Christian Strategies for an Anti-Christian Age | Aaron Renn

Jonathon Van Maren speaks with Aaron Renn, author of "Life in Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture." 

They discuss the decline of Christianity's influence in America & how we see this played out in 3 presidential sex scandals, the impact of societal changes on Christian communities, and how Christians can build resilience in an increasingly anti-Christian world. 

Aaron delves into his three-worlds model and its implications, the cultural shift marked by events post-2014, and the need for churches to better address gender issues in a way that resonates with men.

You can find Aaron Renn on substack here: https://aaronrenn.substack.com/

You can find his podcast on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAaronRennShow 

You can find “The Bridgehead with Jonathon Van Maren” on YouTube, Rumble, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

#AaronRenn #Negativeworld #Christianity

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The fact that Jordan Peterson cleaned the clock of the church, in reaching young men should be embarrassing to the church. For the first time in the 400 year history of America, official elite culture now views Christianity negatively, or certainly skeptically. Donald Trump as a viable presidential candidate, is only possible in the negative world. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Bridgehead. Today, we're going to be talking to Aaron Renn, the author of a fantastic new book called "Life in Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture." Aaron Renn also runs a Substack newsletter. He is a co-founder a co-founder and senior fellow at the American Reformer. He's one of the most interesting Christian intellectuals today because he's not primarily an intellectual. He's not primarily an Ivy League professor or an academic. What's so interesting about Renn is that he built a career in management and technology consulting advising major corporations. And what ended up happening is he applied the skill sets that he has in understanding city planning, in consulting at large, and applied them to the fact that Christians now live in a profoundly anti-Christian culture. His book was packed with insights. I reviewed it for the European Conservative. I think it's one of the most helpful cultural books for Christians to come out in a decade. And here is our conversation about that book and about his theory of "negative world." So just to start off for our listeners that are unfamiliar with your "negative world" thesis, which was first published in "First Things" magazine in 2022. Maybe lay out what your thesis is, but also how, how you came up with this framing for the world we currently live in. Yeah, the three worlds model actually was originally published in 2017 in my newsletter. Then I updated it for the February 22 edition of "First Things" magazine, but I actually came up with it in 2014 when I saw a series of Christian short films about how we should live in the world, really kind of targeted at a youth audience. And I said, man, this is a great film, very great production quality, great scripts, everything. But this is talking about a world that's passing away. And we're soon to be entering a radically different world. So I went home and I jotted down all these bullet points of observations about the culture. And that became my three worlds model. And again, it's an American specific model. I want to be clear here. But we never had a state church. Like in many European countries, but for most of our history, there was a sort of softly institutionalized generic Protestantism as our default national religion. So as recently as the 1950s, half of all adults in the United States attended church every Sunday. That was an all time high. We had prayer and Bible reading in our government schools. Uh, we were adding "In God We Trust" to our money and "Under God" to the pledge of allegiance. It was a essentially Christian society in a sense. Then starting in the 1960s, this began, began to get unraveled and the status of Christianity in America went into a period of decline that continues to the present day. It hasn't been like a steady, steady state. There's been some ups and downs, but basically the trend has been down and that continues. And I divide this period of decline from roughly 1964 to the present into three phases or worlds that I call the positive world, the neutral world and the negative world. So the positive world lasts from 1964 to 1994. And this is a period of decline for Christianity. I want to be clear. All is not positive in that sense. Church attendance is in decline, for example, and yet Christianity is still basically viewed positively in society. To be known as a church going man makes you seem like a good upstanding citizen. Makes people want to hire you. vote for you, et cetera. And Christian morality is still the basic moral framework of society. And if you violate those norms you can get into trouble such as by having an affair. In 1994, we hit a tipping point and enter what I call the neutral world which lasted from 1994 to 2014, in which Christianity is no longer seen positively anymore, but it's not really viewed negatively yet either. It's just one more lifestyle choice among many in a sort of pluralistic public square. So we might meet, I'd say, I'm a Christian, you'd say, great, I'm a vegan. And, you know, Christian moral systems sort of had a residual impact in society in that era. Then in 2014, we hit a second tipping point and enter what I call the negative world, where for the first time in the 400 year history of America, official elite culture now views Christianity negatively, or certainly at least skeptically. You know, there were always people throughout American history who were not exactly religious, including many of our founding fathers, for example. But Christianity was publicly held in honor, and that's what's no longer the case today. So, uh, to be known as a Bible believing Christian, does not help you get a job in the elite domains of society. It probably makes people look at you a little bit funny. Uh, Christian morality is expressly repudiated and in many ways is now viewed as the leading threat to the new public moral order. I think a lot of these articles that are constantly being written and books, many books about Christian nationalism, uh, fall into this category. I think Christian nationalism today, in a sense plays the same function that terms like Islamofascism, uh, would have played in, in the 2000s. It's identifying a particularized enemy, uh, of, uh, of America in that sense. And so this shift, uh, especially the shift into the negative world has really caught American evangelicals and, of course, other Christians flat footed a little bit as the cultural ground has really shifted under their feet. You know, originally, back in the positive world, the main, uh, one of the main evangelical political organizations was called the Moral Majority. It was founded by a guy named Jerry Falwell. And the idea here, of course, was that, uh, much like Nixon's silent majority, it's like we are the majority of Americans, no matter what the college professor might say. Well, nobody would ever create such an organization with that name today when it's very clear that, you know, traditional Christians represent a minority. And so that's a very painful psychological adjustment