Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Excellent Spiritual Pivot: From Criticizing Oppression to Embracing It in a Different Language

National Review Discovers That Simply Asserting Things Does Not Make Them True, But Keeps Doing It Anyway

I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s recent National Review piece with interest, partly because I’ve learned to expect a certain slant from that publication and partly because Ali herself has become something of a paradox wrapped in an enigma. She spent years as a fierce critic of radical Islam, then pivoted to a kind of cultural Christianity that I find deeply suspicious. Reading her argument that “religious liberty sustained America” requires us to accept several claims that simply do not hold up to scrutiny.

Let me work through this systematically because this is exactly the kind of argument that sounds authoritative but collapses when you start asking questions.

The Founding Fathers Were Not What Ali Claims

Ali states that the Declaration of Independence was drafted by men “overwhelmingly Christian” who were “formed by the moral language of the Bible.” The historical record is considerably more complicated than this. Encyclopaedia Britannica’s examination of the Founders notes that “scholars trained in research universities have generally argued that the majority of the Founders were religious rationalists or Unitarians” (Britannica, 2006). Deism “influenced a majority of the Founders” according to their analysis.

Thomas Jefferson famously edited the Bible to remove miraculous elements. George Washington refused communion throughout his adult life, which his pastors interpreted as Deistic belief. Benjamin Franklin attended various churches but rarely expressed orthodox Christian views. James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, was deeply influenced by Enlightenment rationalism.

This is not to say the Founders were atheists or hostile to religion. Many were theists. But they were formed by the Enlightenment as much as by Christianity, and many specifically rejected orthodox Christian theology. Ali’s attempt to claim them as unambiguous Christian founders does not survive contact with the evidence.

Christianity and Slavery: The Complicated Reality

Ali claims that “it was not secular ideology that supplied the most powerful moral critique” of slavery. “It was Christianity.” This claim requires serious unpacking because the historical record is deeply uncomfortable.

Robert Abzug, a professor of American studies at the University of Texas, writes in his Gilder Lehrman Institute essay that “before the war, the vast majority of white Christians in both sections opposed emancipation” (Abzug, 2024). Let me repeat that because it is crucial: most white Christians, in both the North and the South, opposed emancipation before the Civil War.

The Gilder Lehrman essay also notes that “those who opposed the abolitionist doctrine of immediate emancipation certainly had the Bible and historical Christianity on their side.” Slaveholders used scripture to justify their positions, pointing to passages about servants obeying masters and the existence of slavery in ancient Israel without divine condemnation.

What Ali conveniently ignores is that abolitionists had to take RADICAL readings of Christianity that went AGAINST mainstream Christian teaching. William Lloyd Garrison and his followers were initially seen as heretical by most of the religious establishment. Many abolitionists left their churches entirely because the churches refused to condemn slavery. The mainstream religious community accommodated itself to slavery for decades before the abolitionist message gained traction.

So Christianity provided ammunition for BOTH sides of the slavery debate. The reason emancipation eventually won had as much to do with political and economic factors, Enlightenment ideas about liberty, and the brutal reality of slavery itself as it did with religious argument.

The Numbers on American Religion

Ali claims that “eighty percent of Americans still profess belief in God” while “less than a third attend church regularly.” This framing is misleading in several ways.

The Pew Research Center’s December 2025 report on religion in America found that about 70% of U.S. adults identify with a religion, with Christianity accounting for the majority of that number (Pew Research Center, 2025). More significantly, their data shows that young adults are dramatically less religious than older Americans. Among 18-24 year olds, only 56% identified with a religion in the 2023-24 survey, down from 74% in 2007.

Most importantly, the Pew report explicitly states there is “no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults” (Pew Research Center, 2025). This directly contradicts Ali’s optimistic narrative about young people returning to faith. Young men are not converting to Christianity in large numbers. The narrowing gender gap in religiousness among young people is driven by declining religiousness among women, not increases among men.

Catholic young people attending the Traditional Latin Mass? The data shows that while young Catholics are disproportionately represented at TLM services, only about 2% of U.S. Catholic adults attend the Latin Mass weekly (Catholic World Report, 2024). This is a tiny cohort, not a revival.

Trump and the Christian Vote

Ali claims that “The Christian voting bloc played a decisive role in the election of Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2024.” This claim is technically true for white Christians specifically, but deeply misleading when presented as a general statement about Christianity.

