Masculinity, Negative World, and the Future of Evangelicalism (Interview with Aaron Renn)

[00:00:00] If you've noticed a shift in evangelicalism over the past five years, you're not alone.

[00:00:06] Aaron Ran, host of the Aaron Ran Show, joins us to talk about his book Life in the Negative World,

[00:00:12] confronting challenges in an anti-Christian culture.

[00:00:15] In this episode, we talk about why figures like Jordan Peterson and Jocke O'Willink draw the attention

[00:00:21] of so many Christian young men who are struggling to make sense of their lives.

[00:00:25] We also discuss the shift from neutral world in which Christianity serves as one religious option among many

[00:00:32] to the more hostile negative world, as well as ways that this shift fractured and split the modern conservative evangelical movement.

[00:00:40] And finally we talk about ways evangelicals can not only adapt to negative world, but also take advantage of new opportunities

[00:00:47] all while navigating difficult waters of modern politics.

[00:00:52] Enjoy this episode.

[00:01:01] You're listening to Thatll Preach, we've got guests on our show. We're excited about it.

[00:01:05] We've got Aaron Ran. Aaron Ran is a writer, podcast, consultant in Indianapolis.

[00:01:09] He's also the co-founder and senior fellow at American Reformer.

[00:01:13] He's got a podcast in a YouTube channel called The Aaron Ran Show, as well as a sub-stack.

[00:01:19] And he's on to talk today about a really exciting book I think he's written, really helpful book.

[00:01:25] It's called Life in the Negative World, Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture.

[00:01:30] Great little subtitle there and really relevant to some of the things that you've been writing about for a long time.

[00:01:35] So Aaron, thank you for joining us on the show.

[00:01:37] Thanks for having me.

[00:01:39] So I first started reading your stuff when you had a newsletter, I think it was called The Masculine Us Back in the day

[00:01:44] and you were writing on a lot of different topics that I felt like a lot of people weren't writing about, especially in the Christian world.

[00:01:51] And I remember when your three worlds of evangelicalism, article came out, I think it came out in first things.

[00:01:58] Yeah.

[00:01:59] I remember reading that and thinking, this guy has his pulse on something that I'm like, yeah, I can see that this is a very accurate portrayal

[00:02:09] of understanding Christianity in relation to culture in America.

[00:02:13] And so I thought it was a very insightful article and I'm pleased to find out that you have now written a full length book on it.

[00:02:19] So I'm curious just from your own life, your own biography, what got you interested in writing about the negative world?

[00:02:27] Maybe you could even talk a little bit about how those kind of concepts sort of percolating your mind up to your article and then your book.

[00:02:35] Well, the way my mind works is it's like there's a huge funnel at the top that like all the observations that I'm making about the world are constantly flowing into it.

[00:02:45] All the books that I read the articles, even the things I just see, you know, when I walked on the street and I look at something, oh, look at that building.

[00:02:53] And then over time, I just, you know, I just sort of synthesize little structures that start making connections between things and create patterns and thoughts about the world.

[00:03:02] And so this gives me, I think one of the things that's given me is an ability to see kind of connections and patterns that other people haven't necessarily seen yet and be able to articulate them.

[00:03:15] The other thing that I have is, I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse is, you know, a willingness to say things that are sort of not the things everybody else is saying.

[00:03:26] And they're not even that they're unpopular things. It's just most people follow the crowd. That's like the nature of the beast, you know, we all do that. And if I see something that I think maybe even goes against the crowd, I'm like, yeah, I see that that's, that's right.

[00:03:41] And I'm willing to say it. And so actually my background have been a management consulting and something like the three worlds of evangelicalism is very much something that would come from any kind of a management consulting type perspective on the world.

[00:03:53] But then I got interested in cities. I grew up a grown up in a rural area and moved to Chicago after college. So I got very interested in cities after living in one and, you know, started just seeing the same connections and writing and turned it into a sort of a profession of that.

[00:04:08] And then, you know, I sort of applied the same thing to the church. And really what got me interested in it was again men's issues. I originally called my newsletter, the masculine is still basically the same newsletter but I rebranded it after myself.

[00:04:24] You know, a back, you know, over a decade ago now I saw that young men were turning to online influencers. They weren't turning to the church. They weren't turning to traditional authorities. They were looking to online gurus to tell them about life what they should be wanting at a life, you know, how to get what they want at a life.

[00:04:41] And this was even before Jordan Peterson came along. You know, I don't think Jordan Peterson created this segment. I think he was in somewhat the product of it.

[00:04:50] His timing was impeccable and coming along right as men were looking for guides online. And of course, I used to be tough to explain this to people.

[00:05:00] But then when Jordan Peterson came along, it's like everybody gets all the turning to Jordan Peterson. They're turning to Joe Rogan. They're turning to Jocco willing.

[00:05:06] They're turning to people like Andrew Tate. Although frankly, I think Andrew Tate is mostly a teenage phenomenon more than that, you know, adult male phenomenon.

[00:05:15] Nevertheless, I think it was interesting. You know, the people are not turning to the church. They're turning to these guys. Why is that?

[00:05:25] So I thought you know there's actually a lot of things about the messages some of these people have that's compelling in a lot of ways they may not have a Christian theology or often have kind of immoral aims many of them.

[00:05:36] We had a lot of what they're saying about the world actually has a lot of diagnostic accuracy to it.

[00:05:41] And I saw for example that they lost what the church was saying was either incomplete or incorrect.

[00:05:48] And so just as one example of that, it's one of the most well known statistics and social science that women initiate the vast majority of divorces.

[00:05:57] You know, how many varies by source but basically around 70% of all divorces are initiated by women.

[00:06:04] You'll never hear that from any pastor. You know, if you listen to a sermon, you know, it's almost always family breakdown as like the man dumping his wife for some reason.

[00:06:12] And again, why these women are filing for divorce is complicated. We could not need going to that here, but just that basic stat is never presented in church.

[00:06:22] And so when you hear some guys out there, you know, and the online people are telling you this stuff.

[00:06:28] And you're like, wow, they're telling me things to churches and telling me what's going on here. People gravitate to that.

[00:06:34] And so I really wanted to engage on that issue.

[00:06:36] And then you know, I just started writing about other topics again.

[00:06:42] I was originally going to shut my newsletter down because it wasn't as popular as I wanted it to be.

[00:06:47] And I said, well, maybe I should just throw out any of my couple last best ideas on any topic, forget men's issues. I'll just write in general what I think about the world evangelicalism.

[00:06:56] And now shut it down.

[00:06:58] One of them was the three worlds evangelicalism, the original version of it and it blew up.

[00:07:02] And so you know, I sort of wrote about that because the market demanded it, I guess, but that's kind of how I came to write about it.

[00:07:08] And so now I sort of like write about a variety of issues.

[00:07:11] It's fascinating. I mean, I think I feel like Jordan Peterson was like the indie band that I listened to when he first came out and then he became like mainstream.

[00:07:19] You know, I remember finding his lectures online on YouTube in like 2014, 2015 and thinking like, you know, I remember thinking this guy's not a Christian.

[00:07:29] But then when he says stuff, I'm like, he's saying things that sound like reality.

[00:07:34] It sound like, you know, and he said it with a lot of precision. And he had, you know, he had his degree and he's got his PhD in psychology, he's taught for a long time.

