# Life in the Negative World  ## Metadata - Author: [[Aaron M. Renn]] - Full Title: Life in the Negative World - Category: #books ## Highlights - Then in October 2019, a sermon at the Crossing affirmed that there are only two genders, saying, “Gender is not a social construct. Men and women are foundational to God’s plan. God is not pleased when we blur genders.”5 This sermon caused a major controversy in the Columbia community. As the Crossing stood by their position, institutions in town came under pressure to drop partnerships with the church. The True/False Film Fest decided to do so, cutting ties. An art gallery in town did likewise.6 A church that had worked hard never to offer gratuitous offense suddenly found itself a pariah in parts of the local community it had been trying to reach. ([Location 128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=128)) - The fact that Christians like these are at risk of being ostracized for their beliefs reveals that we’ve now entered a new and unprecedented era in America, one I call the “negative world.” That is, for the first time in the history of our country, orthodox Christianity is viewed negatively by secular society, especially by its elite domains. ([Location 137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=137)) - This book is about the shift to the negative world, what that means, and how to live in this new reality. I describe the shifts in the relationship between culture and Christianity over the past sixty years, tracing the fall of Christianity’s status from being softly institutionalized in the 1950s to being increasingly seen as a threat to society’s institutions today. I also examine the strategies evangelicals used to respond to the various phases of this decline and how those approaches have changed and even deformed under the new pressures of the negative world. ([Location 142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=142)) - That’s what I hope to do with this book as I provide a framework of the “three worlds of evangelicalism”—the positive, neutral, and negative worlds—that I originally developed in 2014 and later published in the February 2022 print issue of First Things, an influential New York magazine about religion and the public square founded by Richard John Neuhaus. The framework describes the stages of decline of the status of Christianity in America over the past sixty years. ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=165)) - I also describe the three strategies evangelicals developed in response to this decline: culture war, seeker sensitivity, and cultural engagement. Then I provide a set of considerations and ideas for life in the negative world across three dimensions of evangelical life: personal, institutional, and missional. ([Location 169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=169)) - The most common method for identifying religion in social science surveys divides Protestants into three main groups: Mainline, Evangelical, and Black Protestant.7 I similarly classify any Protestant who is not mainline or from the black church tradition as an evangelical. ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=184)) - AMERICAN CHURCH ATTENDANCE REACHED A HIGH-water mark during the 1950s, when around half of adults attended services on Sunday mornings.1 In that era, going to church was just another part of being an upstanding member of society, like voting or volunteering. So perhaps not all the people in the pews were especially devout, but they were there. Christianity and church attendance had normative force in society. ([Location 202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=202)) - America historically had an Anglo-Protestant identity. ([Location 206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=206)) - Even so, the Protestant component of American identity remained strong. Not just Christianity, but specifically Protestant Christianity was dominant; Protestants were still a two-thirds majority. Though diminished from its heyday, America still had a powerful upper-class WASP establishment: the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. While the WASPs might compromise on the Anglo-Saxon part of their identity, Protestantism remained an upper-class boundary. Jews were blackballed (or subjected to a quota) in some institutions. Even Catholics were viewed as suspect. John F. Kennedy’s election as the first Catholic president in 1960 was controversial precisely because of his religious background. ([Location 213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=213)) - America was thus a Christian, specifically Protestant, nation in some respects. That doesn’t mean the country had an officially established religion or was always governed as a nation in line with Christian teachings or without serious injustices. But Christianity was publicly held in honor. It ([Location 218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=218)) - While, as Moore stressed, this era did not necessarily make everyone into a serious, devout Christian, it was a cultural environment structured to be friendly to Christianity, at least Protestant Christianity, and its ethical system. ([Location 241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=241)) - Starting sometime in the 1960s—perhaps we could date the start of it to the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, six months after King’s Birmingham letter—this system began to break down. Social upheavals convulsed the country. Church attendance declined. Christian belief declined. People began questioning Christian moral teachings. Societal views of Christianity and the church changed as old truths were called into question. The overall status of Christianity in American society and its moral hold on the nation declined, portending radical shifts in the relationship between Christianity and the broader culture. ([Location 243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=243)) - Since that bygone midcentury era, the status of Christianity in America has passed through multiple thresholds as it declined, dividing that post-1963 period into three major eras, or worlds, characterized by three ways society at large has viewed and related to Christianity. These are the positive world, the neutral world, and the negative world (dates are approximate). ([Location 249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=249)) - POSITIVE WORLD (1964–1994). Society at large retains a mostly positive view of Christianity. To be known as a good, churchgoing man or woman remains part of being an upstanding citizen in society. Publicly being a Christian enhances social status. Christian moral norms are still the basic moral norms of society, and violating them can lead to negative consequences. ([Location 252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=252)) - NEUTRAL WORLD (1994–2014). Society takes a neutral stance toward Christianity. Christianity no longer has privileged status, but nor is it disfavored. Being publicly known as a Christian has neither a positive nor a negative impact on social status.8 Christianity is one valid option among many within a pluralistic, multicultural public square. Christian moral norms retain some residual effect. