Everyone else is writing about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, so why can’t I?
It’s entirely possible that the writer and former Dutch politician’s purported conversion to Christianity (after making a career as a vocal ex-Muslim and New Atheist) is the sort of thing that only people on Substack care about, just as there used to be things that only people on Twitter cared about. Still, with the caveat that Substack is not real life, I think her case is worth commenting on, because it calls attention to the problem with making your religious identity very public in a context where it can help your career. I wrote a book about that once.
The reasons Hirsi Ali cites for her conversion aren’t important. I happen to think they’re silly, but she didn’t ask me. As the philosopher Justin Smith-Ruiu wrote in his Substack post about Hirsi Ali, “as long as we’re operating in the space of reasons at all, every reason for faith is going to be a bad reason.” Note that Smith-Ruiu doesn’t think the lack of a good reason is a reason not to believe. People believe, or they don’t, and reasons often don’t have much to do with it. The heart has reasons, etc.
I’m writing about Hirsi Ali because her conversion — like any intellectual, religious, or political conversion you announce in a search-engine optimized article — raises questions about sincerity. She’s converting at a moment when New Atheism is a dead brand. Within some anti-woke circles, Christianity is more viable. The path to a major book deal on becoming Christian to own the libs is clear.
I do not mean to denigrate conversion or converts. I’m Catholic, and every Easter eve, my parish is packed with the families of the dozens of people who are joining the Catholic Church that night. Some of my best friends and closest family members are Catholic converts. I am currently sponsoring someone through the process of becoming Catholic. If it weren’t for converts, the Catholic Church in the U.S. would be in terrible shape. (Which is not to say it’s in great shape as it is.)
So I do think conversion is a good thing, even as it raises an eyebrow when it is done very publicly.
Insincere religious conversions were a big problem in the fourth-century Christian Church, after Constantine not only made Christianity legal but gave it favored status in the administration of the Roman Empire. A lot of people wanted to become Christian in order to advance their social position, but the conversion process took several years and required the renunciation of popular pastimes like adultery, extortion, and murder. So people had an incentive to enroll as catechumens (i.e., prospective converts) and be seen at church but then never follow through on the full conversion.
For Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem in the later fourth century (and subject of two chapters in my first book), this problem was especially acute. His city had received lavish imperial patronage as Constantine and his successors tried to connect the resurrection of Christ to the emperor. Constantine sent his mother Helena to oversee the recovery of the True Cross and locate the tomb from which Christ emerged on the third day. Cyril’s church was built atop these sites.
Because the temptation to make a surface-level conversion was so great, Cyril hoped to make the sacraments more alluring and thus to get more catechumens to take the plunge (literally), get baptized, and submit to Christian moral strictures. He needed to turn insincerity to sincerity. Here he is in an introductory sermon to the catachumens:
Possibly too you have come on another pretext. It is possible that a man is wishing to pay court to a woman, and came hither on that account. The remark applies in like manner to women also in their turn. A slave also perhaps wishes to please his master, and a friend his friend. I accept this bait for the hook, and welcome you, though you came with an evil purpose, yet as one to be saved by a good hope. Perhaps you knew not whither you were coming, nor in what kind of net you are taken. You have come within the Church's nets: be taken alive, flee not: for Jesus is angling for you, not in order to kill, but by killing to make alive: for you must die and rise again. For you have heard the Apostle say, Dead indeed unto sin, but living unto righteousness. Die to your sins, and live to righteousness, live from this very day.
To deal with possibly insincere converts, then, Cyril settled on an ingenious strategy: He promoted the reputation of secrecy around baptism and the eucharist. Cyril shrouded the sacraments in mystery and barred catechumens from even witnessing or learning about them. If you had not yet been baptized, you could not be admitted to the inner church, where the eucharist was celebrated. And if you weren’t there, then full-fledged Christians would know you were not yet one of them.
But Cyril knew that being told there were wonderful things just behind that door, but oops, he cannot tell you about them just now, was irresistable to some people. He was trying to spark a first conversion — from a desire for status to a desire to know a secret — that might then transform into a desire for the sacraments, faith, and eternal life.
In my book, I took all of this to suggest that in the twenty-first century United States, where plumbers stick Jesus-fish decals on their trucks and political candidates tout their Christian bona fides on the stump, sincere Christians ought to make a norm of concealing their faith. The idea was that you will know the poseurs by their noisy promotion of their religious identity. And then you’ll know exactly whom not to trust.
At the time I was writing the book (2005-2008), not only was the U.S. president making himself out to be a latter-day Crusader, but every pastor and theologian, of every political and ecclesial stripe, seemed to be saying Christians needed to be maximally public about their faith. I thought these people were misguided. After all, even Jesus said, don’t pray on the street corners like the hypocrites, but go into your closet, where only God can see you, and pray there.
I love to say “I told you so,” and look where the merger of faith and public life landed us: A president who was adored by conservative Christians even though he literally did not know which end of the bible was up.
Still, I’m not entirely convinced of the argument of my book today. We cannot know what’s in another person’s heart, so perhaps we should not denigrate their avowed faith. Shouting “hypocrite!” doesn’t get you anywhere in church or politics. (As a priest said in a homily I heard this year, the church isn’t full of hypocrites; there’s always room for more.) So I don’t think the possibly-insincere faith itself is the problem. Rather, I think the problem is the work.
I won’t say I will be praying for Hirsi Ali — not because her incipient faith is unworthy of a divine nudge, but because I already have a lot of other things to pray for. Someone should pray for her, though. Her new Christian community should support her.
But one thing no one has to do is read her. You do not have to read the person who was a vocal atheist when publishers were clamoring for vocal atheists. And you do not have to read the person who is now a vocal Christian at the moment when a conservative faction large enough to stake a career on is interested in Christianity as a bulwark against the woke mob at the gates. Her faith needs no earthly reward. You do not have to read the person who’s so adept at reading the cultural tea leaves. You can read something else.