[00:07:45] And I was one of those guys. I mean, I felt I really especially early on like Peterson's online lectures when they put the stuff that he did when he's teaching his classes, I'm like, man, this is when there's all this madness and culture on stuff.

[00:07:58] It just sounded like somebody who was willing to just be direct. He was also willing to be wrong in a lot of ways. He was actually pretty open-minded, but he, yeah, I remember that.

[00:08:08] I just had not experienced something like that. And it is weird that like a lot of his early lectures that got popular were like two hour commentaries on Genesis.

[00:08:17] I know.

[00:08:18] He did a whole series of like two hour plus lectures on Genesis.

[00:08:21] And I'm like, yeah, it shows something profound that you know, wow, young people really are willing to listen to two hour lectures on Genesis.

[00:08:30] They're interested in the Bible stories.

[00:08:32] Right. And the way he was talking about them was super compelling.

[00:08:37] And I think a lot of very few evangelicals have studied Jordan Peterson or thought about the way that he talks about the world.

[00:08:49] And, you know, I think it's interesting. One of the points that I made when I saw him is there's a lot of things I disagree with Jordan Peterson on.

[00:08:57] Sure. But like he treats life as, you know, a endeavor of the utmost moral seriousness. Like how you live your life as what you think is a random individual has profound consequences not just to yourself but to the world.

[00:09:17] And, you know, part of the world's destiny will be lost if you do not rise to the challenge of what you're called to be.

[00:09:27] And I think a lot of young men respond to that.

[00:09:30] It's a sort of a heroic vision of manhood and it's a very serious. He's a very serious person. You know, he's not a he doesn't clown around.

[00:09:38] He's, you know, and I think part of it was he was a clinical practitioner for a long time to doing therapy. So think about how good he got at learning about people's concerns and like how to speak with people.

[00:09:52] Yeah, there's like a lot that came out of that.

[00:09:56] It's pretty moving even when you see him tear up. Yeah, but we're stories of men who have told him really hard things they've gone through and how they've overcome it.

[00:10:04] I mean, he is a great deal of compassion to yeah absolutely.

[00:10:08] You were found. Yeah, you know, I feel like, you know, and a lot of evangelical pastors.

[00:10:14] A lot of what they do is it's just man up lectures right. I mean, literally, you know, there might even be a, you know, an event where the words man up are like there.

[00:10:23] It's sort of a hectoring. It's shaming.

[00:10:27] It doesn't offer anything noble. It's all about how basically you need to sacrifice yourself for other people, which I think, you know, Peterson would probably stay some of that too, but he puts it into different register.

[00:10:40] You know, it's talked about in a very different way. You know, there's something.

[00:10:44] There's something noble and heroic about the way he talks about life.

[00:10:50] And you don't necessarily get that from, you know, I think modern evangelicalism for whatever reason.

[00:10:56] Whereas I think, you know, just saying the way he talked about I just when I saw him here in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago.

[00:11:04] He sold out a 2500 see theater and he gave a commentary on the call of Abraham.

[00:11:10] And like part of the idea of Abraham leaving his home and going, you know, to the place he doesn't know where God's taking him is, you know, Peterson presents that as God is calling him to an adventure.

[00:11:23] And I think there's a sense in which that's true.

[00:11:26] You know, he was he was called on an adventure.

[00:11:30] Paul, you know, after his calling on the road to Damascus, he did live an incredibly adventurous life.

[00:11:38] And against it, you know, in many ways, a heroic life, many, you know, almost like a movie, like how many times did he barely escape with his life from yet another thing?

[00:11:48] And so really, you know, and things like that idea that the Christian life is a life of adventure.

[00:11:54] You know, we're an adventure with God.

[00:11:56] And I'll be at one that's, you know, actually safe because he's in charge.

[00:12:00] Right.

[00:12:01] And, you know, and so many, so many things there.

[00:12:03] So I think there is a lot to the way these guys talk.

[00:12:05] In Peterson, of course, he's been the most successful of most of them.

[00:12:10] Is also good.

[00:12:12] I always find Jocco willing.

[00:12:14] Interesting to he's a Navy seal for Navy seal, wrote the book extreme ownership super popular guy.

[00:12:21] I tend not to listen to his lectures.

[00:12:23] I mean, I like written content.

[00:12:26] Jocco is so thoughtful and like he'll spend 15 minutes just going through some introductory point because he really likes to be precise and like way talks.

[00:12:35] I just don't have time for us to put the contents excellent.

[00:12:39] Yeah.

[00:12:40] And again, I have to go about Jocco.

[00:12:42] He's very serious like Jocco is not like just kidding around you like this is like serious stuff in a lot of it's just like the basics and both for Peterson too.

[00:12:56] I mean, a lot of Peterson like his famous early famous line was you know clean your room bucko or something like that.

[00:13:02] A lot of this is basic stuff.

[00:13:05] You know Jocco's like you know here's what's going to happen.

[00:13:08] One day, you're just not going to feel like going to the gym and you're not going to go.

[00:13:14] And then that's going to happen again.

[00:13:15] So he talks about the way that we like lose focus and like lose discipline.

[00:13:19] He talks about how discipline equals freedom.

[00:13:22] And again, not everybody resonates with with that style.

[00:13:25] But I mean, he's got like a lot of guys like posting pictures of their alarm clock at 4 30 in the morning.

[00:13:32] And then he's like, you know, you're not getting up to go to the gym.

[00:13:35] It's like it's like okay, great.

[00:13:37] If you really want to go to the gym every day, you got to do it at a time when you know there's not going to be another interruptions and that's early morning.

[00:13:45] If you get up at 4 30 in the morning and go to the gym, there's probably not going to be anything that conflicts with that.

[00:13:50] So you just need to set your alarm and just do it.

[00:13:53] There's nothing there's nothing to mention about it.

[00:13:56] Just actually do it.

[00:13:58] You actually convincing people that they actually can get up at 4 30 in the morning and go to the gym.

[00:14:04] And then seeing them do it like, wow, I can actually do this stuff.

[00:14:08] There's a lot of practicality.

[00:14:09] See you see how it responds and not everybody responds with every single person.

[00:14:15] But you know, I also think again with Jaco.

[00:14:19] A lot of it is, you know, he's Navy seal. It's like about being elite.

[00:14:23] It's about like, you know, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard and other people.

[00:14:28] You need to be dialed in on excellence and really bring in your A game every single thing that you do.

[00:14:35] And I think there's a thing that like people respond to that.

[00:14:38] There was some art.

[00:14:40] I can't remember exactly where I saw this but they were talking about the Marine Corps and their ability to recruit people.

[00:14:46] You know, even though like they're known for like tough boot games and all their messages.

[00:14:50] He's like this guy's like look, never underestimate the motivating power of excellence that they called excellence can really be a motivating force for people.

[00:15:03] And now yeah, that's I mean, I remember thinking.

[00:15:09] Wow, like he was talking about when he was in the seals he was talking about how whenever.

[00:15:15] There would be a challenge or something negative would happen.

[00:15:19] He would train himself to say good.

[00:15:22] And that mental switch sometimes throughout my day, I just have what I feel like I have Jaco's head floating, you know, like a ghost in front of me being like say good, you know when.

