Aaron Renn’s “negative world” thesis broadly posits that in contemporary America the primary forces of culture are turned against Christians and Christian moral teaching. Identifying as a Christian and following the Bible’s moral teachings is viewed as regressive and antisocial, and even invites ostracism.
In recent months, however, several high-profile former critics of Christianity have pivoted to openly confessing the need for Christianity due to its social and civilizational resources, as Paul Shakeshaft has noted. While researching for his blockbuster book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, non-Christian popular historian Tom Holland became convinced that most of our cherished values in the West are indebted to Christianity. As a result, he realized that in his “morals and ethics” he is “thoroughly and proudly Christian.” Joe Rogan, the freethinker who hosts the most popular podcast in the world, and who has in the past repeatedly denounced Christianity as unreasonable and intolerant, admitted in February that “We need Jesus” to bring social and moral order out of our contemporary chaos. In a viral essay this past November, former New Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali narrated her conversion to Christianity, inspired at first by its ability to resist the authoritarian, woke, and Islamic forces that threaten Western civilization. She also credited Christianity as the source of our greatest values in the West. And arch-pop-atheist Richard Dawkins recently came to similar conclusions, referring to himself as a “cultural Christian.”
These high-profile “conversions” to cultural Christianity (and, in Ali’s case, genuine faith) don’t so much challenge Renn’s thesis as press us to consider what might be on the horizon. I am convinced Renn’s analysis remains essential for that task.
First of all, the negative world itself sparked the backlash represented by Dawkins and the others. The moral chaos, tribal hostility between identity groups, and loss of classical rights that now characterize the post-Christian West have made many nostalgic for the time when our social norms were rooted in Christianity. The very real threat of losing permanently the substantive goods of the classical liberal order has led them to recognize that that order cannot sustain itself apart from its foundation in living Christian faith. The figures mentioned above are merely high-profile examples of a broader phenomenon (evidenced, for example, by the flattening of the growth of “nones,” especially among Gen Z). Regular people know things have gotten crazy. They rankle at the destructive lies peddled by the woke. They crave common sense, the affirmation that they are not crazy, stupid, or bigoted. They recognize the need to labor together to build a society that promotes the true, the good, and the beautiful, not the fake, depraved, and ugly. This does not mean that we aren’t living in the negative world. Rather, it means we have reason to hope that that world’s days are numbered.
In view of the growing recognition that the continuance of Western civilization depends on Christianity, the church should ready itself to receive an influx of refugees from the cultural wasteland wrought by attacks on the faith. The prospect that Christians might face less social stigma in the years ahead is bound together with new evangelistic opportunities. If Christians resist the forces of dissolution and welcome these refugees, we might just see many embrace not only cultural Christianity, but the genuine article.
Back in the “neutral world,” when being a Christian was neither socially advantageous nor a liability, “winsome third-way-ism” was a fitting approach to evangelism. America was still running on the fumes of a formerly Christian culture that provided a basic catechesis in secularized biblical values. One could assume that most of one’s neighbors shared a generic belief in the reality of God and a transcendent moral order; basic realities, such as the distinction between sexes or the right of young children to be protected from sexual degeneracy, had not been called into question for more than a small, revolutionary vanguard. In the neutral world it was much easier to envision people across the political aisle sharing the same ecclesial pew. Thus, it made sense for Christian leaders to balance preaching and teaching against the errors and blind spots of both sides. This also impacted evangelism.
One of the interesting aspects of “winsome third-way-ism” is how its proponents approach the “lost.” While most advocates of this model admit that there are unbelievers on both left and right, they treat those groups disparately. Third-wayers are likelier to treat unbelievers on the left with deference, even affection. They frequently soften scriptural teaching in order to win these individuals to the faith, with the unstated (and often unfulfilled) promise that those hard teachings will be encountered in discipleship. By contrast, the lost on the right are regularly derided from pulpits, and third-wayers are quick to disavow them. The prospect of their conversion is often a matter of disinterest, and the hard edges of Scripture related to right-coded sins are sharpened. The left gets a gospel carrot, the right a stick.
This is related to how “converts” to cultural Christianity are viewed. Many evangelicals are suspicious of their investigation or appreciation of the faith, even dismissing them as inauthentic or cynically utilitarian, wanting Christianity’s civilizational fruit sans-faith. The winsome are less willing to build bridges to their right and sometimes even treat the desire for civilizational order as illegitimate. But when those same evangelicals meet unbelievers on the left drawn to Christianity for its resources for advancing social justice, they receive them warmly, eager to nurture their interest into genuine faith. Of course, the desire of leftists for social justice is no more legitimate or congruent with Christianity than the desire of contemporary cultural Christians for a coherent society ordered to reality.
In To Change the World, sociologist James Davison Hunter argued that broad social change is driven by elites. Since that group was overwhelmingly left-liberal at the time of the book’s publication, it is easy to see how many evangelicals concluded they must show evangelistic deference toward the left. This made sense in the neutral world context. Today, however, those on the left are especially hardened to Christian teachings, and evangelicals’ overtures yield radically decreasing dividends. In the negative world, preferential treatment of the woke is less a strategy for changing the world than for signaling one’s obeisance to power.
Moreover, privileging the left evangelistically undermines outreach to those who are more open to the gospel. To be clear, I do not believe this means we should abandon hope of reaching those on the left. What I am proposing is that we recalibrate our methods and emphases. Today, centrists and those on the right are more fertile soil, I believe, because they are more open to reality. They recognize that the cultural revolutionaries’ projects to rewrite reality are destroying civilization. These refugees crave clarity about basic moral realities because of how much confusion the negative world has produced. They are looking for voices who stand up to the civilizational destroyers—maybe even voices who boldly proclaim supernatural truths.
Like the “god-fearers” that early church missionaries often targeted, we today need to consider the “reality-respecters” in our mission. It appears that a harvest is ripening. If evangelicals continue to treat the woke preferentially, we risk abandoning the crop to rot in the field.
James R. Wood is assistant professor of religion and theology at Redeemer University.
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Image by Arian Zwegers, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
