Matthew Burdette, Is The Church Obsolete?:
Famously, the essay in which the writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke about her conversion—the authenticity of which I do not doubt —focused on the role that Christianity plays in Western civilization. But one should be clear-eyed about this matter. If the point of Christianity is the survival of the West, then Christianity may be treated as a useful fiction or a necessary evil alongside things like police forces and the military. The place of Jesus in such a Christianity is clear: he is a mascot, a long-dead victim of Roman imperialism and religious zealotry whom we invoke when we need a symbol, so that we may display him for all to see, pinned to the cross by our highest values and current political aspirations.