[00:15:33] But that mind shift is saying like okay, how do you actually face hard things with courage and also see the possibility in them.

[00:15:42] And so you but you've got to know the challenges and what I appreciate about your book is that you're very forthright and direct about the challenges of negative world of a world that's hostile Christianity.

[00:15:52] But you're not you're not doom and gloom about it.

[00:15:55] You actually have some insights about there could be great opportunity in the midst of these challenges.

[00:16:00] So maybe just for background for listeners, what are some of the challenges that you see that make up what you are envisioning as as negative world?

[00:16:09] What are some things that you start to see?

[00:16:11] Well, first I'm glad I'm not the only one that's got a hologram of Jaco that comes up into like this. Just do it.

[00:16:18] Just go do it. The next is something I don't want to do.

[00:16:21] Yeah, I know he's got to do it.

[00:16:24] But yeah, you know, I make the point in the book, you know, I can't lay out this model.

[00:16:28] If you go back again for much of American history, although we didn't have a state church like in Europe,

[00:16:33] we did have a sort of softly institutionalized generic Protestantism as our default national religion.

[00:16:41] And you know, again in the 50s, half of all adults into church, there was prayer and Bible reading in public schools, all that sort of stuff.

[00:16:50] That started to become unraveled in the 1960s.

[00:16:53] Christianity went into a period of decline and it's still declining to be quite honest.

[00:16:59] So, you know, and I divide that period of decline from say 1964 to the present into three eras or worlds that I call the positive, the neutral negative world.

[00:17:09] So the positive world is from 64 to 94.

[00:17:12] And it's a period of decline for Christianity. I want to make that clear at the same time.

[00:17:17] Christianity still basically view positively.

[00:17:19] You know, being known as a good church going man makes you seem like an upstanding member of society makes people want to vote for you if you're a candidate.

[00:17:27] So, you know, the moral norms are just the basic moral norms of society.

[00:17:31] And if you don't follow me again trouble.

[00:17:35] When I 1994 we had a tipping point in what I call the neutral world.

[00:17:38] Christianity has not seen positively and more but it's not really viewed negatively yet either.

[00:17:41] It's just one more lifestyle choice among many in this sort of pluralistic public square.

[00:17:48] Then in 2014, we had a second tipping point in inner when I called the negative world where for the first time in the four hundred year history of America,

[00:17:56] The initial elite culture is now explicitly negative towards Christianity.

[00:18:01] You know, being known as a Bible-believing Christian does not help you get a job in the

[00:18:05] elite sector's economy.

[00:18:07] Quite the opposite.

[00:18:08] Christian morality is now expressly repudiated and is in fact seen as the leading threat

[00:18:13] to the new public moral order by a lot of people.

[00:18:16] I think all of the talk about Christian nationalism is very much in this vein.

[00:18:23] So, you know, I think that has been a dislocating experience for a lot of American evangelicals

[00:18:29] who are used to thinking themselves as, you know, moral majority to pick the name of Jerry

[00:18:34] Falwell's organization.

[00:18:35] Well, that's ludicrous now.

[00:18:37] The reality is I think we can see around us that things even evangelicals might want are

[00:18:43] not popular in the culture.

[00:18:46] You know, we've seen this in the abortion votes.

[00:18:49] Every time abortion gets put on the ballot, the pro-borsion side wins.

[00:18:53] Even in deep red states like Kentucky, the reality is the evangelical position is a minority

[00:18:58] position and therefore we need to make adjustments to think about that and like adjust to what

[00:19:07] it means to be a minority in society.

[00:19:10] You know, when you were talking about the negative world and also the shift, you know,

[00:19:16] the rapid shift, I remember growing up watching like John Stuart on the Daily Show, you

[00:19:21] know, as a teenager and I wasn't a Christian.

[00:19:24] And I was like, this was like being like that liberal kind of talking talk show was

[00:19:30] like the underground against this kind of bush conservative backdrop.

[00:19:35] You know what I mean?

[00:19:36] They were the mischievous people.

[00:19:38] And now it's like, I don't even know if people watched the Daily Show much.

[00:19:41] I mean, it's become the mainstream idea and it doesn't have...

[00:19:46] So just that vibe kind of switched for me where I'm like, it used to be that very liberal

[00:19:51] talking points were like, those are all the comedians.

[00:19:54] They're saying that, you know, it was sort of unsavory to say those kind of progressive

[00:19:57] things.

[00:19:58] And now it's just...

[00:20:00] It's kind of the opposite.

[00:20:01] Now people, the alternate forms of media are geared toward conservatives because they

[00:20:06] feel like they can't speak those things in the public sphere.

[00:20:09] It's an interesting kind of dynamic shift.

[00:20:11] I noticed reading your book.

[00:20:13] Yeah, and that's true.

[00:20:14] And the other thing you notice even on the right, I mean we're entering the age of

[00:20:17] the post-Christian right in America.

[00:20:19] And I think that's one of the things that has really been...

[00:20:25] I think Donald Trump's election in 2016, in near election in 2020 and possibly getting

[00:20:31] elected this year, I think causes people to...

[00:20:38] You know, misunderstand the culture with regards to Christianity because I think a lot

[00:20:43] of people in their mind is like evangelical equal Republican.

[00:20:48] And therefore for Republicans are winning.

[00:20:51] That must mean things are good for evangelicals.

[00:20:53] In fact what we're seeing is, I think the majority of Republicans are not evangelicals.

[00:21:00] The majority of Republicans are, you know, they're the post-Christian right.

[00:21:04] You know, it's people who...

[00:21:07] They don't like wokeness necessarily all that much.

[00:21:11] Maybe they don't like immigration.

[00:21:12] There's a lot of things they don't like but they're not interested in social conservative

[00:21:16] policies.

[00:21:17] They're not interested in religion.

[00:21:19] And if you'll notice most of the edgy online writing and culture is driven by non-Christian

[00:21:24] people, it's the dissident right people like BAP or like manosphere writers or even Jordan

[00:21:29] Peterson.

[00:21:30] You know, it's not the edgy Southern Baptist preacher that people are turning into as

[00:21:37] thinking it's cool.

[00:21:39] It's a...

[00:21:40] So I think that the Republican electoral success is a sort of mass.

[00:21:52] It's caused people to misunderstand the fact that evangelicalism, Christianity has been

[00:21:56] insignificant decline.

[00:21:58] However the Republican party believes in the future, it's not going to believe sort

[00:22:03] of social conservatism.

[00:22:05] You know, for example, definitely moving away from that.

[00:22:09] Yeah, I mean, I think it's entirely possible and it may even be the fact now that I don't

[00:22:14] think you could run on the Republican platform and publicly say that you're opposed to

[00:22:20] same-sex marriage or something like that.

[00:22:21] I think they would view that as political suicide.

[00:22:25] Yeah, I mean probably there's some places in rural counties and stosh people do that but

[00:22:30] yeah, people don't do that.

[00:22:32] Right, right.

[00:22:33] Well, people...

[00:22:34] Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:36] Oh, go ahead, I didn't mean to cut you off.

[00:22:40] Well, no, it's what I was saying.

[00:22:42] You go to DC, you go to New York, you go around these conservatism institutions.