to go through. I want to belabor that point just for one more moment, because what I thought was really interesting is, and you open the book, uh, this way as well, is that you framed your, your three worlds, um, in terms of sort of a tale of, of three affairs. And the reason I thought this was particularly interesting besides the fact that it was helpful in, in explaining the evangelical reaction, um, to Trump's sexual infidelities, is also because there's a good case to be made that the moral majority kind of broke, um, on, on the shores of Bill Clinton's soaring popularity, even after he got caught having an affair. The fact that Bill Clinton left office more popular than, than pretty much any politician of his time, despite the fact that he had an extremely public and sordid affair. The details of which went across the United States in the form of the Star Report and media coverage of the Star Report, and the fact that the American reaction was sort of a collective shrug really indicated that we didn't the moral majority itself might've been a thing, but was no longer a thing by the time we hit 1999. So what made you decide to, what are, what were the three affairs you chose to use as framing devices? And how did you think of that idea? Because I, I, I genuinely found it, not just a, a cool writer's gimmick, but, but really helpful. I don't remember how I came up with that, uh, idea, but it was in the original 2017 version of the piece. And again, I wanted to illustrate what has changed in American culture in these three worlds in a very tangible way. So I used three different presidential sex scandals. Back in 1987, Colorado Senator Gary Hart was the leading contender to be the Democratic nominee for president in the following year's, um election when it was reported by the "Miami Herald" that Uh, he had had a young woman stay all night in his DC townhome or something of that nature. Various allegations of that nature. Uh, and just the idea that this guy might have had an affair torpedoed his candidacy. He was forced to withdraw uh from uh, from the race. And, you know, it goes to show you the old model was still in effect. If you have an affair, you've, in a sense, disqualified yourself from holding certain positions in society. By the way, it wasn't a scandal or anything of that nature, but it was remarked on, that Ronald Reagan was the first president who had ever been divorced, uh, divorced and remarried. The second scandal was, uh, from the neutral world, so that was the positive world scandal. In the neutral world, the scandal was the Clinton Lewinsky affair from 1998. And I would argue that Bill Clinton was badly damaged by this, uh, scandal. Probably accounts for George W. Bush winning the election, uh, in 2000. Uh, nevertheless, he survived it. Uh, it didn't destroy his, uh, his popularity completely. And the left, including many of the feminist organizations, uh, you know, rallied around him saying, you know, however kind of deplorable his personal conduct and having an affair with a White House intern might've been, so long as it was consensual, uh, his personal behavior has no bearing on his public performance in his role in office. The negative, the negative world scandal, uh, is from October 2016 when"NBC News" uh, releases this tape that they have been sitting on for months- they've had this tape for months. Of Donald Trump on the set of the TV show "Access Hollywood," making crude comments about women. And they think we're going to drop this on him, it's going to be the proverbial October surprise. It's going to sink his candidacy. And in retrospect, that was a 48 hour blip of a scandal. And he, he went on not that long later to, uh, to win the election. And so it's really a sea change from Gary Hart to Donald Trump. And this is the point I always try to stress. When I talk about this negative world and its relationship to Christianity, everybody likes to immediately gravitate to how it affects the Christian, how it affects the church. But this is something that has had pervasive impacts in our society. Donald Trump is, as president, as a viable presidential candidate, is only possible in the negative world. In the positive and the neutral world the standards of society would have barred the path of someone like him to the office. So let me just give you one example of a non-sexual nature. Traditionally, casino gambling was basically banned in the United States. Except in Las Vegas. I believe Atlantic City legalized it in the eighties even. It wasn't, it was pretty recent in Atlantic City uh, legalized. Gambling was frowned on morally. It was viewed as the province of the mafia. I mean, if you were involved in the casino business, as we see in like movies, like "The Godfather," you were basically viewed as mobbed up. And so, yeah, you would go to your local mob bookie, uh, to make bets, uh, because it wasn't legal, uh, or maybe you'd go to Vegas or you'd gamble in a mobbed up casino, but it was a shady business. Now, casino gambling is a fully, you know, if sports betting on your phone, a fully legitimate mainstream legal, socially approved of um, uh, you know, thing you can do. This major sports leagues in the United States are actually partners in the gambling business today. So gambling has lost, it's completely lost the stigma that it had. And this is relevant to Trump because Donald Trump was a casino owner. Donald Trump owned casinos in Atlantic City, and the idea that a guy who owned casinos and when that was viewed as a sort of mobbed up industry. Of course, he always said the difference with me - I was clean, I wasn't involved in the mob, so I'm not saying he was. But he couldn't, a casino owner would never have been elected president, so he talked a good game of running for president, but he never actually did it. I mean, he, he sort of did this reform party thing, I think in 2012 to help Sink Buchanan, um, but it wasn't serious. But I think what happened in 2015 is he recognized something for the very first time. American culture has changed, and now my path to the White House is there in a way it was not before. And he came down that escalator. And he won. And so I think there's a great irony that all of the people who tore down the old moral standards in the name of this liberationist ideal, uh, it is they who made it possible for someone like Donald Trump to become president. It wasn't conservative Christians who paved the way for Trump. It was they who changed the standards of society to the point where I think evangelical and Christian voters woke up and realized, as you said, after Bill Clinton, the old standards no longer apply in public morality. So even though you might, someone such as myself does not support legalized gambling, there's no prospect of my policy coming to pass because I represent a minority position. And so therefore I can't be voting for people based on their position on casino gambling or pot legalization or anything else. Because that's now the norm in society. And so all of these people, you know, who demand, you know, you Christians need to be voting against Trump because he's this horrible person according to your own standards, which of course we totally reject and repudiate, but you should hold to those to get rid of this guy we don't like. I think there's so many ironies, uh, here. No. So there's a, there's a couple of things there. When you look at, uh, look at Donald Trump's election, one