Public Reason: WAIT! WHAT!? I confess I did not even know that you could have "Christianity as Noble Lie” on your modern Bingo Card:
Nick Cohen: What has Christianity to do with Western values?: ‘Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Vladimir Putin and the clash of civilisations…. The notion that liberal democracy is only for Westerners and is the product of specifically Western religious traditions has always been asinine…. Far from being a sign of democratic solidarity, Christian identity politics has become the friend of every enemy of Western democracy…. Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently made my point for me… announced her conversion to Christianity and unintentionally revealed the fatuity of Christian identity politics…. No embracing of the Nicene Creed; no declaration that Hirsi Ali now believed in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. She spoke of a personal crisis and of finding ‘life without any spiritual solace unendurable’. But she made clear that her conversion was rooted in political rather than religious belief…. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has shown extraordinary courage in standing up to the threats of radical Islamists. Tom Holland is the nicest and most intellectually generous historian I have met. But this is hopeless stuff…. The Enlightenment was a reaction against the bigotry and slaughter of the European wars of religion… <nickcohen.substack.com/…>
And:
Ayaan Ali Hirsi: Why I am now a Christian: ‘Atheism can't equip us for civilisational war…. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces… great-power authoritarianism and expansionism… the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia… global Islamism… and the viral spread of woke ideology… eating into the moral fibre of the next generation. We endeavour to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools…. And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground. We are either running out of money, with our national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, or we are losing our lead in the technological race with China. But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us?… The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition… an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity—from the nation-state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning…. Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage…. Christ’s teaching implied… a circumscribed role for religion… separate from politics… compassion for the sinner… humility for the believer…. The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story… to attract, engage and mobilise…. Unless we offer something as meaningful… the erosion of our civilisation will continue…. There is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all… <unherd.com/2023/12/why-…>
