Roger Partridge: When Your Liberalism Essay Gets Published in Czech

When Tomáš Suchomel, editor of the conservative Czech journal Kontexty, contacted me in June asking if they could translate and republish my Quillette essay, “Classical Liberalism Without Strong Gods,” I was delighted.

Roger Partridge: Classical Liberalism Without Strong Gods

In November 2023, Ayaan Hirsi Ali stunned many of her long-time admirers by announcing her conversion to Christianity. “We can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools,” she explained. As Peter Savodnik has documented, Hirsi Ali is far from alone. This conversion trend spans figures from Jordan Peterson to tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Even podcaster Joe Rogan recently declared, “We need Jesus.” In February 2025, nearly 4,000 conservatives gathered at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, to hear Peterson, who now openly embraces Christianity as “the reality upon which all reality depends,” Hirsi Ali, Niall Ferguson, and others making the case that liberal societies require deeper foundations than individual rights to survive.