of the things that I think that made it difficult for us to see that we were in neutral world and then shifting into negative world. So neutral world, uh, just to remind the viewers, neutral world is when, um, being Christian was sort of neutral. It wasn't a positive or a negative. Is that in 2004, you have George W. Bush, um, running on a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. In 2008 you have California voting to overturn same sex marriage that's already been implemented there. Uh not a single traditional marriage, um, question had lost at the ballot box and it seemed to it seemed to me at the time, I remember talking about this with friends after elections, like perhaps all of sort of the moral worrying is, is, is a bit over the top because when Americans are asked to speak directly to these issues, they speak with one voice. And this was just evidence that there was a massive sort of cleavage between what Hollywood says, what the Democratic Party says, and what the American people clearly articulate that they want when they're given the opportunity to vote on these things. And it struck me that if you look at, so George W. Bush ran as a pro life president, we don't know what he would have been like as a domestic president, of course, because he turned into the war on terror president, but ran against same sex marriage. In his memoir decision points he's got a whole section on why he's pro life, why he's anti abortion, in which he describes seeing his miscarried sibling in a jar, um, that, uh, where his mother had, had placed the siblings so that his father, um, the first president Bush could, could see him later. And then Roe v. Wade is overturned and the retired president, George W. Bush doesn't release a statement. Doesn't say a thing. Um, the Republican president, uh, the former Republican president, uh, Donald J. Trump, when Joe Biden passes a law, enshrining same sex marriage into federal statute, Trump throws a party at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate what he calls the gains of "our movement." And there's not a peep from the religious right that Donald J. Trump just referred to the LGBT movement as "our movement" and that similar sorts of hedonism play out in Mar-a-Lago as we saw critiqued on trans visibility day at the White House. Right? You know, you've got the same sort of things that are playing out. And so what I'm interested in kind of pinpointing, and the reason I'm interested in pinpointing this is because America is a negative world, but the entire Western world is now a negative world. America just got there later, um, for a variety of reasons. What do you think was the tipping point transition from neutral world into negative world? Like 2014 obviously is when the transgender movement really gains a lot of strength. There's that 2014 time magazine cover the transgender tipping point with Laverne Cox on the cover. Um, 2014 is really when gender ideology starts to surface in mainstream consciousness. Um, what made you pick. 2014 and what in your view would have been the tipping point transition from one world into the next? Yes, I don't take a position on like, what caused what necessarily. I'm not one of these where did it all go wrong or y ou know these things. There are obviously tipping points and transitions in history. I think one of the most critical points was actually 1989 the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because when you go back, why was America adding "In God We Trust" to its money in the 50s? Because of the cold war. You know, we were in a existential global struggle, full spectrum struggle against communism in the form of the Soviet Union. Communism was an avowedly atheist, materialist, anti religious system, uh, and therefore, Christianity was bound up with the West's moral war against the Soviet Union. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, uh, that actually freed up American leadership to unbundle Christianity from what it meant to be a Western, free, democratic, liberal society. And so that began, I think, the process of the unbundling. In fact, you could probably argue that the neutral world started in 89, you know, we don't need to go into all the details on that. that Yep. When it comes to, to, uh, as you point out, there was definitely a radical shift on sexuality in a fairly short period of time. I wouldn't get too hung up on 2014. I think it's the best date, but the reality is there was some major breaking point or shift in the culture during Obama's second term. You saw it. And again, the radical shift on, you know, sexuality in both legal and public opinion. You see it in, uh, the rise of the so called "Great Awokening" uh, on race, uh, which, uh, left wing pundit Matthew Yglesias, uh, said started in 2014. You could say it maybe started with a Trayvon Martin, uh, killing in 2012, but 2014, uh, was a major tipping point in which this obsession with sort of race issues, uh, and these things, uh, started going on. Um, again, uh, I think, uh, it was, uh, Jonathan Haidt, the, uh, uh, American, uh, college professor who's written a lot about social media, he said 2013 is when things really started going, um, crazy, uh, on American campuses. So there's a lot going on there. Uh, one thing I think may be there, again this is somewhat speculative, you know, the George W. Bush administration was a colossal failure. Basically on every front. Um, you know, particularly with the, you know, the Iraq war. And, you know, he had this moment post 9-11 where there was just incredible unity in the nation that could have been used for many things, and it was squandered, and it was incompetent, and he wasn't great on domestic policy either, uh, let's be honest. And, you know, this, this kind of specter of the Bush administration had been hanging over, um, you know, the Republican Party for a long time. Think back to the 2016 election. It was considered unbelievably controversial that Donald Trump called the Iraq war a mistake. I mean, you could not be a Republican in good standing and call the Iraq war a mistake until Donald Trump said it and got away from it, but I think exhaustion with the Bush administration, uh, and sort of the, uh, the fact that, you know, Republicans were a little bit out of ideas, um, you know, for the world with some exceptions, like the reform a con movement, but there was sort of, I think, uh, in essence, I think the conservative movement a little bit exhausted itself. The religious right kind of exhausted itself in some ways, and there had been underneath the culture, a steady erosion of sort of public support for this. And so I think it was very easy for say corporate executives who may have been traditional what we call country club republicans or chamber of commerce Republicans to say I'm, just going to vote for the Democratic guy I'm going to vote for the Democrat because, you know, all those people are I would call them moderate social liberals. They like the free market, low taxes, you know the the neoliberal left uh, is going to give them that. It's going to give them free trade. It's going to give them the, you know, the immigration that they want, you know, they're, you know, they kind of like diversity and they're not too, you know, they think some of the, you know, some more extreme expressions that they think are okay, but like, they're basically okay with the stuff, uh, in moderate forms and they see, you know. So