[00:22:46] Yeah, there are some trad Catholic types in these organizations but by and large they're

[00:22:51] sort of what I call moderately socially liberal.

[00:22:56] They believe in what Amy Wax called bourgeois values, they'll talk about bourgeois values.

[00:23:03] So bourgeois values is working hard and not having kids out of wedlock that sort of thing

[00:23:11] but it's not like refraining from premarital sex or anything like that.

[00:23:15] It's not about anti-abortion.

[00:23:17] It's about, look guys, let's not take this a little too far here but it is still basically

[00:23:24] like pretty much on the socially liberal side of the equation.

[00:23:28] The only question is whether it's a behavior that sort of undermines individual success

[00:23:33] or economic growth or something like that.

[00:23:37] Otherwise it's just fine to indulge.

[00:23:41] They're probably okay.

[00:23:42] A lot of them are probably okay with the libertarians were famously always the people

[00:23:47] that wanted to legalize pot.

[00:23:49] I say even now, legalizing pot is probably the majority position in among the Republican

[00:23:56] voter.

[00:23:59] There's no constituency for making gambling illegal.

[00:24:04] For example, I can't remember the last time I heard a preacher talk about gambling but

[00:24:11] if you went back to the 1980s like when my state of Indiana was legalizing the lottery

[00:24:16] they had to pass a constitutional amendment to enable gambling to have a state lottery,

[00:24:21] the churches were against it.

[00:24:24] Now you don't hear anybody in the church is talking about gambling.

[00:24:27] It's like how pass A that's like saying you don't believe in dancing.

[00:24:33] That sort of stuff.

[00:24:35] How do you see this negative world affecting the church?

[00:24:40] I think you have a lot of great observations in your book about that.

[00:24:45] I became a Christian in the upsurge of the young wrestlers reform.

[00:24:52] That was wild and exciting time.

[00:24:54] It was just church being planted.

[00:24:57] I just think about how I look at a picture of together for the gospel in 2012 and you're

[00:25:02] like all these guys.

[00:25:03] Now you look today and they've all fractured off on different kinds of tribes.

[00:25:09] I have to imagine some of that is different approaches or maybe even different awareness

[00:25:14] of the negative world and what that looks like.

[00:25:17] Can you talk about your observations about the negative or when it comes to evangelicalism

[00:25:20] and strategies of outreach?

[00:25:24] Yeah, well, the new Calvinism movement, the young wrestlers were reformed.

[00:25:29] Firstly, I'll tell you there's a great book.

[00:25:32] It's an academic book.

[00:25:33] You might want to try to get it from the library because it's really, really expensive.

[00:25:36] It's called the Reformed Resurgence or Reformed Resurgence by Brad Vermerlin, who's a sociologist.

[00:25:43] He did his dissertation on that and then he has a book by Oxford University Press.

[00:25:47] Talks a lot about that movement I think in impressive analytical form.

[00:25:54] I think that it really was a huge thing for a while.

[00:25:57] It was really a product of social media and not many social media but the internet and

[00:26:01] a lot of ways, really the rise of the internet.

[00:26:04] A lot of those guys, the guys that came together to create that movement, most of them,

[00:26:09] not all of them but a lot of them were already famous heavy hitter type people.

[00:26:15] Many of them baby boomers and a lot of them have just moved on.

[00:26:19] Tim Keller, major figure has passed away.

[00:26:22] John Piper's retired.

[00:26:25] John McArthur probably doesn't have that many years left.

[00:26:28] He's now in his old cranking though.

[00:26:30] He's like a, you know, we had like, you know, test his DNA to make sure he's human.

[00:26:36] Like how can he have that much energy at his age?

[00:26:39] Just a little, a little something else there but, but you know, ultimately I think a lot

[00:26:42] of it is just generate some of its generational turnover.

[00:26:45] But part of it was I think when we flip to the negative world, that movement really fractured

[00:26:51] because some people wanted it to go in essentially a woke direction if you want to call about

[00:26:55] that.

[00:26:56] But there was a massive swing in that group towards talking about racial justice and things

[00:27:04] like that.

[00:27:05] You know, it just became huge, you know, circle like 2017.

[00:27:11] In fact, I even started doing some analysis of articles on the gospel coalition talking

[00:27:16] about race because I'm like every other article on here is about race.

[00:27:19] And that became that became a polarizing issue.

[00:27:22] I think there.

[00:27:23] And then when you add to that matrix, Donald Trump's candidacy, you know, and again,

[00:27:30] the young wrestlers reformed these were mostly conservative guys, I think basically, you

[00:27:36] know, they weren't all per se Republicans, but they were basically culturally conservative

[00:27:40] people.

[00:27:42] And, but, you know, they were also kind of apolitical.

[00:27:46] They were trying to go beyond politics.

[00:27:48] They're like this idea of the culture war of, you know, evangelicalism is about fighting

[00:27:55] with people all the time about, you know, voting Republican.

[00:27:59] They wanted to get beyond that rightly so, I think in my opinion.

[00:28:04] But then along comes Donald Trump.

[00:28:07] And you know, you know, some of these people kind of horrified particularly since there was

[00:28:11] so much evangelical support for Donald Trump.

[00:28:15] And, and so I think that also put a like a big, that really caused a lot of their, a lot

[00:28:22] of the people to, I don't say pivots the right word, but they really wanted to make clear

[00:28:28] that they had nothing to do with Donald Trump, which of course a lot of the rank and file

[00:28:32] love Donald Trump.

[00:28:33] So I think sort of wokeness in Trump really put enormous stress on that movement and

[00:28:41] frankly, most other move, you know, a lot of other parts of evangelicalism and create

[00:28:45] a lot of realignment fracturing, you know, et cetera.

[00:28:53] And you know, so that was big.

[00:28:55] I think that was big.

[00:28:56] And in COVID hit, COVID was another one, this sort of like really polarized people and

[00:29:01] divided people.

[00:29:02] Although I think the COVID division sort of reinforced existing divisions rather than

[00:29:07] creating them, whereas some of these other things Trump and kind of wokeness sort of fractured

[00:29:16] fractures and kind of things that would have been unified in the past.

[00:29:19] So John McArthur basically was very unhappy about the turn towards the, the sort of social

[00:29:26] justice thing.

[00:29:27] For example, he even put out I think a statement about it, you know, these collecting signatures

[00:29:31] on and you know, kind of together for the gospel and part ended over that.

[00:29:36] And then to be honest, they also had their share of scandals.

[00:29:42] So you had Mark Driscoll, you know, Mark Driscoll was like a huge part of that young wrestler

[00:29:46] son of fours and he was Gen X, you know, and his ministry blew up right kind of really

[00:29:54] exploded in grand fashion.

[00:29:56] James McDonald was another big guy in that movement.

[00:29:59] James McDonald was sort of disgraced Joshua Harris.

[00:30:05] He wasn't like the biggest name, you know, the I cast dating goodbye.

[00:30:08] Like he sort of like, you know, apostatized from Christianity.

[00:30:13] There were also again, scandals and other people's ministries there.

[00:30:16] So another big guys has some scandals and things.

[00:30:20] And so that definitely also caused some issues there.

[00:30:26] And there's probably, there's probably a lesson there, right?