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=255)) - NEGATIVE WORLD (2014–PRESENT). In this era, society has an overall negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the higher status domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and now seen as a threat to the public good and new public moral order. Holding to Christian moral views, publicly affirming the teachings of the Bible, or violating the new secular moral order can lead to negative consequences. ([Location 259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=259)) - Although I use the phrase negative world, it might be better to say Christianity is viewed suspiciously rather than negatively. ([Location 266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=266)) - But someone who holds to historic Christian beliefs will find himself in conflict with secular culture at several points. ([Location 272](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=272)) - This aspect of the negative world, in which a denatured Christianity is acceptable but orthodox Christianity is not, pressures evangelicals to find ways to make their theological beliefs align with the ideologies of today’s secular culture. ([Location 274](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=274)) - In the positive world of 1987, the Miami Herald reported that Colorado senator Gary Hart, a front-runner in the 1988 presidential race, had a young woman named Donna Rice stay overnight in his Washington town house when his wife wasn’t there.10 A media frenzy over Hart having a possible affair—and subsequent allegations—forced him to drop out of the race. ([Location 279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=279)) - In the neutral world of 1998, the Drudge Report broke the story that President Bill Clinton had been having an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, including engaging in sex acts adjacent to the Oval Office.11 Clinton was badly damaged by the scandal but survived it as the Democratic Party rallied around him and publicly decided his private behavior wasn’t relevant to his job. ([Location 283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=283)) - In the negative world of 2016, Donald Trump, a man whose persona over a forty-year career in the public eye had been antithetical to Christian moral norms—exemplified by infidelity, boastfulness, and greed—was the Republican nominee for president and supported by several voting blocs of evangelical Christians. An attempt to derail his candidacy with an October surprise was made in the form of a leaked audio tape from the set of Access Hollywood. Trump made crude comments about women on that tape.12 This was a forty-eight-hour blip of a scandal, and Trump proceeded to win the election a month later. ([Location 286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=286)) - Trump’s support by the religious right may have offended his opponents more than his affairs and actual sexual sins did. ([Location 294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=294)) - The transition from the neutral to the negative world is more clearly evident, even to the man on the street. Something significant changed in American society during President Obama’s second term, even if people can’t always articulate what it was. One of the best examples of this shift is the so-called Great Awokening,14 a term progressive technocrat Matthew Yglesias established in an article for Vox in 2019 and a change he said started in 201415 but which may have been triggered by the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. ([Location 316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=316)) - Zach Goldberg at the Manhattan Institute used data from LexisNexis to examine the frequency of various terms related to wokeness in the news media and especially the New York Times. He found that the frequency of terms such as social justice, systemic racism, and white privilege being used skyrocketed from relatively low levels starting after 2012. His graphs of this became a viral sensation on the internet.17 Clearly, something fundamentally changed in the discourse on race circa 2014, which has had a major influence on the key institutions of society. ([Location 326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=326)) - In 2008, a majority of voters in California—yes, California—approved Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment to effectively ban same-sex marriage.18 Also in 2008, Barack Obama campaigned for president as an opponent of same-sex marriage, specifically citing his Christian faith as a rationale. He was lying about this and had already been on record as supporting same-sex marriage in the 1990s while a member of the Illinois legislature.19 But it’s notable that he felt compelled to lie about this issue and even stress Christian bona fides in order to be elected. (Hillary Clinton also publicly opposed same-sex marriage at that time.)20 Yet by 2016, Donald Trump was personally holding up pride flags at rallies while running for president as a Republican.21 Today, the effort to prevent people who are transgendered male-to-female from competing in girls’ sports seems like a desperate rearguard action. All of this points to an incredible sea change in public morality over a short period of time. ([Location 335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=335)) - In the Christian world, evangelical pastor Rick Warren prayed at Obama’s 2009 inauguration.23 Yet by 2013, Louie Giglio was forced to withdraw from praying at Obama’s second inauguration because of a controversy over his views on homosexuality.24 ([Location 346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=346)) - Like all frameworks of this type, the three worlds model is a simplification of complex phenomena designed primarily for practical purposes. ([Location 353](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=353)) - Also, the three worlds framework is designed specifically for the period after the midcentury consensus began to disintegrate, even if it would be valid at some level to extend the positive world further back in time. ([Location 368](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=368)) - What I’ve labeled the positive world wasn’t a world in which all was going well for Christianity. It was in fact the opposite. The positive world is defined as the period of Christian decline starting in the 1960s, during which the status of Christianity in society had fallen but not yet eroded to the point of neutrality or negativity. Many people saw alarming signs about trends in the church or society even early on in this positive world period. ([Location 372](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=372)) - What caused the decline that led to Christianity descending from positive to neutral to negative status in society? This is a complex question to which no easy or certain answer can be given, but there are several directions we can explore. For example, the three worlds framework covers a period in which many have talked about the secularization of culture. The three different worlds could be seen in part as emerging from this secularization process. Secularization is a subject one could devote an entire career to studying. ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=381)) - British academic Callum Brown explained a sudden collapse of Christianity in England during the 1960s by arguing it resulted from women ceasing to view being a Christian as an essential part of their identity as women.28 ([Location 387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=387)) - Attempting to explain secularization or Christianity’s decline is far beyond the scope of this book. But at least six major post-1964 events clearly had an impact in facilitating or even accelerating the decline of the status of Christianity in America… ([Location 389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=389)) - THE COLLAPSE OF THE WASP ESTABLISHMENT. As I previously noted, up through the 1950s America was largely run by a hegemonic upper class WASP establishment. While the nature of the American upper class shifted radically over the course of the nation’s history, there was also remarkable continuity in important ways. For example, Kingman Brewster, president of Yale University during the tumult of the Vietnam War era, was an eleventh generation descendent of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower.29 Members of the Adams family remained prominent in American cultural circles well into the mid-twentieth-century era. These ancient lineages, by American standards, retained prominent and powerful positions. Not for nothing was there a “Protestant” in the acronym WASP. Protestantism was a key part of their identity and an exclusionary boundary as well. Theirs was a liberal Protestantism, and many of the WASPs weren’t especially religious people. But… ([Location 392](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=392)) - THE SIXTIES SOCIAL REVOLUTION. The late 1960s saw a major social upheaval with young adults rejecting the authority of their parents and other traditional authority figures, embracing drugs and the counterculture, protesting against the Vietnam War, rejecting aspects of the industrial economy and creating an environmental movement, experimenting with new forms of communities, and more. This was an epochal social… ([Location 401](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=401)) - THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION. Related to the ’60s social revolution, the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and ’70s called into question many beliefs and practices regarding sex and family inherited as part of the Christian tradition and normalized many new practices that previously would have been forbidden. These traditional beliefs included bans against contraception, premarital sex, pornography, homosexual practices, revised gender roles, and divorce. The full flowering of the rejection of many of the beliefs and practices didn’t happen until recently, and in… ([Location 405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=405)) - THE END OF THE COLD WAR. Undoubtedly, the collapse of the Soviet empire and the resulting end of the Cold War was a seminal event in facilitating the public rejection of Christianity by American elite culture and institutions. Because communism was an avowedly atheist system—“godless communism,” as some called it—Christianity and Christian identity became part of America’s fight against the Soviet bloc. For example, the phrase under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance30 and in God We Trust to money in the 1950s.31 Christianity was an integral part of the regime of freedom in the… ([Location 411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=411)) - DEREGULATION AND CORPORATE CONSOLIDATION. Starting in the 1970s, America began deregulating the corporate sector and especially rolling back limits on corporate concentration. As a result, a much smaller group of large companies are now much more dominant in many sectors than previously, including the banking, airline, technology, and media industries. Not every industry is dominated by an oligopoly—many small banks and credit unions still operate, for example—but there’s far more concentration in many sectors, and some are de facto monopolies or oligopolies. These companies have vast lobbying power and are more tightly connected to the state, resulting in trends like declining corporate prosecutions and access to bailouts and other government support in times of crisis. At the same time, these firms are more compliant with state and elite cultural mandates. The net result is that the market no longer acts as a meaningful check on the behavior of these firms, and they can… ([Location 418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=418)) - DIGITIZATION. The move to digitization, combined with the lack of a proper regulatory framework for it, enables vast top-down control over the country. For example, even into the 1990s and later, people still conducted most financial transactions with cash or checks. Today, the majority of transactions are non-cash, such as with credit and debit cards, which means Visa and Mastercard have de facto power to determine who can engage in commerce in the US.32 The bulk of internet traffic today is on mobile devices, and two companies control the entire market for smartphone operating system software, Apple and Google. They have significant power over deciding whether or not various kinds of companies can engage in business in the US. Unlike analogue-era essential services, such as for electricity or telephone utilities, these businesses retain discretion on with whom they… ([Location 427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=427)) - MAINLINE DENOMINATIONS LIKE THE EPISCOPALIANS, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and similarly traditional groups dominated the Protestant landscape up to the 1950s. The alternatives to the mainline were generally considered lower-status, such as fundamentalist churches. Starting in the 1940s, people like Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry helped crystalize the neo-evangelical movement, which attempted to navigate between those two poles. This emerging evangelicalism would hold firm to traditional Christian beliefs but be more culturally and socially relevant and less sectarian. ([Location 446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=446)) - Evangelicalism, then, became a major force in America during this initial period of declining Christian cultural influence. The ability to successful adapt to a state of decline is, in many ways, built into evangelicalism and might be considered its greatest strength. ([Location 455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=455)) - As I previously noted, the most common model for categorizing Protestants in social science surveys3 divides Protestants into the three categories of Mainline, Evangelical, and Black Protestant. ([Location 463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BYYXSYVV&location=463))