I think there was sort of a collapse, uh, in the second Obama term, sort of a collapse of conservative opposition to the left, uh, at the institutional and, uh, elite levels in society. Uh, it may be somewhat fallout from the Bush administration. And then, of course, the Romney, you know, the Romney loss. I mean, Romney, uh, in a sense, you know, there's a focus on electability. It's like, well, Republicans nominated Mr. Electability. He just didn't get elected. You know, he lost. Yeah. Yeah. Romney looked like you asked AI to spit out a Republican, that's what AI would give you. Right. I mean, he is the embodiment of everything that the never Trump Republicans would say that they want and he lost decisively at the ballot box. And so I don't think that much of the Republican world has fully digested the implications of that. So I think with Romney's loss um, you know Obama's in his second term doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected. He's freer to do different things Um, you know, I think you know, it's kind of you know, some of the stuff's all kind of playing in there and you know, the right has been in disarray. I mean Donald Trump is a Donald Trump's candidacy again as an example of the negative world. I don't know what the future of the Republican party holds, but clearly it's you know, it's not unhealthy, you know, which you might call, you know, conservatism, Republican Party, however you want to define it in the U.S. is not in a healthy state. And, um, you know, what the future looks like there, uh, who knows. Of course, again, not saying that the Democrats, you know, are, are, are like rocking and rolling. They got a lot of problems there. You know, they got a lot of problems. And the best thing that the, the best thing the Republicans have going is the Democrats problems and their far left base. Um, but again, I mean, if you look, you know, your, your, uh, talk about public opinion and sexuality. I mean, I think if you look at the track record, these left wing activists have an extraordinarily successful track record of getting their way ultimately in society, which is, you know, why I would tell people, you know, don't be so quick to write off these pro Hamas people. Um, you know, you could make the same point that they're extreme, that they're not supported by, by anyone who's sane. And again, time and time again, we've seen these vanguard movements. Um, you know, they often fizzle out, but the ball is advanced down the field and then the next one comes along and the ball keeps getting advanced. And the next thing you know, 30 years from now, we wake up and, uh, you know, the, the landscape is completely different. So I certainly wouldn't take it for granted, uh, that they're destined, uh, to lose. You know, even if, uh, you know, I might say, wow, you know, I can't imagine anything dumber and, and than being pro Hamas, So if you look at the chaos that you just described on the conservative right, which I think is a good characterization because we simply don't know what it means to be conservative anymore, what it means to be right wing, as you noted. Like Trump changed entire positions and longstanding dogma with just a couple of sentences. Just sort of shattered what turned out to be very fragile positions. And what's interesting about the negative world thesis is that there are enormous implications for the world's reigning superpower for the moment, um, becoming anti-Christian, um, as, as your book indicates. Negative world is the United States of America is now anti-Christian. That is what the culture looks like. And this I think is contributing enormously to, um, a sense of disenfranchisement, of confusion. And of chaos on the right. Because what do you do if you're an American Christian who has grown up all of your life with the "In God We Trust" slogans of this ideal, um, of America as a Christian nation of America at war with the evil empire. And then to realize that the elites of the America, uh, for whom, for which you have felt deep patriotism your entire life is now, you know, provoking, um, the, you know, the Vatican with pride flags, uh, flying trans flags in, in countries overseas. Is sending, uh, enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars for abortion overseas, to push LGBT policies on countries that don't want them. Uh, they're pushing Japan into accepting LGBT policies. The Biden administration funded drag shows in Ecuador, um, as if that was a good use of money. And so what happens when the most patriotic segment, uh, of the United States now feels disenfranchised, but also to some degree anti American, as in, in negative world, if this is what the United States stands for, then I am not pro the United States, which is why you see all kinds of confusion about isolationism, about, um, different foreign conflicts. A lot of this has to do with, I think, um, negative world sorting itself out. Where do we land when we no longer have faith that the United States is a force for good in the world, and when in many cases the United States looks evil. But then on the other side of things you have the left because there is, as you mentioned, also chaos on the left where the left already hated the United States. Their thesis was this is a colonial empire. Um, we are the evil empire. We need to be, um, you know, sort of deconstructed. And so the people in charge are the people who hated the United States to begin with, or at least hated her conception, her constitution, her declaration of independence, her Christian founding. And then those who treasured those things are no longer in power living in negative world and trying to figure out, well, what does it look like to be an American Christian in negative world? When actually, uh, America is not known for exporting democracy and freedom and Christian values. There's a lot, uh, there's a lot in there. Here's what I would say. I think American Christians, uh, and conservatives in general, you don't have to be a Christian to think this way, tend to have the point of view that eventually reality will intrude and reality will impose discipline on some of the crazier elements of the left. And sanity will return. So the idea being, oh we're going to defund the police. We're going to hire these Soros prosecutors We're going to have a spike in murders. We're going to have all this homelessness and crime. And the people are going to wake up and, uh, you know, they're gonna wake up and they're gonna, you know, make it happen. You know, they're going to do something about this or eventually, yeah, it'll just sink the cities and, you know, the, uh, you know, the marketplace will discipline the people who do this. I would not put a lot of stock in that. Um, I think that's a naive view. There is a sort of reality. There are consequences to things. But I think this idea, well one, it encourages a sort of passivity. I don't really have to do anything to stop this stuff. Because, you know, "reality," quote unquote, "the marketplace" will do it for me. And again, there's a sense in which that's true, uh, you know, but it's, it's not entirely true and it encourages a sort of passivity. You know, secondly, you know, when you look at, um, all these migrants coming to the United States, the truth is it's still the most desirable destination in the world. For basically everyone else in the world to come. Even though the United States, yes, you definitely get significant