[00:30:29] There was probably too many, you know, when you sort of create a like an all star team

[00:30:34] of big name people, that's probably not all 100% healthy kind of thing.

[00:30:41] You know, we actually remember at our church, we had purchased a bunch of Paul trips book

[00:30:46] dangerous calling and and that was kind of like that's like the book to help pastors

[00:30:51] not fall into scandal.

[00:30:53] And I remember on one of the book jackets, it was like endorsed by Italian Javidian James

[00:30:59] McDonald.

[00:31:00] You know, Josh Joshua Harris.

[00:31:03] I could just like it's like a who's whose list of like in a few short years.

[00:31:07] Unfortunately, you know, I mean, it's terrible, but it's I just remember thinking like, wow.

[00:31:12] He was involved at Mars Hill.

[00:31:14] He may have been he may have been on the oversight board or something.

[00:31:18] It's not clear what his role was.

[00:31:19] He may have gotten called in to try to like help fix things.

[00:31:24] Yeah.

[00:31:25] And so I'm not saying that he did anything wrong.

[00:31:27] I don't really know, but I know he there was something involving him and Mark and Mark

[00:31:31] riskled to.

[00:31:32] But yeah, I mean a lot of this a lot of these things just, you know, there were a lot of issues

[00:31:38] there.

[00:31:39] Alme Kier is in your book, you actually talk about how different streams of evangelicalism

[00:31:45] are going to respond differently.

[00:31:47] They're going to have different potential strategies.

[00:31:49] Yeah.

[00:31:50] To how they encounter negative world and tease that out a little bit more.

[00:31:55] How do you think we can actually because there is a fracturing.

[00:32:00] Is there a possibility where we can all sort of, you know, agree to disagree on some things,

[00:32:06] but get along because a lot of what you talk about is having a kind of sense of, you know,

[00:32:14] if we're all scattered apart, it's very hard to have any kind of assertive force in the

[00:32:18] political sphere or something or in the social sphere.

[00:32:21] How do you see, is there any way forward where these quote unquote tribes and us overuse

[00:32:26] language can kind of have a common union again, maybe like it used to be or is there a new

[00:32:32] way that that could look?

[00:32:33] What are your thoughts on that?

[00:32:34] I don't think it's trending that direction.

[00:32:36] I think it's trending towards more division.

[00:32:40] And I think the key is, you know, even evangelicalism was really never a unified coherent movement.

[00:32:46] So I think a lot of these guys disagreed with each other for a long time, but they sort

[00:32:52] of, you know, work together because it seemed like there was a project that was worth working

[00:32:57] together on.

[00:32:58] So like apparently Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson didn't like each other.

[00:33:07] And you know, like I don't think I don't think Jerry Falwell was a charismatic or a penicostle.

[00:33:12] He was more of a fundamentalist, traditional fundamentalist.

[00:33:15] But they, you know, that doesn't mean that they all, you know, were like buddy, buddy, but

[00:33:19] like they, there was like something that they were working together on in a sense.

[00:33:24] There were benefits to saying evangelicalism's thing.

[00:33:28] You know, and now I think in the part of the negative world is there's no benefit whatsoever

[00:33:32] to being called an evangelical.

[00:33:34] So why would you want to even preserve the idea of being part of evangelicalism?

[00:33:40] I started noticing this like, you know, a decade ago that you would see people who, and

[00:33:48] some people even explicitly said this, I'm not an evangelical.

[00:33:53] I'm a Presbyterian.

[00:33:54] A lot of the kind of the people in the Kelerite world say we're not evangelicals, we're Presbyterians.

[00:34:00] And now you'll hear people talk about Anglican.

[00:34:02] Anglican is the flavor of the month now.

[00:34:04] I'm an Anglican.

[00:34:05] They don't even use, they reject the event.

[00:34:07] So it's sort of a flight away from the evangelical label because it's kind of toxic in the marketplace

[00:34:15] in a sense.

[00:34:16] And so there's really no value in the evangelical brand essentially.

[00:34:21] And I think a lot of these groups, you know, have fundamentally different social values

[00:34:26] and views of the world.

[00:34:28] And you know, maybe the very last thing he wrote before he died was Tim Keller wrote this

[00:34:33] series of papers called the decline of renewal of the American church or something like that.

[00:34:38] And he enrolled it out and then he sort of re-composed, like for installments, then

[00:34:43] he put them all together and did a bunch of new additions.

[00:34:47] One of his things is he's laying out like the landscape.

[00:34:49] He's like, there's four different groups here.

[00:34:52] And he's like, there's basically going to be a realignment.

[00:34:54] And his view was we need to divide from the fundamentalist.

[00:34:57] We called it divide with tears.

[00:34:59] He's like, didn't mean you know that we should hate them or whatever, but there's no

[00:35:06] more basis for cooperation because we're too far apart.

[00:35:10] And instead, we need to partner with these people over here who previously we would not

[00:35:15] have partnered with.

[00:35:17] And so the young wrestler reform movement was very complementary in his gender theology.

[00:35:23] You know, like the gospel coalition is constitutionally complementary.

[00:35:27] And you know what Keller saying, we need to make common cause with more evangelical egalitarians.

[00:35:33] So it's a realignment of what things look like.

[00:35:36] And I don't think there was anything sinister about that.

[00:35:39] I think he was in part of it just responding to reality.

[00:35:42] He's like, look, these guys over here on the more conservative side of the equation,

[00:35:47] like I don't agree with them and a lot of us don't agree with them.

[00:35:50] And they don't agree with us.

[00:35:51] So why should we pretend that we're the same thing anymore?

[00:35:55] And so I think, you know, for example, like if you're an evangelical who does not like

[00:36:00] Donald Trump, you're going to do everything in your power to make sure people know you

[00:36:05] are not a Trump's order that you are not like those other people.

[00:36:09] And so I think we're sort of in a disintegration phase more than an integration phase.

[00:36:14] And so we know where we'll come out of it on the other side of that.

[00:36:18] You know, I don't know.

[00:36:19] We're sort of a disintegrating phase in society too.

[00:36:24] We're a less unified society, we're a more divided society, we're a more polarized society.

[00:36:31] And there you go.

[00:36:34] That's it's a good point.

[00:36:36] I mean, in some ways, and I think you're touching this in your book where we're in the

[00:36:40] very beginning phases of kind of sorting this all out.

[00:36:43] I mean, the dust is still settling in a lot of ways and there's going to be a big, you

[00:36:48] know, like you said, a lot of these, I think a lot of the cohesion, whether it was a parent

[00:36:52] or real of that like 2007 to 2013 evangelical, everybody's buddies and, you know, was held

[00:37:03] together by the friendships of these pinnacle figures.

[00:37:07] MacArthur and Sproul and Piper and Keller, and they were all sort of and Don Carson, they

[00:37:11] were all these like, they were held together by their friendships, I felt like.

[00:37:16] And now that they're retiring and now they have their own schools that are kind of more

[00:37:20] fracturing apart, it seems like that what was held, I was holding a lot of things.

[00:37:23] There was these personal issues between these key figures.

[00:37:26] Yeah.

[00:37:27] And that was, you know, that was true.

[00:37:29] And that was also just, I mean, that was only one corner to evangelical world.

[00:37:32] True.

