You might have heard or seen on socials that the renowned Muslim-turned atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has announced that she’s now a lapsed atheist and has become a Christian. This is a big deal. She has been a prominent public atheist for decades, often sharing a stage with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
In a piece titled ‘Why I am now a Christian’ on the website Unherd she details how she read the book by Tom Holland Dominion (one of my favourites from the last few years) and came to the conclusion that the things she values: the nation state and the rule of law, the institutions of science, health and learning, free and fair markets, freedom of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.
The news of her conversion lit up my socials – but the intensity of celebration made me nervous. Not about her conversion – I’m glad it’s happened; I’ll join with the angels in heaven in rejoicing for her. What I’m concerned about is we’ve been here before.
Ever since I was little, I’ve heard people say “ohh if only [insert celebrity here] became a believer then…” and the sentence kind of trailed off after that.
A few years ago, another prominent atheist announced, to great fanfare, that he too had become a Christian – Kanye West. At the time, the Christian world was falling over itself to celebrate. His music was being played in churches and he was leading worship in the megachurches of the world.
But like seed growing in the third soil, his conversion seems to have metastasised into something quite dark. I listened yesterday to his new single, Vultures, which seems to be about him justifying his new-found antisemitism.
Paul warns in 1 Timothy 3 not to elevate people to leadership within churches who are recent converts, and the reason he offered for this is the danger of conceit. That conceit is not only a problem lurking in the heart of the individual, it’s actively fed up by us.
Part of the challenge for famous people when they become Christian is our expectations of them. We’re used to being led by celebrities. We expect celebrities to be immediately adept at articulating the things of faith, because we expect them to be adept at articulating everything else.
Kanye needed time to sit in church, experiencing the indignity of bumping on every misplayed note by the non-professional musicians up the front and being humbled by the experience. He needed time to be re-formed by the King of the Jews.
I hope Ayaan Hirsi Ali can take a bit of time now to sit in church, get immersed in a Christian community, and get to know her new Lord. My hope for her is that through the nourishment of meditation on the words of God in the scruptures, she’d be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
grace and Peace,
Steve