public benefits, uh, if you are even an illegal migrant, uh in the United States. But we certainly don't have a welfare system like Europe where you read about these countries where these immigrants come here and sort of subsist on welfare for years and never work a job. You actually have to work in America at some point. You can't just sit around and and collect benefits. So even if you're getting subsidized in America, which the majority of these immigrants are, um, you're certainly, it's certainly done in the context of productive labor. You know, you're you have a low wage job and maybe you're consuming more uh, government spending than you produce in terms of taxation, but you are actually working. Uh, so it's not like we have this army of freeloaders, uh, coming here, and they're still very attracted, uh, by America. And so that tells you, there's still something very, very attractive about this country. You know, uh, I don't think the rest of the world thinks that America is some degenerate great Satan. They all want to come here. And that's telling us something important. It's also the case that there are external factors as well. Far beyond, um, you know, American conservative Christians as, as an actor. Geopolitically, uh, you know, what's happening in Ukraine, what's happening with, with China and these, you know, rival blocs and different things. Um, you know, geopolitics can intrude. And I think there really is a sense among many American elites today that "wow!" They wouldn't phrase it as aggressively as i'm going to say it, but i'm going to basically say they ran the country into the ground over the last 30 years. And now we realize, oh we can't produce artillery shells? Uh, we're totally dependent on China for our defense supply chain? Uh, we can't manufacture chips, and what if they take over Taiwan? Uh, so I think a lot of people oh, wait a minute we can't build houses in California anymore? Uh, uh, we can't bring all the, we can't connect all this green electricity to the grid? So I think on the elites there's definitely been a thing that this is no longer just a game that they're playing, uh, with the Republicans, but like, holy cow, we got some challenges here. And I think it's interesting that, uh, what we've seen, for example, is, is actually a lot of people have essentially adopted the Trumpist positions on a number of things, even as they denounce Trump. The Trump position on China was considered so radical. I mean, again, it was, how could this horrible person, you know, call for like decoupling from China? Well, that is now the consensus position. It's like, I remember when Trump put those tariffs on China, it's like tariffs are always just hurt the American consumer. They're the whole econ 101 lecture. Well, what did Biden do? He raised the tariffs. He didn't get rid of the tariffs. Uh, we had CHIPS Act, which is industrial policy designed to bring manufacturing of microchips back on shore. Uh, this Inflation Reduction Act, which green subsidies to green energy automobiles. It's industrial policy. So we've taken a more confrontational approach towards China, you know we're engaging in industrial policy. Uh, so there are certain aspects of Trumpism that have been accepted and are now moving in that direction. So that's a lot of like context there. And i'd say what's what's uh, it is challenging for the American Christian who again, are used to thinking themselves of them being the majority as being the mainstream, to now now find themselves on the outs. And I'm very struck by uh, Rod Dreher's discussions of the young French Catholics, uh, that he meets. These young Catholics in, in these European countries who are very traditionalist. Of course, they're a very small minority. They're under no illusions that, you know, that Catholicism is about to have a great awakening in France or something, but they're optimistic, they're positive, they're building. They're like, we're here, we're building lives. And I think what'll happen is generational turnover, right? When the old boomer mentalities, and again, Gen X people like me, remember the 80s? When we're gone, and I think Gen Z, and I already see this, Generation Z in America in general has a completely different mindset towards the country than older generations. Uh, and let me make this analogy. Uh, you know, starting in the 1960s, basically, um, maybe even in the 50s, American cities started to go into decline. You know, there was white flight, suburbanization, de-industrialization, you know, there were the urban crisis, there was the riots, there was, you know, you know, a building abandonment. Uh, New York City in the 70s, of course, being sort of a picture of this. And they're, they're developed, I think, this narrative of loss among people who remember the good old days. And who lived through all this decline and who, whose mother used to take them to the department store for tea on special occasions. And now the department store is closed and you don't do that anymore. And the old neighborhood is, is, in ruins and all that. And then when you get into the nineties and especially into the 2000s, cities start to come back and you get the millennial generation. And the millennials never knew the old glory days of the cities. All they knew was cities were on the way up. Their experience was sort of starting at the bottom and riding the elevator up. And therefore they have a completely different relationship to cities in America than older generations whose culturally formative years were during periods of decline. And so I make that analogy to generational turnover among Christians in America. The boomers, the Gen X, they are formed like, I remember the eighties, like How awesome things were in the 80s. Probably there were a lot that wasn't so awesome in the 80s, right? I didn't have air conditioning in the 1980s when I was growing up. I don't want to get rid of air conditioning okay? But you know, there's this narrative of loss. Whereas I think with gen z people, first off they never knew a prosperous America. They've never known, sort of, the prosperous America that we had. They never knew, you know, the Christian America. They've basically been formed entirely in a negative world. It's always been a negative world. So, like, for them, it's just, like, no big deal. This is the norm. And in fact, I keep running into these guys who are super optimistic about the future. Uh, I think, you know, Gen Z gets such a bad rap as being mentally ill and all this stuff. And they got a lot of issues. But the best of Gen Z is the best we've ever had. I think these young, maybe late millennial generation Z Christians are going to have that same enthusiasm and positivity that those French Catholics Rod Dreher is always talking about have. They're gonna have a completely different mentality. Okay, great. We lived through the collapse. We're now kind of in this negative world, but that's the only thing we've ever known, so now we can start building. And so I think that's the that's the hopeful attitude. And they're not gonna, they're not psychologically formed by a majoritarian mindset And that is really, I think, a very important point for, for generation. So I think it'll take generational turnover, I think, for the adjustment to happen. New generations of leaders, et cetera. Again, not quite sure where the millennials fit into it, um, but, uh, that's how I'm looking at it. So one of the pieces