[00:37:33] And I think, you know, one of the things for Merlin and his reform research in his book

[00:37:37] talked about is like numerically like the new Calvinists are like a small fraction

[00:37:41] of the overall evangelical landscape, but they had disproportionate influence.

[00:37:45] And so there were all, there were always people who were like strongly disagree with them,

[00:37:50] I think a lot of things like like the neo-anabaptist and the new monastic movement was also going

[00:37:54] about that time.

[00:37:55] You know, then there was kind of the emerging church which turned into like, you know,

[00:38:00] the whole Rob Bell and other stuff and kind of progressive evangelicalism was developing

[00:38:04] it.

[00:38:05] So there were other groups, I think coming along in one of the things for Merlin talks

[00:38:10] about a new, of his new Calvinism was in essence, new Calvinism was itself a faction

[00:38:17] that was designed to compete with other factions to essentially control like evangelical

[00:38:24] orthodoxy and things of that nature.

[00:38:27] And so again, evangelicalism was always more divided than we think.

[00:38:32] Although there was less overt, I think fighting between a lot of these different groups.

[00:38:41] You know, when I look at the evangelical world, I gotta be honest, it's kind of a strange

[00:38:46] place, you know, especially when I compare it to kind of other parts of the world.

[00:38:54] You know, a lot of it is sort of dominated by these sort of charismatic mega church preachers

[00:39:00] or like seminary presidents.

[00:39:04] And you know, it sort of operates on sort of patron client model right?

[00:39:09] So you gotta like, you know, become a disciple of one of these guys which sort of means

[00:39:14] you have to like be a yes man and you know, they really like to build up people with

[00:39:21] whom they're in alliances and to be able to probably map do a power map of evangelicalism

[00:39:26] just by looking at the speakers at different conferences.

[00:39:30] You know, who gets invited to speak at different conferences?

[00:39:33] And you know, I would see like Hillsong with New York would put on a conference and you

[00:39:40] know, they'd have a whole group of speakers.

[00:39:42] And then there's like a gospel coalition conference and they've like not even, there's no overlap.

[00:39:46] You know, one time I sort of did a look and I taught, you know, because when Hillsong,

[00:39:52] before Hillsong went through its problems, Hillsong was basically like the evangelical

[00:39:56] mega church in New York, like 8,000 people there.

[00:39:59] Tons of celebrities.

[00:40:01] And you know, Redeemer was still huge, you know, had like 5,000 people all that.

[00:40:07] And I'm like, have these guys ever talked to each other?

[00:40:13] And so I went, well, I was googling and googling and googling and I could never find a time

[00:40:19] in which Carl Lentz and Tim Keller had appeared together or talked about each other at all,

[00:40:26] except one time a journalist asked Carl Lentz.

[00:40:31] Oh, I know you're in the same city with Tim Keller.

[00:40:33] What do you think of him?

[00:40:34] He's like, he just made some, like kind of like, oh yeah, yeah, I think we kind of basically

[00:40:38] believe sort of same thing.

[00:40:39] Good guy.

[00:40:40] It was just sort of like where there wasn't any like real engagement there.

[00:40:44] And so it's like you've got these like two people who are right there, both evangelicals,

[00:40:48] both gigantic, successful pastors and they don't even talk to each other.

[00:40:52] They don't collaborate.

[00:40:53] They don't do anything.

[00:40:55] And it's like weird.

[00:40:56] I saw the other thing is people talk about Tim Keller coming to New York to start Redeemer

[00:41:01] Presbyterian Church in 1989.

[00:41:04] And you know, I don't think he's ever claimed this but a lot of people say that was like

[00:41:06] the first evangelical church plant in New York.

[00:41:10] And I'm like actually in 1987 David Wilkerson, the guy who wrote the cross in the switchblade

[00:41:17] if you're familiar with that book.

[00:41:19] He came back to New York City and founded a church in Times Square called Times Square

[00:41:25] Church.

[00:41:26] And Times Square Church is actually a still a very successful, multiracial evangelical

[00:41:35] mega church that owns a Broadway theater at like 50th and 7th Avenue.

[00:41:40] It's so packed.

[00:41:42] You like have to get there 15 minutes early to get a seat.

[00:41:45] It's not like you just walk in and you just walk in and decide which seat you want.

[00:41:52] Like they're guiding you.

[00:41:53] They're like filling up the rows like one by one so like every single seat is taken

[00:41:58] in this theater from multiple services.

[00:42:00] And I'm like these guys ever talk to Hillsong ever talk to Redeemer, like not that I can

[00:42:09] tell it's like they all sort of pretend the other people didn't even exist.

[00:42:13] And so it really is an odd thing.

[00:42:17] And I think part of what you're saying is, you know, in this young restless reformed

[00:42:20] world, they sort of acted as if they were the universe.

[00:42:23] This is the universe of evangelicalism.

[00:42:27] And it's really kind of wild.

[00:42:30] I mean, there's some weird social dynamics of it that I can't fully crack the code and

[00:42:35] I probably never will because I don't have the leisure to study it.

[00:42:39] Like a sociologist should study it or like a business school professor should study it.

[00:42:44] You know, so it's like there's all these different like even within Manhattan, very successful

[00:42:49] evangelical mega churches of different flavors and none of them seem to talk to each other.

[00:42:57] They don't attack each other but they don't even talk to each other.

[00:42:59] They don't collaborate.

[00:43:00] It's not like you know, oh we're getting together for like a prayer meeting, all the evangelical

[00:43:06] pastors in Manhattan, we're all going to get together.

[00:43:08] We're going to pray for each other's churches.

[00:43:09] We're going to pray for the city.

[00:43:10] Like I never once heard of anything like that happening.

[00:43:14] I remember who it was.

[00:43:16] Somebody mentioned a dynamic.

[00:43:17] You were talking about seminaries.

[00:43:20] How if you are conservative evangelical seminary, you have a very limited pot of people

[00:43:25] are going to come to your school.

[00:43:27] And so you are working with people where they're already concerned.

[00:43:30] So you have to super specialize.

[00:43:31] We're missional.

[00:43:33] Where you know cultural engagement, we're reformed orthodox whatever.

[00:43:37] And you have to like super fine tune.

[00:43:38] I wonder if there's a dynamic there with a conservative evangelical church.

[00:43:42] You only have a small subsection people are going to go to that church.

[00:43:46] And then you have to think well, we're conservative but the selling point of coming

[00:43:50] our church is this kind of niche, you know, kind of alignment or kind of idea.

[00:43:55] Yeah, there's nothing wrong with serving a particular niche.

[00:43:58] Sure.

[00:43:59] I don't think that's bad.

[00:44:01] I just think it's weird that when people sort of like don't pretend that like so I think

[00:44:04] the key is even gelicalism was never as unified as people wanted.

[00:44:09] I think it was very siloed.

[00:44:11] I think it was very hierarchical.

[00:44:14] I think again, it was very patron client oriented.

[00:44:18] It's very close network meaning, you know, with like new Calvinism like young wrestlers

[00:44:24] and reformed.

[00:44:25] We're all going to blurb each other's books.

[00:44:27] We're going to promote each other.

[00:44:28] We're going to speak at each other's conferences.

[00:44:30] But if you're not part of our club and you're not like a loyalist, our group, like we're

[00:44:35] certainly not going to promote what you're doing.

