“Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?” she said, arguing that “the void left by the retreat of the church” in the modern world “has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma.”Hirsi Ali said in the essay that there is “no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness” to address these present crises: “Christianity has it all.”Another reason she made that switch, she said, is “global”: The writer said in the essay that “Western civilization is under threat” from multiple fronts including Russia and China, “global Islamism,” and “woke ideology.”“We endeavor to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools: military, economic, diplomatic, and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease, or surveil,” she wrote. “And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground.”Hirsi Ali said the only way to successfully “fight off” these threats is to 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,” she said; that legacy includes an “elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom, and dignity.”

The writer said that she considers herself a “lapsed atheist,” writing: “I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity.”“I discover a little more at church each Sunday,” she wrote, arguing that she has found “a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.”ALSO READ: Archbishop Daniel Okoh Celebrates 60th Birthday