of advice that you give, which I've heard in the context of sort of evangelical good stewardship, but I'd never heard in the context of sort of cultural engagement preparation for an anti-Christian culture in negative world, is becoming antifragile by, by paying down debt, by becoming debt free. How would you explain that as an anti-Christian, uh, cultural strategy? Well, obviously the word antifragile comes from Nassim Taleb, uh, he wrote the book "Antifragile," uh, he wrote the book "The Black Swan," uh, and I, I'm very influenced by his thinking in a number of ways. And the idea of antifragility is that you actually become stronger from stress. You can think about the early church growing while it was persecuted, uh, for example. I don't know that antifragility per se is something everyone can aspire to have in life, uh, but the idea of being more resilient in the face of stresses, in, in the face of things not going well, uh, is something I think we ought to be consciously thinking about in every dimension um, of our, our lives. And now I always say, and I'll stress it again, I do not believe the American church is facing persecution, uh, in the sense that the Chinese church is facing persecution or North Korea or Nigeria, or even sectarian violence in places like India. You know, we don't, we don't live in that environment. But we do face, you know, subtle social pressures and economic pressures, you know, to conform to certain ways of thinking, and even if, uh, you know, and certain actions. And so when you're in this environment, when, uh, you know, you could be subjected to those pressures, I think the idea is, think about, um, how am I structuring my life to be pressure resistant and to have integrity in the sense of structural integrity, when the pressures of the negative world bear down on me or bear down on my church, my institutions, et cetera? And certainly, for example, if you have a lot of debt, and you're living a lifestyle, you know, fully, taking up all your money, then, uh, you know, you can't really afford to take stands that might cost you your job, for example. Whereas if you're, you know, living, let's say you have a two income family, you really live on one income, you're saving the rest, you have savings, you don't have any debts. Uh, you know, you can, again, afford to be a little more bold, uh, in, in what you do. And, uh, you know, I mention, uh, in the book, this movement in the United States was basically a millennial, secular millennial movement called Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea is to kind of live like a monk, save all your money, and then by like age 35, 40, you're retired. I don't hold that up as an ideal and you know, I have a mortgage. I'm not debt free. I'm not totally opposed to debt by any means. But this idea of thinking about your financial profile and what that allows you to do, because If you're able to get into a situation where you have a certain amount of financial independence, then you are antifragile. Then you can swing the bat and say, maybe I'll become a little more, I'll start a business. I'll, you know, take a more confrontational political stand. I'll, I'll start this, this ministry to the homeless or something, cause I don't need to make any money. So I can, I can do it. So it's freeing on a lot of things. But, but just thinking, um, thinking intentionally about all the major decisions of life in light of oh, we're in the negative world, so how would this affect me? What professions should I go into? Just interviewed a, for my podcast, a physician in Canada who wrote a book about uh, Christianity and physician assisted death. And in Canada if you are a doctor, you know, you cannot refuse to refer someone to um medically assisted suicide. Uh, so what do you, you know, how how is your conscience aligned with the requirements to be in certain industries? Uh, where should you live? Do you want to live in a high cost, uh super secular jurisdiction, uh, like San Francisco? For many people the answer is going to be yes because they have you know, uh the conscience, the financials, the the skills, whatever to do with for other people gonna say, you know, no. Uh, you might think about you know, oh am I part of like a real solid community that's gonna have my back and where we're gonna be able to reinforce, you know, a way of life that we want to live? And because you can't assume everybody else is living that, that way of life. So there's a lot of things I think that have to be, you know, intentional about where, where you live and what you do. And so, you know, I, I've tried to take some of that in my own life. You know, I, I moved from, uh, New York City to, uh, Indiana where my wife and I are from. And then we, you know, moved to the suburbs. So, you know, I'm in a red state and sort of a red jurisdiction. We're close to our family. We have organic community here. You know, this is our culture. Um, it's lower cost than being there. So there's a lot of decisions that we made that are good for our family I'm not disagreeing, I love where we live. But they're also like, okay great, yeah, those are the sorts of things we ought to be thinking about, you know, if you know what I mean. And some of this is like, yeah for me being sort of a public Intellectual of sorts, if you want to say that, for me to with with heterodox views, I mean, I don't think my views are extreme by any means. You know, here in a, in a city like Indianapolis, if I were in the, in the downtown area, still living down there, you know, I could get like dogpiled by the mob at any point. Uh, and you know, if it happens now, it could still happen, but like now I don't live in a community where like everybody who would be all my neighbors would like know my name and know who I am and see me walking down the street. So it's, it's a little bit of a different environment. And you know, that was definitely a consideration, um, you know, after watching what happened to other people, uh, in this city who weren't even necessarily Christians, I was like, this is not a safe space to to live if you have, you know, certain views that don't align with the absolute far left. That's really interesting because a lot of the, the descriptions that you lay out in your book, all of the different things that community should be doing, so, you know, um, build antifragility, pay down debt, own your own spaces so people can't evict you from your space. A lot of those things I think are, are like, really well showcased by a couple of different religious communities. You've mentioned some of them before. Um, two examples, I think of, um, that I have more personal experience with, one would be, um, Moscow in Idaho where you have the Reformed, um, community there, uh, of the, uh, the CREC, uh, denomination. Then you also have Steubenville, Ohio. Um, I was a guest on Matt Fradd's podcast last year, and I kind of toured around with a bunch of people. And what was really interesting is that the, the wealthy business owners had like purchased like a workshop and you could pay 10 bucks a month and you had access to all these tools. You had these office buildings where there was shared office space for all these different religious people. And so the, the, the people who could pay down debt, become independently wealthy, run big businesses, created these spaces where, uh, more and more and more Catholics want to immigrate to that area because it is