I want to make a three-way distinction. You can be a Cultural Christian, a Political Christian, a Believing Christian, or any combination of the three. People may disagree about which of these constitutes being “A Christian”. For me it has to be Believing Chistian.
There is a fourth category to consider: "Practicing Christian", meaning one who regularly participates in the ritual and communal practices of an organized group of Christians. Does Ali attend any church services? Does she pray at night before bed, or before meals or pray at all?
Note that practicing Christian is compatible with any of the the three types mentioned above.
I appreciate the care and generosity of the distinctions made in this comment, and perhaps I should learn some greater generosity from it. But I find it hard to understand how it helps for Ms. Hirsi-Ali to call oneself some sort of Christian, albeit a modified one. As you indicate, the fundamental thing that makes Christians Christians, and distinguishes them from others, is their particular beliefs, in God (which they have in common with other monotheisms), and then in Jesus as the son of God and the path to salvation (which distinguishes the from the other monotheisms). One can admire many of Jesus' teachings, and can join with Christians in social movements and politics, without being a "cultural" Christian or a "political" Christian. Labelling "goodness", or less harmfulness, as "Christian" seems to me to give too much credit to the religion itself, and to reduce further the recognition of the beauty and promise of atheism. While I am sometimes charmed by a polytheistic approach, which can have delightful elements of storytelling, only atheism locates our ethics, our morality, and our responsibility for our behavior, in reality. We are obliged to look to the history of our own evolution, to express how we want to be and can be as a species, including in relation to other species, and why we form the moral code that we do. (I do not mean to indicate atheists agree with each other, but rather to locate where the discussion should take place.) The obligation is on us to form an ethic, and to be able to articulate the case for it, without reference to religion. Undoubtedly any philosophy or moral code will overlap in some aspects with religiously generated codes as articulated by practitioners from time to time (and place to place). But what is gained by referring to, or preferring, one religious culture to another? Which one is worse, or better, will change. Would we gain anything if we referred to ourselves as "atheist Christians"? How is that better than, simply, "atheist"?
Your speech starts out well and then totally loses it at paragraph 6, reflecting not only blindness as to the supposed “superior morality” of Christianity, but also a singularly aggressive and generalised perspective on Islamism.
Militant Christianity is the source of the casting of women in the “Western” world as less than second-class citizens. Like “political” Islam in Sharia states, “political” Christians in the US have made oppression of women legal, through SCOTUS, the highest court in the land, with the overturning of Roe v Wade and some state laws that don’t allow pregnant women to cross state lines or get a divorce. For all the Democrat Party's supposed opposition to that, none of that has changed under the Biden administration in its nearly four years of leadership since 2020. Biden and Trumps' subservience to far-right religious-led Israel means it probably won’t change much in the future either. Armageddonist "political” Christians are in league with Israel in slaughtering Palestinian women and children. That, to me, does not reflect true “Christian” values. And, apart from the fact that the Catholic church still does not allow women to be ordained, r-wing Christian Nationalists and Evangelicals in the US, Australia, the UK and Europe are attempting further oppression of women’s rights, gay rights and many human rights in general. The manifestation of these “values” still underlies much in western society, as is evident in that any women brave enough to take a rape case to court is still subjected to extreme public vilification, with the same accusations cast at her as befits any extreme Islamist. While I agree that a Trump/GOP win is unthinkable, therein is the point. Biden at least presents some interest in women's and general human rights above Trump and the GOP, but the reality is Biden's support for Israel may well cost him the election. Is Israel's genocidal ambition worth relinquishing the White House to Trump for, and with it, all women's and human rights in the US?
Of course, I have no more love for Jihadists and extreme Islamists than I do for the far right "conservative" SCOTUS, Trump MAGAs or Bible-belt fundamentalists. But, as for Islamists being necessarily anti-Jewish, surely, I don’t have to point out that not all are and are you serious in implying it’s one-sided? At this very moment, militant Zionists are displaying the most violent forms of anti-Muslim sentiment there are and have been doing so since the 1948 Nakba, which they then continued to do for decades preceding October 7.