[00:44:39] And so there is kind of interesting thing that like like I don't think it's any accident

[00:44:44] that my three worlds article was published in first things magazine which is basically Catholic

[00:44:48] run.

[00:44:49] I mean most of the people that have promoted my work have actually been like Catholic,

[00:44:53] Eastern Orthodox or like, you know different things like that.

[00:44:58] It's like I don't get a lot of love from called elite evangelicalism.

[00:45:04] I don't get a lot of hate either.

[00:45:06] But like somebody like me doesn't map into their world, you know all that much.

[00:45:11] And so it's a different kind of it's a weird culture and I haven't fully figured it out

[00:45:16] yet.

[00:45:17] And again, I probably never will feel figured out.

[00:45:20] But I think it's fracturing, you know as well.

[00:45:24] So that's what we're just sort of a fracturing world.

[00:45:28] So that is an interesting thing that you notice.

[00:45:32] I mean, and you do in your book, you look at Roman Catholics as an interesting model

[00:45:36] that evangelicals can take some insights from.

[00:45:41] You want to talk about that a little bit?

[00:45:43] Yeah, well sure.

[00:45:44] You know, as I said, you know we're now a minority.

[00:45:46] You know what does it look like to live as a minority?

[00:45:48] So maybe we can learn from other minorities.

[00:45:50] And you know, I don't think it makes sense to look at for example Jews.

[00:45:55] Like let's learn some lessons.

[00:45:56] Well first off, Jews are a religious group but they're also an ethnic group.

[00:46:00] They're also very small.

[00:46:02] They've also been historically persecuted.

[00:46:05] And there's a lot going on there that I think, you know, they've got some very impressive

[00:46:09] communities.

[00:46:10] I think in incredible ways.

[00:46:13] But I don't think that we could learn to like be like Jews in America.

[00:46:16] Whereas I think, so I use example of early 20th century Catholicism.

[00:46:22] Is it perfect?

[00:46:23] Roman's I think are another interesting example as well.

[00:46:26] But you know early 20th century Catholicism, first off there's a lot of Catholics just

[00:46:30] like there were a lot of Protestants.

[00:46:34] You know they were multiple ethnicities so it's not just linked to a particular ethnic

[00:46:38] group.

[00:46:39] It's, you know, and so they were sort of disfavored but they weren't.

[00:46:46] So it was an anti-Catholic country and Catholics reviewed with suspicion and this and that.

[00:46:51] It wasn't like they were being treated like black.

[00:46:53] So you can't just say, oh don't learn, you know blacks were like uniquely discriminated

[00:46:58] against in America which you know in a way Catholics, Catholics weren't.

[00:47:02] So it's like I call them milder form of negativity and nevertheless, you know the Catholics,

[00:47:08] you know, they had to, you know, they had to learn how to be faithful Catholics in

[00:47:13] a Protestant country.

[00:47:16] Just like if we went to a very Catholic Catholic country like Italy, we'd have to be like,

[00:47:20] oh, we can't just go along with the Italian culture because that's a Catholic culture.

[00:47:24] We have to have our own things and so they built their own Catholic schools, Catholic

[00:47:27] universities, Catholic fraternal societies.

[00:47:29] They built infrastructure to sort of sustain Catholic life and those sorts of things.

[00:47:36] And so that's basically how it works there.

[00:47:43] That's what I would say.

[00:47:44] And that's why I use that example.

[00:47:47] You know the Catholics?

[00:47:48] I think Catholics even today, right?

[00:47:50] Why are there so many Catholic intellectuals?

[00:47:52] You know, you know like a lot of people will, for example, they'll say, oh look at Charles

[00:47:59] Taylor's a secular age to talk about secularization.

[00:48:02] He's a Catholic philosopher or they'll say, look at Patrick Denean and Notre Dame professor,

[00:48:06] political science professor why liberalism failed.

[00:48:08] The political diagnostics are coming from Catholic, they're looking to Catholic intellectuals.

[00:48:12] Why is that?

[00:48:13] And so, Catholics among other things they nurture and support Catholic intellectuals in

[00:48:22] a way that Protestant figures down.

[00:48:25] And again this gets to the point of you know I think some of the way evangelicalism functions.

[00:48:31] There's a real alignment in the Catholic world between sort of talent, networks, platforms,

[00:48:38] financing that doesn't necessarily occur in the evangelical world.

[00:48:47] And so I think that you know, I think that there's a reason why, you know, I look for example

[00:48:52] there's this group it's like called the new polity project.

[00:48:55] You know, they may have heard of them but it's sort of quasi like Catholic integralism

[00:48:59] not entirely.

[00:49:00] It's sort of an alternative to Catholic integralism.

[00:49:03] And a lot of this group is sort of, they orbit around a stupid bill Ohio which has a Catholic

[00:49:11] university there whose name escapes me.

[00:49:13] And so it's like you know, stupid bills becoming like this hotbed of Catholic intellectual in

[00:49:19] stupid bills of Appalachian Ohio town on the Ohio River, you know and like people are moving

[00:49:25] there.

[00:49:26] They're having conferences there.

[00:49:27] You know, so obviously there's financial and other resources being brought to bear around

[00:49:33] this nucleus.

[00:49:34] So there's an institution there's an existing institution there's finances, there's

[00:49:38] a geographical location and there's a group of intellectuals around this new polity movement

[00:49:43] and other things.

[00:49:44] And that sort of thing is very rare I think in the evangelical world to see.

[00:49:50] And so yeah I think I think Catholics, I think there's a lot to learn from Catholicism.

[00:49:56] If you lay out some major kind of, I would say things to aspire to I think for evangelicals

[00:50:05] and for Protestants.

[00:50:07] You list out the pursuit of excellence, anti fragility, ownership acquiring ownership

[00:50:14] and then speaking the truth clearly.

[00:50:17] And I'm just curious if you want to open up those a little bit you don't have to go super

[00:50:20] in depth because you know you got to read the book to find out everything but I thought

[00:50:23] those are some strong statements that I think have a lot of insights.

[00:50:28] So would you like to open up a little bit of what, what, what that would mean?

[00:50:33] Sure.

[00:50:34] And so there's a lot there.

[00:50:37] I mean again we, you know ever since Mark Noel wrote that book to scandal the evangelical

[00:50:42] minds been well known that evangelicals lack an intellectualism and other things.

[00:50:48] And the truth is, you know when most of the intellectuals were at least not hostile

[00:50:54] to Christianity and his views, you could rely on them.

[00:50:57] Well now you can't.

[00:50:58] And so it's, you know so I think we have to be, we just, the world's harder today.

[00:51:06] Like it's just harder to get married and stay married today.

[00:51:09] It's harder to have a successful career.

[00:51:13] You know the world is harder and when the world is hard you got to elevate your game.

[00:51:17] You got to be excellent.

[00:51:19] Again, ownership I was sort of inspired by the guys in Moscow Idaho for this.

[00:51:23] I mean you got to Moscow Idaho with Doug Wilson.

[00:51:26] This hyper conservative like, you know Christian group in this actually college town state

[00:51:35] university college town in Idaho has nevertheless like they own half of the main street.

[00:51:40] It seems like they have their, I mean it's wild.

