think it was one therapist who said to me, early this year: “I think, Ayaan, you’re spiritually bankrupt.” And at that point, I was in a place where I had sort of given up hope. I was in a place of darkness, and I thought, “Well, what the hell, I’m going to open myself to that and see what you are talking about.” And we started talking about faith, and belief in God, and I explained to her that the God I grew up with was a horror show. He created you to punish you and frighten you; and as a girl, and as a woman, you’re just a piece of trash. And so I explained to her why I didn’t believe in God—and, more than that, why I actually hated God. And then she asked me to design my own God, and she said, “If you had the power to make your own God, what would you do?” And as I was going on I thought: That is actually a description of Jesus Christ and Christianity at its best. And so instead of inventing yet another new God, I started diving into that story.

And so far I like this story, as I explore it. The more I look at it, the more I—I don’t want to say I’m fulfilled, but I no longer have this need, this void. I feel like I’m going somewhere.

This is a testimony easier to recognize, I think, especially the middle, which is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’s descriptions of his conversion: gradual, intellectual, grudging—and sincere and life-transforming. It inclines me to say

Samuel D. James

called it right in his article for World: She “is in great need of deep discipleship,” but “we must acknowledge all of us initially come to Christ for different kinds of reasons. … Many times, we know we need Christ, but even if we don’t know yet why we need him.”

There remains a bigger question, though, whatever we think about Hirsi Ali herself: Is this story emblematic of a broader move to use the trappings of Christianity for political and social purposes without concern for its truth claims?

There’s reason to think the answer is “yes.” Prominent figures—and, presumably, some of their readers and followers—have begun to realize the usefulness of the Christian story for generating social cohesion and meaning and the usefulness of Christian ethics for producing a comparatively peaceful, stable, and liberal society.

Here’s deBoer:

I’ve written before about my distaste for the Jonathan Haidt-style embrace of consequentialist religion—the kind that says that, while the truth claims of religion are obviously wrong, periods of near-universal religious observance were periods with more social cohesion and personal meaning, so we should all worship without actual belief. (If you think I exaggerate, click through to find Haidt’s explicit words to that effect.)

He calls this “worship of the God-shaped hole” and correctly observes it is utterly foreign to Christianity.

And it’s not just Haidt. From Jacob Phillips for The Critic:

[Hirsi Ali’s] insights join a developing turn to Christianity in the discourse. There’s Jordan Peterson’s oft-repeated comment that Catholicism is “as sane as people can get”—not to mention Tom Holland’s Dominion, showing the manifold benefits of Christian civilization aside from questions around faith, as such. After years of being sidelined, Christianity is a contender once again.

This is a strange development, though I’m still not sure how much of a development it is. These are all highly educated people in elite circles, after all. Is there a grassroots version? Are ordinary people worshiping the God-shaped hole in hopes of producing a kind of Christendom 2.0 in defense of liberal society?

I don’t know. Probably not anything so deliberate. But I think I could make a case for a certain similarity between this and those who claim the label “evangelical” as a political signifier though they never go to church.

I’m also not wholly sure what to make of it all. On the one hand, a peaceful, stable, and liberal society is exactly what I want, and surely new, if imperfect, openness to Christianity is a good thing? But on the other hand, there was much to critique in the first Christendom—I am an Anabaptist, after all—and surely Christians are failing people if we let them believe that the God-shaped hole is enough.

Moreover, superficially Christian culture can successfully stabilize politics while successfully inoculating the populace against actual Christianity. We saw this in Christendom, in fact. And “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

I’ll put below a few other responses to Hirsi Ali’s announcement which are worth your time, but, before that, here’s Phillips for the last word:

Some might well decide elements of Christian teaching align with their view of things. [… But t]he civilizational benefits of the Christian religion are mere by-products of the religion itself. […]

The apostles didn’t lay down their nets to become fishers of self-fulfillment. The mystics didn’t emaciate themselves through fasting to defend our freedom of speech. The martyrs didn’t die for the good educational outcomes of stable families. At the centre of anything purporting to be Christian must always be the radically disruptive reality of lives being lived, and societies being led, in ways which are not of our choosing.

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2. What I'm reading this week

• In defense of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion, by

  PEG
  (a one-time colleague at The Week)

• Candles and An update on motives, by Alan Jacobs

• Embracing Islam to own the libs, by

  Shadi Hamid
  (written previously, but reshared in connection to Hirsi Ali’s news)

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3. A recommendation

Duluth Trading Company for kids’ flannels. The Black Friday sale is still going through the end of today, and the shirts are a unisex cut for little kids, so you can pass them between siblings. (That’s my plan.) This is a Minnesota company with a year-long guarantee on its goods.

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4. Recent work

• Christians can’t fix the Israel-Hamas war | Christianity Today (unlocked link)

• What U.S. restraint looks like in the Israel-Hamas war—and why it’s vital | Defense Priorities (newsletter)

• My Mending Division Academy small group course (and the other five) is available at 40 percent off through the end of the month with code 40OFF

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5. Miscellaneous

Podcast interview from last year, newly on YouTube:

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