The “Anglican” Christianity you refer to is one based on values of genuine Christian principles of the Gospels, principles it’s not hard for atheists like myself to share – “thou shalt not kill” and genuine values of peace and love of my fellow beings. I realise that's probably what you're trying to say, but that meaning is lost in any allusion to those values being specific to Christianity. I, too, appreciate great religious music, such as Handel and Bach, and sing all the Ave Marias as beautiful pieces of music. There is other great “religious” music from other religions, with similar sentiments. Although an atheist, I enjoy and recognise common values with many genuinely good Christian people, values genuinely based on compassion, respecting men and women equally, being truthful, not stealing and being against violence and killing. For that and many reasons, for example, I'm opposed to the genocide of Palestinians currently taking place in Gaza. Anyone supporting that and its associated land and resources steal, based on lies and dehumanisation, cannot call themselves any kind of true “Christian”. I've previously referred to false information touted by certain supposed rationalists, such as that women in Gaza were supposedly "not allowed to drive, go to university or become doctors" etc. as being dangerously dehumanising. Another example is the inflammatory claims of mass rapes by Hamas on Oct 7. Those claims were already suspect and some it's already been admitted were fabricated. Further information adds to the mounting evidence that much of the rest also lacks credibility [https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24093]. Noticeable is how fast and willingly people seized upon the false sensationalistic claims without critical analysis and even continue to cite it. Recourse to these false claims as justification for mass murder, even of children, clearly reflects affectation and not objective rationality.
The point that I still don't understand about this anouncement is how one can simultaneously celebrate the reduction in believing Christians while maintaining the enjoyment of living in a 'Christian' nation. To do so is at best inconsistent and at worst incoherent.
A line of questioning that has helped me when considering many different scenarios such as this is: 'Why this, why now?' It appears that there is a growing acknowledgment that the worldview in which certain people were putting their trust cannot survive on its own. It was created out of cultural affluence and has no power to weather hard times. It also can only live in environments that are not actively hostile to it. Please understand that I am not trying to be inflammatory in saying this but this worldview (not its adherents!) appears in this instance to be a bit like a parasite that has been working methodically to destroy its host so that it could gain ascendency/hegemony/autonomy. But it's a big, scary world out there and now there is a largely unspoken but commonly intuited question as to whether that was such a good idea, knowing the limitations of the ideology.
My point is that this proclamation of cultural Christianity (that is, no longer actively seeking Christianity's demise) still falls short of helping to undo the damage caused through decades of violence done to its foundational principles. If people like Mr. Dawkins would like to enjoy the benefits of a society based on Christian values, it would behoove them to at least smile inwardly when the pews both in the cathedrals and the little parish chapels are full.
"Believing Christians" believe all kinds of things in near infinite number of variations. Christianity is a diverse global community including something like a billion people. As example, for many serious Christians, Christianity isn't about beliefs at all so much as it is about the experience of love. Christianity is way too big to fit within Dawkin's simplistic sophomoric descriptions.
When it comes to the topic of religion, Dr. Dawkins isn't a scientist, nor a person of reason. On the topic of religion he is instead a committed ideologue with a knack for self promotion repetitively chanting the slogans of his ideology in a never ending attempt to project an image of superiority. Classic ideology!
Reason and ideology are not the same thing. Reason doesn't care who wins. Ideology cares about little else. Dawkins is desperate to win a holy war. That agenda has nothing to do with reason, and everything to do with ideology.
I just listened to you on Andrew Sullivan's podcast, and at times it did seem like you were talking past each other on exactly this point: you clearly meant "Believing Christian" by Christian, and were asking about those particular metaphysical claims; Andrew kept pulling things back to the more "Cultural Christian" angle about the value of that community.
I thought this article was a nice way of clarifying that distinction! As an atheist myself, I do assume anyone calling themself a Christian must (of course!) believe in the theology of their religion. But the more I look at the role of religion in the world, the less I think most of its adherents care one way or the other about the metaphysical questions, and if I pick at them about theology, they just glaze over. It's not the important bit for them (even if it's the interesting bit for me).
I loved listening to that Weekly Dish podcast episode, and it brought me as a new subscriber to your substack!
Semantics on this feels to me like splitting hairs. It's how we in, what was once, the gay community ended up with the constantly expanding, ridiculously meaningless acronym.
Here in Australia we gained an insight on what being a "Political Christian" might mean when our then Deputy Prime Minister, and subsequent Prime Minister, Julia Gillard stated openly that she was an atheist. There was at least one op-ed written in response to this which basically said that Ms Gillard needed to affect some kind of Christian belief - whatever her actual beliefs might be - in order to be "representative" of the Australian population, and that she was not fit to be Deputy Prime Minister if she did not do so.
In terms of the concept of "Cultural Christian", I was brought up in a somewhat eclectic kind of Protestantism from which I lapsed when I was 12. For about the next decade I thought I had completely rejected and rebelled against the Christian religion (and all religion). However, self-analysis as I have become older, discussions with my lapsed Christian contemporaries, and observations of public events and debates, have led me to think that a religious upbringing is very "sticky" in terms of shaping who we are, how we behave, and how we think about issues, and that it continues to exercise a stronger hold on us if we don't self-analyse how it has shaped us, and don't carefully think through which elements of this influence should be repudiated, and which have some enduring value and should be retained, albeit reframed in secular humanist terms.
