2026 ARC CONFERENCE WAS A NOBLE ENDEAVOUR

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The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is an annual summit of some 4,000 culture-makers from across the globe who refuse the verdict that decline is inevitable, or that cultural self-hatred is a virtue. Instead — in the words of ARC’s founders — “by drawing on our moral, cultural, economic, and spiritual foundations, we hope to develop a more hope-filled vision for the future and re-lay the foundations of our civilisation”.

Great minds like Konstantin Kisin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rod Dreher, Michael Shellenberger, Sir Paul Marshall and Katy Faust reminded us, the West may not be perfect but it is the cauldron of humanity’s highest aspirations — from universal literacy to the free market to the industrial revolution and representative self-government. Ours is the civilisation that invented the individual, pioneered the university, birthed modern science, eradicated slavery and globalised human rights.

No civilisation’s faults are beyond critique. What defies all reason are blanket denunciations of the West, so fashionable today, that run in parallel with an amnesia about its countless blessings and a refusal to judge other civilisations by the same impossibly high standards.

The crisis before us, ARC argues, is one of deconstruction. “Generations of Westerners have been taught to hate their own civilisation,” as Kisin put it in the event’s first session. “They’ve been taught that up is down and that good is evil.” Our liberalising impulse, he argued, “has mutated from the pursuit of freedom from tyranny to the pursuit of freedom from reality.”

Worse still is that those sponsoring the West’s demolition offer nothing substantive in its place. Speaking to ideologies like critical theory, Net Zero, DEI and post-colonialism, Sir Paul Marshall explained: “Almost all of these ideas and narratives are parasitic. They feed off an historic body of good foundational ideas but then pervert and erode them. None come from a place of optimism. None of them bring unity. None of them set out a path to human flourishing.”

There is no one with more clarity or hard-won insight to interrogate our modern maladies than Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who fled Islam in Somalia in her 20s to become one of the West’s foremost apologists. True to form, she did not disappoint at ARC this year.

In a sit-down interview with Kisin, Ali described the conditions she escaped: violence, forced marriage, compulsory religion, a scapegoating reflex that blames all ill fortunes on the West or the Jews, schools as indoctrination machines, police as agents of state terror.

On securing asylum in the Netherlands, Ali explained, she was floored to discover a world untold — of women able to choose their own husbands and careers, people free to worship or not worship as their conscience led, schools that imparted knowledge and formed character, police whose goal was to help, journalism that held governments to account, and a society that resolved conflict without brutality.

This is the unparalleled bounty of Western civilisation, she told ARC’s audience — and it’s precisely what we risk losing unless we adjust our current trajectory.

In pressing home just one example, Ali explained that when she first came to the West, “I could walk day and night freely, bicycle about 24 hours a day if I wanted to, wearing whatever I wanted to. And now, a few decades on, we’re in a place where women are afraid to go out.” As evidence, she invoked Britain’s rape gang scandal that victimised up to 250,000 young people, according to a recent report.

In short, the third worldism from which our civilisation originally set itself apart is one we can expect to return to if we refuse to correct course. Fortunately, God has told us the end of HIS STORY and after Satan and his Antichrist are defeated, next on God’s agenda for planet Earth is Jesus Millennial Kingdom. The nation God established for His purposes will finally fulfil its destiny with its Messiah, Jesus ruling the nations of the world from a magnificent new Jerusalem.

Go to http://www.millennialkingdom.net to get prepared to rule and reign with Jesus for the next 1000 years.

MUSLIM TURNED RIGHTS ACTIVIST AYAAN HIRSI ALI NOW A CHRISTIAN

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim and renowned critic of Islam, has revealed her conversion to Christianity, describing her journey from Islam to atheism and ultimately to Christianity.

On Nov. 11, 2024, activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali published an essay titled “Why I am Now a Christian.” Her declaration has understandably made waves. For 20 years, Ali has written, spoken, and acted as a committed atheist. Rejecting the Islamic teachings she was indoctrinated with during her teenage years, she has long argued for secularism as the needed lens for furthering humanity and countering the world’s evils so often perpetrated by religious dogma. Hence, her conversion to Christianity is not being well received by the media.

Ali grounds the explanation for her conversion on the usefulness of Christianity. I do not mean “useful” in a trite way, as one might find a spoon more helpful to eat soup than a fork. Ali sees the use of Christianity as fundamental on a societal and personal level. In this way, Ali grounds her turn to Christianity on the same principles that led her to reject God and organized religion. She now sees Christianity not as a foe to her cause but as a needed ally.

Hirsi Ali traces her initial disillusionment with Islam following the 9/11 terrorist attacks when she questioned the justifications for the attacks in the name of Islam. During her teenage years in Nairobi, Hirsi Ali says she was influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, which instilled in her a strict interpretation of Islam.- This period was characterized by a strict adherence to religious practices and a deep-seated disdain for non-Muslims, particularly Jews. However, her later exposure to atheism through figures like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins provided a stark contrast to her previous beliefs.

Hirsi Ali attributes her turn to Christianity to a broader concern for the challenges facing Western civilization. She cites threats from authoritarian regimes, global Islamism, and “woke” ideology as catalysts for seeking a unifying force. Christianity, in her view, offers a foundation of values and traditions that uphold human life, freedom, and dignity, and counters the divisiveness she associates with atheism.

Responding to her embrace of the Christian faith, conservative Christian philosopher Dr. Robert George wrote on Facebook: “Two decades ago, under the influence of the writings of Bertrand Russell, she became an atheist. Her thought was that atheism was smart and sophisticated — it was allegedly what really intelligent people believed (the ‘brights,’ as Daniel Dennett embarrassingly labeled himself and his fellow unbelievers). It was the way to a world of rationality and civil liberty. Hirsi Ali is not the first to have gone down that misguided path. She now sees that it is indeed misguided and that there is, if I may quote scripture, a more excellent way.

Hirsi Ali’s embrace of Christianity also stems from a personal quest for spiritual solace and meaning in life.

Hirsi Ali critiques atheism as leaving a “God hole,” which she believes has led to the rise of irrational ideologies and the erosion of Western values. She argues that Christianity provides a unifying story and foundational texts, similar to those in Islam, that can engage and mobilize people.

Christians should be thankful for Ali’s essay. It no doubt took plenty of courage to make, given her past commitments and social circle. The author of this article Adam Carrington, an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College made the following comment. “We also should exercise cautious support of her. She mentions at the end of her essay that “I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday.” Judging by her essay, she still might need guidance in seeing the centrality of grace in Christianity and how that grace is most manifest in the person and work of the Son of God, made flesh. Sometimes, those truths take time to know and to feel. In some sense, we spend our entire lives trying to rest in God’s grace, not save ourselves as is the normal human inclination.

But we also should be thankful that Ali sees the political and social goods of Christianity, historically and today. In its witness, we see the dignity of humanity made in the image of its Creator. In its doctrine, we see the need for politics that protects the innocent, punishes the guilty, and guards the right. In Christianity, we also see the need for mercy, not just from God, but with each other as neighbors and citizens.

That such commitments to dignity, law, and mercy seem obvious to so many of us is not the insight of secular humanism. Ali has joined us in seeing its origins in the God revealed in the Bible.