The Public Religion Research Institute’s analysis of the 2024 election found that “more than eight in ten white evangelicals” voted for Trump, along with “six in ten white Catholics and white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants” (PRRI, 2024). Overall, 72% of white Christians voted for Trump.

But look at the other religious groups: only 13% of Black Protestants voted for Trump. Among Jews, it was 21%. Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, just 25%. Among Hispanic Catholics, only 43% (PRRI, 2024).

So Ali’s “Christian voting bloc” is actually a very specific segment: white Christians. The religious makeup of Trump’s coalition was narrow, not broad. This matters because Ali’s argument implies a unified Christian America that simply does not exist.

The Assassination Attempt and Providential Claims

Ali mentions that “when he survived an assassination attempt, a significant portion of the Christian public interpreted it as providential.” This is accurate. NPR reported that after the July 2024 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump himself said “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening” (DeRose, 2024).

Governor Greg Abbott said “Trump is truly blessed by the hand of God.” Senator Tim Scott told the Republican National Convention that “the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back up on his feet.”

But NPR also reported that this language “troubles theologian Kaitlyn Schiess,” who said rhetoric like this “usurps the position of what Christians believe: Jesus Christ as the Messiah” (DeRose, 2024). Amanda Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty described this as “very problematic theology” that conflates religious and political language in dangerous ways.

The point is not that some Christians interpreted the event as providential. The point is that doing so is theologically questionable and politically consequential in ways Ali does not acknowledge.

What the Article Actually Reveals

Reading Ali’s piece carefully, I see an argument designed to accomplish something specific. It claims Christianity as the foundation of American liberty while ignoring the ways Christianity has been used to justify oppression. It claims religious influence is growing when the data shows decline. It claims a unified Christian coalition when the religious landscape is deeply fragmented.

Ali has written extensively about the dangers of religious nationalism in other contexts, yet this article essentially makes a Christian nationalist argument: America is a Christian nation, Christianity shaped its founding, and Christianity must rescue it now. This is the same logic that leads to the kind of providential language about Trump that even some Christians find theologically troubling.

I am not opposed to religion in public life. I am not opposed to Christians participating in politics. I am opposed to bad arguments, and Ali’s article is full of them. She asks us to accept a sanitized version of American religious history that does not survive contact with evidence.

The truth is more interesting and more complicated. The Founders were influenced by both Christianity and Enlightenment rationalism. Christianity has been used both to justify slavery and to condemn it. Religion in America is declining, not rising. White evangelicals are a powerful political bloc, but they do not speak for all Christians, and their influence is tied to a specific political coalition, not to some inevitable religious revival.

Ali asks us to be grateful for a Christian inheritance. I am grateful for the genuinely liberating elements of the American experiment. But I am also clear-eyed about the ways religious arguments have been used to restrict freedom, justify oppression, and concentrate power. The same religious traditions that produced abolitionists also produced defenders of slavery. The same religious communities that support religious liberty have also supported excluding Muslims, persecuting LGBTQ+ people, and imposing biblical law on everyone.

What Ali’s article really shows is the difficulty of making a religious argument for American exceptionalism in 2026. The evidence does not support the optimistic narrative. The numbers do not show revival. The history is more contested than she admits. And the political coalition she celebrates is built on a narrowing base, not a broadening one.

I would respect Ali more if she were honest about these complications. Instead, she gives us a comforting story that happens to align with the political preferences of her publication and her audience. That is not analysis. That is advocacy dressed up as scholarship.

If you would witness what happens when a woman who escaped actual theocracy decides that the real threat is that young people are not sufficiently enthusiastic about church, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's cultural complaint here: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/03/how-religious-liberty-sustained-america/

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Works Cited

Abzug, R. (2024). Abolition and religion. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/abolition-and-religion

Britannica, T. E. (2006). The Founding Fathers, Deism, and Christianity. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214

Catholic World Report. (2024, September 3). Data and the Traditional Latin Mass. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/09/03/data-and-the-traditional-latin-mass/

DeRose, J. (2024, July 15). Trump assassination attempt lays bare deep religious divisions in the U.S. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/07/15/nx-s1-5040606/trumps-assassination-shooting-god-religion

Pew Research Center. (2025, December 8). Religion holds steady in America. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/12/08/religion-holds-steady-in-america/

Public Religion Research Institute. (2024, November 8). Religion and the 2024 presidential election. https://prri.org/spotlight/religion-and-the-2024-presidential-election/