As consciousness continues to evolve & philosophers like Dan Dennett continue to help you think of better questions, Richard. Is it possible that the selfish genes with stupid memes that named themselves human still fail to comprehend the human condition & can't take the ascension philosophy underpinning the Christ narrative seriously, because *language* is the beam in humanity’s eye?
I wonder how many “non-believing” or “political” Christians believe that the world came together perfectly and by chance.
We all go so far back in history and, poof, we throw up a miracle and here we are. It doesn’t make me someone without many doubts, nor does it make me want to scream “Science, science, science!” at people like I have grasped some deep insight about life.
A man whose understanding of Christianity is limited to brief musing while relaxing on his porch, is as equally Christian as the minister with many years of theological education and study. Spiritually is not science, and there is no formula to test belief.
To say one must believe X things is nonsensical in the context of spiritually. What is "belief" anyway. If the man on the porch and the minster both answered yes they believe in X, surely they believe something vastly different.
If Christian belief and knowledge is a ladder from the ground to the top of the highest building. Whether you are on the first step, or the last, you're still a believing Christian.
Jesus Christ, leave Ms Hirsi-Ali alone. What's with the constant public badgering about whether she's a real christian or not? If she's genuinely "one of your favourite people in the world", then have a private conversation with her if it bothers you so much. Don't speak down about her in article after article.
And I can only imagine the kind of 'conversation' you would have with her. One of belittling comments and zero empathy, which is unfortunately the Dawkins way and why you fail to reach a larger audience.
In his famous talk/essay "Why I Am Not A Christian", Bertrand Russell stated that the core beliefs one had to have in order to be a Christian were belief in God, belief that Jesus was, if not God or the Son of God, at least the best and wisest of humans, and belief in immortality. He didn't consider belief in the Virgin Birth to be essential to Christianity, and I think he was right in this. However, I do think RD is right to state that belief in the kind of God who listens to prayers (i.e. not just the kind of God that deists believe in) is part of the essential core of Christian belief.
There is a fourth category to consider: "Practicing Christian", meaning one who regularly participates in the ritual and communal practices of an organized group of Christians. Does Ali attend any church services? Does she pray at night before bed, or before meals or pray at all?
Note that practicing Christian is compatible with any of the the three types mentioned above.
I appreciate the care and generosity of the distinctions made in this comment, and perhaps I should learn some greater generosity from it. But I find it hard to understand how it helps for Ms. Hirsi-Ali to call oneself some sort of Christian, albeit a modified one. As you indicate, the fundamental thing that makes Christians Christians, and distinguishes them from others, is their particular beliefs, in God (which they have in common with other monotheisms), and then in Jesus as the son of God and the path to salvation (which distinguishes the from the other monotheisms). One can admire many of Jesus' teachings, and can join with Christians in social movements and politics, without being a "cultural" Christian or a "political" Christian. Labelling "goodness", or less harmfulness, as "Christian" seems to me to give too much credit to the religion itself, and to reduce further the recognition of the beauty and promise of atheism. While I am sometimes charmed by a polytheistic approach, which can have delightful elements of storytelling, only atheism locates our ethics, our morality, and our responsibility for our behavior, in reality. We are obliged to look to the history of our own evolution, to express how we want to be and can be as a species, including in relation to other species, and why we form the moral code that we do. (I do not mean to indicate atheists agree with each other, but rather to locate where the discussion should take place.) The obligation is on us to form an ethic, and to be able to articulate the case for it, without reference to religion. Undoubtedly any philosophy or moral code will overlap in some aspects with religiously generated codes as articulated by practitioners from time to time (and place to place). But what is gained by referring to, or preferring, one religious culture to another? Which one is worse, or better, will change. Would we gain anything if we referred to ourselves as "atheist Christians"? How is that better than, simply, "atheist"?
Respectfully (and gratefully) yours.
Your speech starts out well and then totally loses it at paragraph 6, reflecting not only blindness as to the supposed “superior morality” of Christianity, but also a singularly aggressive and generalised perspective on Islamism.
