How did we get these? How is it possible for highly educated people in our society to believe that we can choose identity? How can those who claim to care about kids put a 12-year-old on puberty blockers without consulting the boy’s parents? How is a culture that once acknowledged the risk of morality change into one that just criticizes, editors, and cancels what it perceives to be crimes against equality?
More typically, how can a nation founded on Judeo-Christian rules restore behaviors that would have shocked Greco-Roman romans? How did we get below, and, more importantly, what do we do now that we are these?
Fortunately, Aaron M. Renn’s most recent book offers the required perception and methods to understand the clutter we are in. In Living in the Bad World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Society, Renn, a recent senior fellow at the American Reformer and past senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Public Research, provides both an evaluation of the path that led to where we are and a strategy for Christians to survive and prosper in the current social climate.
Renn identifies three stages in the slow unmooring of America from its Christian roots: the “positive world” ( 1964 to 1994 ), when society held” a mostly positive view of Christianity”, “neutral world” ( 1994-2014 ), when” Christianity no longer ]had ] privileged status, but nor]was ] it disfavored”, and negative world ( since 2014 ), where” Christian morality is expressly repudiated and … seen as a threat to the public good and new public moral order”. Nowadays, holding” to Christian social views, formally affirming the teachings of the Bible, or violating the new liberal social order can lead to negative consequences,” is a change from what was tolerated in the good world and accepted in the natural world.
The Negative World’s Dawn
Renn recalls that in 2008, liberal California “approved Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment to effectively ban same-sex marriage,” and that Barack Obama “felt compelled to lie about this issue, saying he opposed it in order to win the election. Even though the transition from neutral to negative appears to have happened out of the blue, Renn traces some of the key factors that led to the transition of America to a world in which Christian virtues are seen as the problem as opposed to the solution and as the enemy as opposed to the anchor.
Renn points to the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s as well as: 1 ) the collapse of the WASP establishment and their normalizing mainline Protestant values; 2 ) the end of the Cold War, which had championed America’s Christian identity as a counterweight to the ( literally ) godless communism of the Soviet Union; and 3 ) the deregulation of the business sector, which had resulted in a few large conglomerates with “vast top-down control” that allowed them In responding to and overcoming these obstacles, evangelicals “proved to be more adaptable to changing times” than the mainline Protestants who made up the former WASP elite.
Throughout the favorable and neutral eras of the world, evangelicals advocated a variety of methods for reaching an unchurched culture that was either supportive or unfeigned of Christian principles. While the “religious right” became culture warriors who entered the public arena in defense of the Republican party and its platform ( e. g. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ralph Reed ), less confrontational, but no less conservative evangelicals initiated the seeker-sensitive movement to make secular suburban baby boomers feel welcome and comfortable in church ( e. g. Bill Hybels, Rick Warren ).
A third strategy, which began” with the resurgence of America’s urban centers”, sought an apolitical cultural engagement with secular city-dwellers who were hungry for intellectual, social, and artistic dialogue ( e. g. Tim Keller, Makoto Fujimura, Andy Crouch ). For several decades, these cultural engagers, somewhat surprisingly, found themselves” treated as respectable by elite secular society in ways the culture warriors never were”.
With the onset of the negative world, all that came to an end. While evangelicals living in” small towns, rural communities, or remnants of the Bible Belt that are still in some ways positive toward Christianity” have been able to avoid confrontation, those living in cities who have attempted, often heroically, to continue their strategy of cultural engagement, have found themselves increasingly canceled by the same cultural elite that once praised them. The seeker sensitives gravitate toward either one or the other, which is also what has caused a wedge between the cultural warriors and the cultural engagers. Donald Trump is that particular thing.
In contrast to conservative Christians like Eric Metaxas who praise Trump and progressive Christians like David French who demonize him, Renn examines how and why the religious right jumped on the Trump bandwagon. They are Trumpists not just because they back Donald Trump politically, but also because they support his leading positions on issues like immigration and trade barriers, as well as post-liberal policies, in some cases. They are populist in that they tend to attack elites, including evangelical elites, in the name of the masses”, Renn writes. Only in Trump have they found a politicians who understand their concerns.
In doing so, Renn sincerely points out, many cultural activists who had “denounced Bill Clinton as disqualified for office because of low moral character” omitted Trump’s earlier heinous acts in their desire to win. He also points out, with equal sincerity, that many in the Trump camp have been legitimately alarmed by some cultural engagement leaders ‘ “initiatives” regarding sexuality and the acceptance of hard-left secular views on race, such as paying black people racial reparations.
Trump and wokeness”, Renn concludes, “are the two key polarizers re-sorting evangelicals”.