now a safe space. They're not going to get canceled. They might not own the property themselves, they may have a lot of debt, but there's others that don't. Um, the coffee, the major coffee shop there is owned by Catholics. The, one of the biggest businesses in town is owned by a Catholic businessman. Most of the major festivals and sort of big like street events are owned by a guy who runs one of America's largest Catholic, um, product companies. The cigar lounge there, of course, is owned by, by Pints with Aquinas host Matt Fradd and his friends. Similar thing in Moscow where they've got not only a private school, but they have a university and a lot of the businesses are owned by church members. What do you think of, of these community models or did you actually extrapolate some of your advice from those community models? Yeah, I mean, a little bit, um, you know, uh, the Moscow, Idaho community is the only existing Benedict Option community in the real world, uh, that I'm familiar with. Apart from, you know, an Anabaptist sect or, you know, an actual monastery. We're talking about people who live in like mainstream society, but built or, you know, uh, you know, built this community. You know, that kind of colors, uh, you know, how people see them. But if you actually look at some of the model that they've built out there, it's, it is incredibly impressive whether you agree with them or not. Steubenville is an interesting case. You know, Steubenville is a town in Appalachian, Ohio. It's in a deeply impoverished part of the state. I have not been to Steubenville specifically, but I've spent quite a bit of time in Appalachian, Ohio. I actually did a big research paper last year, uh, on the future of Appalachia. And my understanding is it's a very run down and depressed town. And I think the advantage of something like a Steubenville is one, Moscow Idaho is a state university town is now very expensive to live in. So you actually have to have money to move there, which is not the case with Steubenville. It's it's much lower cost. Secondly, uh, what it means is all these Catholics who are building this community here are actually working to improve the quality of the community and the thriving of the community, building these maker spaces, building these coffee shops, renovating buildings, trying to create an economy where people can have jobs. This is something that is not just parochial to the Catholic community, but is designed to overflow to the benefits of all of the people who live in that town. Now, of course you can reach a point where it starts going the other way if housing prices go through the roof and people can't afford to live there anymore. But I think the idea of you know, finding a place, there's a lot of places like Steubenville that need some, uh, you know, TLC to help spiff them up. Move to a place that isn't as cool as Moscow, right, and say oh, uh, yeah, maybe we can start renovating some buildings in our downtown. Maybe we could start, um, opening some businesses here that are going to be good for the whole community. I think that's something that's really important. We can't lose sight, we can't ever become so internally focused that we forget about the world around us. Obviously in the evangelical world, evangelism, uh, is really, really important. But also being a force for, for positive good in the community. And this is one of the things that I talk about in the book, I believe. And it's something I've stressed over and over again. With dramatic declines in trust in authorities, in institutions, again, in many respects, our leadership has run the country into the ground to the ground. There are huge problems around opioids. Many of these communities are in very bad shape. People are hungry for competent governance that can deliver the goods, the material goods to people. We need to be seen as a force for good in the community. Not just in the sense of, you know, advancing some, you know, narrowly tailored, uh, Christian moral principles, but in terms of like, "wow, these guys are actually making our town better. You know, they're investing here. They're hiring local people. You know, they're creating better educational options." Now, you do have to be careful in a town like Steubenville. I will tell you, although a religious Catholic school would be fine, if you start doing anything that's seen as undermining the local public school, which is the big heart of the public, you get yourself in big trouble. So you gotta know what you're getting into here. Uh, a lot of, there's a lot of suspicions of outsiders in these places. You know, we could go on and on and on. But the point is, actually, these guys are making things better. These guys are showing up and they're volunteering at the county fair. And our county fair has been in decline. Our 4th of July parade has been in decline because the town isn't what it used to be. These guys are volunteering to do work. They're staffing our local Apple Festival. They're doing all of the stuff. They're engaged in our communities in positive ways. They're bringing a positive trend materially. And in terms of governance, uh, to our community is ways there. And that's where I think, you know, um, this famous, uh, urban pastor in the US, Tim Keller, he always used to talk about, hey, in an urban context, churches need to be famous for helping the poor. Like we need to be famous for helping the poor. And I would probably nuance that a little bit because I do think in today's world a lot of people, um, in kind of a secular space think it's the government's responsibility to care for the poor and that in a sense civil societies, uh, playing that role is not, uh, seen as a positive thing. And there is a sense in which what it means to help the poor today is very different than what it meant, uh, you know, before all the social safety nets and things so it's a little complicated. But I would even open the aperture. And, but I like that idea as, as this idea, like you got to be known for something beneficial to the, to the, community. Open the aperture and say, can we, can we think even more? Wow. These guys open a great coffee shop. Again, these guys have a co-working space. These guys renovated the building on main street. You know, these guys are like, you know, mentoring kids at a local school. All of this stuff, I think, is a very important component. Because if you just go into it down like Steubenville and like, well, we're going to take it over. Uh, it's going to be hostile. This is where Moscow, you know, really got sideways. Um, you know, they're basically viewed as a hostile element, uh, by the people who live in Moscow. And, you know, I would certainly, uh, I certainly say, you know, try to make friends, not enemies. Uh, and, and, and so those are the sorts of things I, I, I would think about. One of the key things you discussed that I'd like to hear your thoughts on is what made your book different than a lot of other books? And a lot of other rhetoric coming from evangelical intellectuals was you talk about the fact that the church needs to change the way it talks about gender. But not in the way people would assume when you hear that sentence, because it's been really popular and really easy, quite frankly, to beat up on men because, um, you know, the, the porn plague has kind of wreaked havoc on men in general. Uh, the church has been sort of, uh, attempting to hold to complementarianism, uh, but