‘Life In The Negative World’ Establishes A Sober Framework For A Post-Christian America
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(REVIEW) Few things have occupied the American Christian mind the past few years like the seeming inevitable decline in the American Christian population. The Atlantic ran a piece from Tim Keller called “American Christianity Is Due For A Revival,” noting a recent Pew Research study that, if nothing changes, Christianity in America will face “irreversible decline.”
Multiple books have come out attempting to understand why this is happening and what can be done about it, from “The Great Dechurching” and “The Benedict Option” to “Losing Our Religion.”
“Life In The Negative World” is the latest, and arguably one of the most practically helpful, books on how traditional conservative evangelical Christians can think about and navigate a new world in which they are increasingly a disliked (if large) minority.
The book establishes a sober and compelling framework for living in a changing world for American Christians that deserves to be read and wrestled with for anyone who wants to understand the age we live in.
“Back in 2014 I detected that we were in a tipping point in the culture,” author Aaron Renn told Religion Unplugged. “In which we were moving from a place where Christianity sort of occupied this neutral ground, as a sort of lifestyle choice among many, to one where Christianity was going to be explicitly disfavored by elite society. And that was going to be a big challenge for the church.”
Renn opens the book by laying out his framework for thinking about the last 100 years of evangelical engagement with the world as “positive world,” “neutral world” and “negative world.” In the positive world, it was a sign of social status to be a Christian. In the neutral world, being a Christian made you one worldview among many competing in the marketplace of ideas. In the negative world — which we’re in right now — it’s actually a negative to your social status to be a Christian.
What Renn argues is that the ways evangelicals have engaged with non-Christians for the past several decades have been suited to the positive and neutral worlds — but don’t work for the negative world.
The “seeker sensitive” and “culture war” movements were built toward the positive world, where you could assume that most people were pro-Christian and all you needed to do was be more welcoming (seeker sensitive) or mobilizing (culture warrior).
The “cultural engagement” model — popularized by writers and thinkers like Keller — works in the neutral world, where you have a seat at the table to build relationships with non-Christians to make your case for Christianity by your words and how you live your life. And yet, in the negative world, these strategies aren’t as effective because you can’t rely on positive good will or even a level playing field with which you can make your case and build relationships.
“The people who have reacted most negatively to this framework have been the cultural engagers,” Renn said. “The ‘culture warriors’ didn’t read the book. The seeker-sensitive people have been the most receptive. They’ve been the ones who’ve said ‘yes, this is reflective of what I’ve seen and experienced.’ The cultural engagers have been the ones who’ve given the most pushback. Because I’m saying they’re no longer the ones at the tip of the spear, at the forefront of the culture.”
Having read Renn’s original First Things article when it came out, I witnessed many intense reactions to it. Its supporters adopted it wholeheartedly to help explain why admonishments by fellow Christians to be gentle in their condemnations of secular liberalism didn’t apply anymore to the modern negative world.
Its detractors condemned it as justification for abandoning Christ’s commands toward kindness as an outdated “strategy,” rather than, as Russel Moore alluded to in his book “Losing Our Religion,” simply obeying Christ’s command toward kindness.
Renn’s book betrays none of the dismissal of Chrisitan kindness one might expect if that were true. Because of this, the book is very useful for both those who resonate with Renn’s framework for understanding a post-Christian America and those who simply want to understand the rift in evangelicalism from a reasonable conservative perspective.
The strength of this book is how seriously it takes the challenges of a post-Christian age for traditional evangelicals and proposes realistic mindset shifts and workable solutions to those challenges. While many such books assure their readers that as long as we listen better and find more common ground with secular progressives, while challenging and correcting conservatives (a tactic that has become derided as “witness to the left; prophesy to the right” among evangelical circles), we will be able to witness well as a religious minority in America.
Renn has a more sober assessment. He points out that the kindest Christians, like Keller and Dave Cover, were canceled to varying degrees. Keller, for example, had an award revoked, and Cover saw his film festival partnership cut ties with his church because they disagreed with the prevailing views of gender.
Renn bluntly tells “culture warrior” conservative Christians that their strategy of engaging with the world as a war is doomed to fail since they don’t have enough recruits on their side to do battle. Meanwhile, he bluntly tells the evangelical left that their belief that they need to be loved by the secular world in order to witness to them will force them to compromise their faith or end up with them being canceled anyway eventually if they don’t compromise.
One of the book’s best sections has to do on “counter-catechesis.” From the data presented in books like “Handing Down The Faith” and “The Great Dechurching,” it’s clear that one of the biggest reasons for Christians leaving the faith is that the church has one day a week in order to disciple Christians to its beliefs and values, while the wider secular society has six of them.
This is why, as “The Great Dechurching” shows, most Christians who’ve stopped going to church have done so not because they have anything against the church but because work and other things are just a higher priority.
While “The Great Dechurching” acknowledges that problem briefly, it’s solutions largely amount to “do a social media fast.” Renn, on the other hand, takes a more serious approach, advising evangelicals to take this as singular priority and to model themselves after Jewish communities, who teach their children not only about Hanukkah but Christmas as well even though they don’t celebrate it.
This book isn’t helpful for everyone. Progressive Christians who agree with the way the culture’s moved regarding gender and race will push back that it’s not Christians who are going to have a worse time in the world, just backward conservatives. And they will find that Renn spends little time trying to persuade them.
Likewise, Christians who are locked into either believing old versions of culture-warring or cultural engagement will probably not be persuaded. In fact, Renn spends some time defending his framework from critics but mostly spends his time laying it out and working out its implications. Primarily, this is a book for those who are feeling what’s going on and can’t articulate it, and once they say “Of course! That’s it!” getting a vision for how to move forward.
The book could have used more examples of how to put into practice some of the things he advises. Renn makes clear that he doesn’t want to give a 10-point plan and that he wants people to decide what applying these ideas would look like in their circumstances and communities. But more examples of ways to do this would have expanded, rather than limited, the imagination as to what that can look like in differing circumstances.
In some cases, such as giving ideas for how to survive cancellations or firings, he gives a good plethora of ideas, such as saving more money, being bi-vocational, being more deeply embedded in your communities and having more Christian-owned mid-sized businesses in your churches to employ Christians. But some examples only scratch the surface, such as “be excellent in your vocation.” How? And how do Christians do a better job of fostering that?
Ultimately, beyond whatever strategies evangelical Christians might use to deal with the changes that they are facing, Renn reminds us that what’s important is that, whatever we do, we are first and foremost following Jesus.
“Christianity is not a business,” Renn said. “We have to be all in on what we believe to be true theologically and what we believe to be true about God and what he has said and that has to be the number one thing. If we’re not doing that, we might as well all go home.”
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.