All conservatives, whether secular or Christian, Catholic or evangelical, progressive or traditional, would be wise to take note of Renn’s cautiously optimistic advice in order to combat this polarization and the forces of the negative world that have fueled it. He offers this advice in three realms: the personal, the institutional, and the missional.
Listen, Learn, and Act
” While twentieth-century liberal Protestants rejected the supernatural elements of Christianity”, Renn reminds us,” they largely held to the natural law and moral structures of Christianity”. How dissimilar from today, when secular elites in the hostile world reject” the specifically Christian beliefs liberal Protestantism rejected, as well as many of Christianity’s core ethical and moral principles. They are now at war in many cases with the created order of the universe itself, not just with Christian dogma.
The only way for evangelicals to succeed in this endeavor is to pursue intellectual excellence, learn how to counteract the ascendant materialist and relativist worldview, and do so through the development of the language and ability to do so. Rather than dismiss and bash America’s elites, they must do the hard work to gain themselves a seat, and a leadership one, in conservative think tanks and publications. For too long, evangelicals have left such things to Catholics, Jews, and Episcopalians. By adding their flexibility, common sense, and populist ethos to such groups, they can effect real change.
However, evangelicals would do well to position themselves financially, vocationally, and geographically while they are awaiting those changes so that they and their families can weather the cancellation that will undoubtedly follow if they resist the zeitgeist of the negative world. That might include serving as a bi-vocational pastor or purchasing the land on which the church rests; these are two ways to prevent a church from accepting progressive views on race and sexuality in order to provide enough tithes to pay the bills.
It is crucial that evangelicals pursue absolute integrity in both their own lives and those of their churches in a time when the American public has lost trust in most of the institutions that define our civilization. One way for churches to accomplish that is to prevent connoting political or social activism with religious mission. ” Whether the problem is conservative politics linked with the mission of the church, Trumpism, wokeness, or some other matter, every evangelical church and evangelical-related institution needs to review its mission, make sure it is clear and aligned with its identity and purpose, and then seek to remain focused on that mission”, Renn writes.
Renn makes it clear that “evangelicals are not required to send their kids to poor schools that also actively seek to undermine their beliefs, and they shouldn’t feel guilty when they decide to leave,” even though he does not support Rod Dreher’s” Benedict Option.” We must engage the negative world by being countercultural in a positive and energizing way rather than turning our churches into political action committees or monasteries.
To this end, Renn observes” a community that’s heavily nonfamilial—where its members regularly watch porn, don’t marry, enter into short-term sexual commitments, and experience frequent divorce—is a weak community”. The most anti-conservative thing that evangelicals and other conservatives can do is create a community that is sexually pure, favors stable and faithful marriages, and promotes fertility as a good, healthy, and life-enhancing thing.
As for missions, Renn will likely shock his evangelical readers by praising the” He Gets Us” campaign, rolled out in expensive advertisements in 2022. Far from watering down the gospel, Renn argues, we can no longer take for granted any knowledge of, or sympathy for, the teachings of the Bible. ” He Gets Us” provided the kind of pre-evangelism needed today. This campaign is not attempting to spread the gospel; rather, it is attempting to introduce Jesus to people in a positive way to prepare them for upcoming evangelism. In a negative world, this type of introduction to Jesus—in a variety of different ways—is an important activity, one that every Christian will need to learn how to do”, he writes. Although it’s worth noting that Renn wrote an article on his substack criticizing this more recent round of ads for being “explicitly left-wing culturally and politically” and for presenting” Jesus as an ethical teacher and moral example rather than a savior” after” He Gets Us” ran once more during the 2024 Super Bowl.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Renn calls on churches to teach biblical, scientific, and psychological truths about the differences between men and women, masculinity and femininity, husbands and wives. If they do not do this, if they keep quiet on issues of marriage and gender so as not to offend” sensitive” parishioners, their young men will” continue to turn to secular men’s gurus like Jordan Peterson, not the church, for answers and advice”. In addition, those churches that view men and women as interchangeable” will likely adopt secular views on gender and sexuality” in the end.
Renn warns against” a full-throated embrace of patriarchy” that their positions “likely succeed in our modern egalitarian society,” but he also says the church must find the courage and wisdom to fight for a traditional view of marriage and the sexes. He points out that gender confusion as well as pornography use and sex must be addressed in order for us to have church communities where marriage with children is the norm [and divorce is the exception], and that perpetual singleness is only for those who are truly called by God.
Only once we get ourselves, our families, our churches, and our communities in order will we have the stability and the vision to minister to the negative world. Renn provides us with a way forward, and we would do well to listen, learn, and act.  ,  ,