you know, use egalitarian language, often sort of apologizing for a lot of the doctrines that seem more culturally inconvenient at the time. And one of the things that you've said consistently in your newsletters, I think I've read at least half a dozen newsletters from you on this specific subject, but you also address in your book, is that we need to be able to speak clearly to the gender issue in a way that men can relate to and can respond to. Um, how would you explain that to listeners? Because when I started that section of your book, Um, I kind of knew what was coming cause I'd read your newsletter, but I think a lot of people would have found that a very unexpected take. Yeah, well, this is actually how I got started writing about Christian issues. Uh, you know, a decade ago I saw uh, wow, all these young men are turning to, uh, online influencers at the same time that, you know, the church has continually been hand wringing about like, why men don't go to church. And if anything, that, that delta has only blown up, uh, since then. You know, people like Jordan Peterson, millions of followers. Joe Rogan, you know, probably millions of listeners. Jocko Willink, you know, and the less reputable side, you know, the Andrew Tates of this world. There are a ton of these guys, a ton of them. And young men are turning in droves to these people looking for life advice. And the fact that Jordan Peterson cleaned the clock of the church, uh, in reaching young men should be embarrassing to the church. But frankly, I see no evidence that they've even thought about why people are turning to Jordan Peterson, uh, instead of them. They're not reflective on it at all. Uh, Jordan Peterson's doing a tour of the U.S. right now to promote his new book that's coming out in the fall called "We Who Wrestle With God." I think it's basically a book version of his Genesis and Exodus lectures. So I went to the one here in Indianapolis. Sold out a 2,500 seat theater. The minimum ticket price was over 100 dollars. So you have people paying, you know, in the hundred, hundreds of dollars, sold out auditorium, to hear him essentially give a sermon on Genesis 12. I mean, people are paying him to give sermons to them. And so I really, you know, the, the big problem I just say is like, we are not answering the questions that people are talking about. In, in American evangelicalism, the, the gender focus is extraordinarily narrow. It's like, can women be ordained as pastors? Or, you know, is the husband the head of the home? Well, you know, I look at it this way. Uh, if you're not married, which increasing numbers of people aren't, who cares who the head of the household is, you know? It's of no relevance to you. There's a whole uh, dimensions of life around, you know, dating markets being totally dysfunctional. And we're just not speaking into that. And so I think we need to take a step back and, you know, think about things, you know, anthropologically, sociologically, as well as biblically in terms of how to navigate this world successfully as men and women, how to live as men and women in this world. And, um, again, I don't think it's necessarily the pastoral, uh, problem to solve entirely. That's been one of the weaknesses of evangelicalism is we've relied on pastors for everything when in fact, you know, Jordan Peterson is a psychologist, you know who taught at Harvard and University of Toronto. And so you start looking at that, it's like wow, we need some people like that. We need like world class experts who are Christian talking about things from that perspective. Not trying to have a pastor like, find, you know the proof text out of the Bible and use that to create them because when that happens, you know, bad things happen, like this movie, it was called "The Purity Culture," and, and, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye." Like, some of this advice they give is so bad, you know, you're, you're putting yourself at risk if you follow it. And it's really not from the Bible, because the Bible doesn't say anything about dating or how to meet people. And so we need to get more lay expertise, where people understand, okay, this is, like, not, you know, authoritative Bible teaching, and that's what I try to do. I try to give perspectives that a pastor is not going to give you. I don't try to, like, preach a sermon in my book. Uh, and, and so, you know, it's great. We need people to preach sermons. I mean, that's really important, but all of life can't be reduced to a sermon. Uh, and so I think we need to, uh, again, we need to open the aperture. We need to rethink uh, some of these things that, that clearly didn't work, uh, is what I'd say. So you, you, you, you mentioned there that that church is, is just not answering the questions that men have and that men are instead going in, in the good case scenario to guys like Peterson who are telling them to clean their room, you know, to get out there and make something of themselves, quit porn, all this kind of stuff. And in the negative scenario is going to people, um, sort of hustlers like, like Tate. What, which questions would you say the church isn't answering or answering badly for young men? Because the people have been trying to figure this out, you said, why don't men go to church? There's a book with that title. Um, and you know, which was very ineffective. It's really too, uh, complicated to, and, and, and too deep to go into here, cause it's, it's not like I can distill it down to a sentence. But the reality is that, you know, I, I've said, uh, a couple things. One is that evangelicals have a very thin anthropology of gender. The differences between men and women are reduced to a handful of elements derived from scripture. And in every other way, they're practically treated as identical. Secondly, uh, going back to the 19th century, which has been documented by academics, evangelical kind of churches, Christian churches, have been extraordinarily negative towards men, basically treating women as naturally good, uh, the guardians of morality, you know, not really fallen in a material sense. And men are to blame for everything, you know. Uh, you know back in the late 19th century it was you know alcoholism, gambling, fighting, all the things that kind of urban uh men do, and there was a lot of that. There's certainly a lot to criticize men for. You can legitimately criticize men all day long. But basically it just became you know, you all suck. You're horrible. You need to man up. And being a man is treated as nothing but essentially, uh, you know, a set of negative and toxic characteristics combined with the obligation to sacrifice all of your hopes, dreams, and plans to serve other people's needs. And it's, it's a highly unattractive, and I believe, unbiblical way of thinking about what it means to be a man. And, um, it's no wonder that they, they lose it. So, uh, yeah, that's what I'd say. Well, we've reached the end of our time. So Aaron, thank you so much for taking the time. Sorry for the tech hiccup earlier. We really appreciate it. No, thanks for having me on. You bet. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. If you want to hear other conversations like it, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also find our content wherever you get your podcasts, or you can head over to thebridgehead.ca where we post both written commentary and video. Thanks so much for joining us.