Militant Christianity is the source of the casting of women in the “Western” world as less than second-class citizens. Like “political” Islam in Sharia states, “political” Christians in the US have made oppression of women legal, through SCOTUS, the highest court in the land, with the overturning of Roe v Wade and some state laws that don’t allow pregnant women to cross state lines or get a divorce. For all the Democrat Party's supposed opposition to that, none of that has changed under the Biden administration in its nearly four years of leadership since 2020. Biden and Trumps' subservience to far-right religious-led Israel means it probably won’t change much in the future either. Armageddonist "political” Christians are in league with Israel in slaughtering Palestinian women and children. That, to me, does not reflect true “Christian” values. And, apart from the fact that the Catholic church still does not allow women to be ordained, r-wing Christian Nationalists and Evangelicals in the US, Australia, the UK and Europe are attempting further oppression of women’s rights, gay rights and many human rights in general. The manifestation of these “values” still underlies much in western society, as is evident in that any women brave enough to take a rape case to court is still subjected to extreme public vilification, with the same accusations cast at her as befits any extreme Islamist. While I agree that a Trump/GOP win is unthinkable, therein is the point. Biden at least presents some interest in women's and general human rights above Trump and the GOP, but the reality is Biden's support for Israel may well cost him the election. Is Israel's genocidal ambition worth relinquishing the White House to Trump for, and with it, all women's and human rights in the US?
Of course, I have no more love for Jihadists and extreme Islamists than I do for the far right "conservative" SCOTUS, Trump MAGAs or Bible-belt fundamentalists. But, as for Islamists being necessarily anti-Jewish, surely, I don’t have to point out that not all are and are you serious in implying it’s one-sided? At this very moment, militant Zionists are displaying the most violent forms of anti-Muslim sentiment there are and have been doing so since the 1948 Nakba, which they then continued to do for decades preceding October 7.
The “Anglican” Christianity you refer to is one based on values of genuine Christian principles of the Gospels, principles it’s not hard for atheists like myself to share – “thou shalt not kill” and genuine values of peace and love of my fellow beings. I realise that's probably what you're trying to say, but that meaning is lost in any allusion to those values being specific to Christianity. I, too, appreciate great religious music, such as Handel and Bach, and sing all the Ave Marias as beautiful pieces of music. There is other great “religious” music from other religions, with similar sentiments. Although an atheist, I enjoy and recognise common values with many genuinely good Christian people, values genuinely based on compassion, respecting men and women equally, being truthful, not stealing and being against violence and killing. For that and many reasons, for example, I'm opposed to the genocide of Palestinians currently taking place in Gaza. Anyone supporting that and its associated land and resources steal, based on lies and dehumanisation, cannot call themselves any kind of true “Christian”. I've previously referred to false information touted by certain supposed rationalists, such as that women in Gaza were supposedly "not allowed to drive, go to university or become doctors" etc. as being dangerously dehumanising. Another example is the inflammatory claims of mass rapes by Hamas on Oct 7. Those claims were already suspect and some it's already been admitted were fabricated. Further information adds to the mounting evidence that much of the rest also lacks credibility [https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24093]. Noticeable is how fast and willingly people seized upon the false sensationalistic claims without critical analysis and even continue to cite it. Recourse to these false claims as justification for mass murder, even of children, clearly reflects affectation and not objective rationality.
Where is the Richard Dawkins who refuses to be in the same room as someone because of their genocidal ways? [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/richard-dawkins-william-lane-craig] Give me that Richard Dawkins any day.
Eloquent as always. Thank you Dr Dawkins for standing up against gender ideology! ❤️❤️
The point that I still don't understand about this anouncement is how one can simultaneously celebrate the reduction in believing Christians while maintaining the enjoyment of living in a 'Christian' nation. To do so is at best inconsistent and at worst incoherent.
A line of questioning that has helped me when considering many different scenarios such as this is: 'Why this, why now?' It appears that there is a growing acknowledgment that the worldview in which certain people were putting their trust cannot survive on its own. It was created out of cultural affluence and has no power to weather hard times. It also can only live in environments that are not actively hostile to it. Please understand that I am not trying to be inflammatory in saying this but this worldview (not its adherents!) appears in this instance to be a bit like a parasite that has been working methodically to destroy its host so that it could gain ascendency/hegemony/autonomy. But it's a big, scary world out there and now there is a largely unspoken but commonly intuited question as to whether that was such a good idea, knowing the limitations of the ideology.
My point is that this proclamation of cultural Christianity (that is, no longer actively seeking Christianity's demise) still falls short of helping to undo the damage caused through decades of violence done to its foundational principles. If people like Mr. Dawkins would like to enjoy the benefits of a society based on Christian values, it would behoove them to at least smile inwardly when the pews both in the cathedrals and the little parish chapels are full.
"Believing Christians" believe all kinds of things in near infinite number of variations. Christianity is a diverse global community including something like a billion people. As example, for many serious Christians, Christianity isn't about beliefs at all so much as it is about the experience of love. Christianity is way too big to fit within Dawkin's simplistic sophomoric descriptions.
