Last week, Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote a short essay titled, Why I am now a Christian. The essay is remarkable both for who Ali is and the redemptive story her life tells.
Ali is a well-known author and speaker who rose to prominence within what became known as the New Atheism. This movement sees belief in God as not merely something to be personally rejected but as a social danger that needs to be actively opposed.
Having grown up in Kenya under the watchful eye of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ali explains that the catalyst for her Atheism had been the terror attacks on New York in 2001. She describes feeling torn between the faith with which she had always identified and what she saw playing out in that moment. "If I truly condemned their actions, then where did that leave me? The underlying principle that justified the attacks was religious, after all: the idea of Jihad or Holy War against the infidels."
Stuck at this crossroads, Ali turned to atheism. That decision made, she found, "It was a relief to adopt an attitude of scepticism towards religious doctrine, discard my faith in God and declare that no such entity existed.
Yet, after two decades of viewing the world through this lens, Ali's essay was a declaration that she had turned from her atheism to embrace Christianity. Her reasons are two-fold.
In part, she has come to see that Christianity offers a way of life in which society can flourish. As the rise of authoritarian governments and extreme ideologies make our world a more turbulent place, Ali asks what might help us resist these forces. She concludes 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.
However, her change of heart is also profoundly personal. Two decades of atheism had left her feeling that life was built on a foundation, not of firm bedrock, but of sand. "I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable - indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?"
Of course, it excites me to see that Ali has turned to Jesus. It excites me that she has found the well from which she can satisfy the spiritual thirst she has to find meaning and purpose, to know right from wrong, and to find a satisfactory answer as to why we all suspect there must be something beyond the 80 or so years most of us get in this world. And it is wonderful to know that someone who had been not simply indifferent but in outright opposition to Jesus has humbly admitted her errors and been embraced by him.
This is not to say that Ali has everything 100 per cent worked out just yet. "I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity", she admits. "I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, 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."
