Her essay, not surprisingly, attracted a lot of criticism. Some of it came from Christians disappointed in the ideological and instrumental way that Hirsi Ali framed her conversion, the absence of a clear statement that Christian claims are not merely useful or necessary but true. The rest came from atheists baffled that Hirsi Ali had failed to internalize all the supposedly brilliant atheistic rebuttals to her stated reasons for belief.
Where Does Religion Come From?
Here are three thoughtful responses to the Christians who, bizarrely, have questioned the article for not sounding like a baptismal testimony. First of all Jake Meador.
Ali’s conversion, then, shouldn’t be read as an instrumentalization of Christianity; it should be read as her finding divine love in the places where she has felt great pain and longing for something better. Indeed, when one zooms out a little to consider the broader landscape in the west one will likely find a great many people drawn to orthodoxy for reasons quite like those of Ali. Though not identical to Ali’s conversion, there are certainly similarities to it in the stories of Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw. Likewise, a number of British intellectuals currently seem to be on something of a collision course with orthodoxy themselves, for reasons not that unlike those cited by Ali. If the church is faithful in its calling in the years to come, we should expect to see more, not less, people coming to us with stories like Ali’s.
Christ or the Pit
Then Stephen McAlpine who wonders whether our own baptismal testimonies were all that anyway.
It’s just a thought, but I’ve been to way too many baptisms in evangelical churches in which the candidates have expressed far less about the Christian faith from the front, been through far less trials on the way to their faith, never had to worry about writing an international headline about their conversion, and who have announced all sorts of utilitarian reasons for coming to faith in the first place. If Ali is not full bottle yet, then she’s in good, well-dunked company.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali says she’s now a Christian (but only if that’s okay with the rest of us)
And the one I liked the most from Alan Jacobs
My view is that everyone has to start somewhere — she’s very forthright about being a newcomer to all this — and what matters is not where you start but where you end up. One person may seek a bulwark against relativism; another may long for architectural or linguistic or musical beauty; another may crave community. Christian life is a house with many entrances. I became a Christian because I fell head-over-heels for a Christian girl who wouldn’t date me otherwise, so how could I judge anyone else’s reasons for converting? As Rebecca West said, “There’s no such thing as an unmixed motive”; and God, as I understand things, is not the judge but the transformer of motives. It’s a how-it-started, how-it’s-going thing, but often in a good way.
Candles
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