When it comes to the topic of religion, Dr. Dawkins isn't a scientist, nor a person of reason. On the topic of religion he is instead a committed ideologue with a knack for self promotion repetitively chanting the slogans of his ideology in a never ending attempt to project an image of superiority. Classic ideology!
Reason and ideology are not the same thing. Reason doesn't care who wins. Ideology cares about little else. Dawkins is desperate to win a holy war. That agenda has nothing to do with reason, and everything to do with ideology.
PS: I am neither Christian nor religious.
I just listened to you on Andrew Sullivan's podcast, and at times it did seem like you were talking past each other on exactly this point: you clearly meant "Believing Christian" by Christian, and were asking about those particular metaphysical claims; Andrew kept pulling things back to the more "Cultural Christian" angle about the value of that community.
I thought this article was a nice way of clarifying that distinction! As an atheist myself, I do assume anyone calling themself a Christian must (of course!) believe in the theology of their religion. But the more I look at the role of religion in the world, the less I think most of its adherents care one way or the other about the metaphysical questions, and if I pick at them about theology, they just glaze over. It's not the important bit for them (even if it's the interesting bit for me).
I loved listening to that Weekly Dish podcast episode, and it brought me as a new subscriber to your substack!
Semantics on this feels to me like splitting hairs. It's how we in, what was once, the gay community ended up with the constantly expanding, ridiculously meaningless acronym.
Here in Australia we gained an insight on what being a "Political Christian" might mean when our then Deputy Prime Minister, and subsequent Prime Minister, Julia Gillard stated openly that she was an atheist. There was at least one op-ed written in response to this which basically said that Ms Gillard needed to affect some kind of Christian belief - whatever her actual beliefs might be - in order to be "representative" of the Australian population, and that she was not fit to be Deputy Prime Minister if she did not do so.
In terms of the concept of "Cultural Christian", I was brought up in a somewhat eclectic kind of Protestantism from which I lapsed when I was 12. For about the next decade I thought I had completely rejected and rebelled against the Christian religion (and all religion). However, self-analysis as I have become older, discussions with my lapsed Christian contemporaries, and observations of public events and debates, have led me to think that a religious upbringing is very "sticky" in terms of shaping who we are, how we behave, and how we think about issues, and that it continues to exercise a stronger hold on us if we don't self-analyse how it has shaped us, and don't carefully think through which elements of this influence should be repudiated, and which have some enduring value and should be retained, albeit reframed in secular humanist terms.
As consciousness continues to evolve & philosophers like Dan Dennett continue to help you think of better questions, Richard. Is it possible that the selfish genes with stupid memes that named themselves human still fail to comprehend the human condition & can't take the ascension philosophy underpinning the Christ narrative seriously, because *language* is the beam in humanity’s eye?
I wonder how many “non-believing” or “political” Christians believe that the world came together perfectly and by chance.
We all go so far back in history and, poof, we throw up a miracle and here we are. It doesn’t make me someone without many doubts, nor does it make me want to scream “Science, science, science!” at people like I have grasped some deep insight about life.
A man whose understanding of Christianity is limited to brief musing while relaxing on his porch, is as equally Christian as the minister with many years of theological education and study. Spiritually is not science, and there is no formula to test belief.
To say one must believe X things is nonsensical in the context of spiritually. What is "belief" anyway. If the man on the porch and the minster both answered yes they believe in X, surely they believe something vastly different.
If Christian belief and knowledge is a ladder from the ground to the top of the highest building. Whether you are on the first step, or the last, you're still a believing Christian.
Jesus Christ, leave Ms Hirsi-Ali alone. What's with the constant public badgering about whether she's a real christian or not? If she's genuinely "one of your favourite people in the world", then have a private conversation with her if it bothers you so much. Don't speak down about her in article after article.
And I can only imagine the kind of 'conversation' you would have with her. One of belittling comments and zero empathy, which is unfortunately the Dawkins way and why you fail to reach a larger audience.
In his famous talk/essay "Why I Am Not A Christian", Bertrand Russell stated that the core beliefs one had to have in order to be a Christian were belief in God, belief that Jesus was, if not God or the Son of God, at least the best and wisest of humans, and belief in immortality. He didn't consider belief in the Virgin Birth to be essential to Christianity, and I think he was right in this. However, I do think RD is right to state that belief in the kind of God who listens to prayers (i.e. not just the kind of God that deists believe in) is part of the essential core of Christian belief.
If "your language" lets you use the word Christian to mean either "Christian" or "not Christian" maybe it's not doing its job?