[00:51:44] They have their own coffee shops, their own university, their own you know classical

[00:51:49] Christian school, their own pizza place, their own gastropub, their own theater.

[00:51:54] It's like they own a ton of stuff, they own a ton of businesses and when you own when

[00:51:58] you own a lot of stuff, you have a lot of ability to do things like mild church in New

[00:52:04] York.

[00:52:05] Actually I think grew a lot during COVID.

[00:52:07] You know why they own their own building and they could open as soon as it was legal to

[00:52:12] be open, they were open.

[00:52:13] Whereas some people who are renting the landlord isn't going to get a lot of meat.

[00:52:18] So it's not even that they chose to do that with the landlords down.

[00:52:21] So when you decide that you want to, you know, when you decide that you want to live in

[00:52:30] a world where people don't like you like relying on them to sell you things, to rent you things

[00:52:35] again I think a lot more about ownership.

[00:52:37] So those are some of the things I think about and then speaking truth clearly, I, you

[00:52:41] know, go, you know, I think we talked a little bit about Jordan Peterson.

[00:52:44] I might as well as Jordan Peterson look at how he is attracted a massive following by

[00:52:50] saying some rather banal things.

[00:52:53] You know, and I think I think you can, I think people are looking for it.

[00:52:58] Well what advice would you give to pastors?

[00:53:01] I mean, I think you've touched on that a little bit in your book.

[00:53:03] But in your writings, you very much are concerned for the churches.

[00:53:08] I appreciate it that you, you mentioned something we're like that essentially pastors are

[00:53:12] being asked to do too much in a sense of, you've got to be a psychotherapist, a social

[00:53:17] critic, a political commentator on top of, you know, exegiting Hebrews, you know.

[00:53:22] And I'm just wondering, I want to hear some of your thoughts about that.

[00:53:25] What can pastors take?

[00:53:27] Sure.

[00:53:28] I do think you know pastors, you know, I think one, if you're going to go into, be called

[00:53:33] in the ministry, you're going to be tougher.

[00:53:35] You know, it's already, it's already a tough job.

[00:53:38] Now it's even tougher.

[00:53:39] I mean, stress, burnout, intra church conflict, it's a major issue.

[00:53:46] If you're a pastor today no matter what you teach, you're hearing it from somebody.

[00:53:49] You're getting zapped on that.

[00:53:54] So that's number one.

[00:53:56] Number two, I think that yeah, I mean, you know, again, the lack of evangelical intellectuals

[00:54:05] has meant that by default, the experts on everything have to be pastors.

[00:54:10] It's like we don't look, you know, in Catholic world it's like, oh, who's our political guy?

[00:54:15] It's Patrick Denean.

[00:54:16] Now not everybody, not all Catholics like Patrick Denean.

[00:54:19] But here's a political scientist who's a Catholic who can talk about the political order

[00:54:25] from an authoritative perspective, you know, as a college professor who's Catholic.

[00:54:29] You know, in the evangelical world, we don't have those people.

[00:54:33] So it's like, who do we call?

[00:54:34] We call Tim Keller.

[00:54:35] Tim, please tell us, you know, and he did a great job on a lot of things.

[00:54:41] But I mean, the fact is, you know, the pastors are not experts at a lot of things.

[00:54:45] And when they try to become experts, they really can cause a lot of harm.

[00:54:49] And I think that's what happened with the purity culture.

[00:54:51] You know, the purity culture, like the Bible doesn't say anything about dating.

[00:54:56] And all of a sudden this book, I just dating the Bible by a 21 year old guy with massive amounts

[00:55:05] of very specific advice, very little of it that's from the Bible kind of takes over the world.

[00:55:11] It actually hurt a lot of people.

[00:55:13] And so I think that, you know, we need to have more, as well as say we need to have more

[00:55:18] lay experts, more Jesus.

[00:55:20] Jordan Peterson is a psychologist and he talks about the world through the lens of young

[00:55:23] Ian psychology and these things, you know, Jocco's a Navy seal.

[00:55:27] Now, he learned a lot about leadership and in commanding and working in the SEAL teams.

[00:55:32] And you know, these people like actually have some expertise.

[00:55:37] And so we need to have people who like are experts in their field, who are talking about

[00:55:41] those things from a Christian perspective, not calling up, you know, John Piper and asking

[00:55:48] him how you're supposed to date today.

[00:55:51] Like John Piper is, you know, what 70 something years old, he got married a long time ago.

[00:55:55] He doesn't know anything about dating today, nothing.

[00:55:59] And that's not his fault and it's not his job either.

[00:56:03] I think we need to have in SOS, we need much more lay expertise on a lot of things.

[00:56:09] That's a good word.

[00:56:11] You know, it's been a couple of years since you originally wrote that first article.

[00:56:17] And then in between that and writing your book, is anything shifted?

[00:56:19] Were there any feedback or critique that you were like, okay, I'm going to implement

[00:56:22] that or any shift in your thoughts.

[00:56:25] Well, I certainly did change the book, make changes and updates in order to address criticisms.

[00:56:31] Not that I thought the criticisms were wrong, but I think, you know, one of the biggest

[00:56:36] changes that I made is in the article, it says the positive world was prior to 1994.

[00:56:43] And the book, I put a start date on the positive world.

[00:56:47] It's from 1964 to 1994 because I wanted to be clear, the positive world is not things

[00:56:51] are great.

[00:56:52] Things were bad in the positive world for a lot of people.

[00:56:55] It was a period of decline, but Christianity would still be positively.

[00:57:00] Got you.

[00:57:01] Yeah.

[00:57:02] So maybe just in conclusion, I want to hear your thoughts on the future.

[00:57:07] You know, when you think about where things are headed, I know we kind of touch a little

[00:57:11] bit on a wear and a time of fragmentation, but what are some opportunities you see for

[00:57:17] the church to capitalize on in negative world?

[00:57:21] Well, unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of problems with people in this world.

[00:57:26] You know, we have declining life expectancy in the United States.

[00:57:30] You know, there's so there's a lot of growth in what kind of stuff called desidus spare

[00:57:34] suicides, opioid addictions, alcoholism.

[00:57:40] And so we need, I think wherever there's these issues with people suffering in all of

[00:57:46] these world and all these ways, then you know, there's always an opportunity for ministry.

[00:57:52] We have a severe homeless problem, you know, in America today.

[00:57:56] We have a lot of the needs are actually overwhelming in terms of just straight up loving your

[00:58:02] neighbor.

[00:58:03] I mean, the loneliness that there's so many people who are lonely, you know, that's one

[00:58:06] of the things I noticed in New York, a lot of people who came to my church, it was not

[00:58:12] that they came there specifically because they were lonely, but you can tell they were

[00:58:15] looking for connection, they were hoping to find community there.

[00:58:19] And one of the things people always said about that church was, wow, you guys have the

[00:58:23] best community here of any church in Chicago, I mean, in New York, I'm like, really?

[00:58:28] Because like in most parts of the country, this would be normal.

[00:58:31] But in New York, where it's such an atomized culture, it massively stands out.

[00:58:37] And I think about even the street I live on in suburban India and apples today, I bet

[00:58:43] just two, three block long length of my street, there are so many people that have pain in

[00:58:48] problems that I don't even know about.

[00:58:52] And I think that is always like the best opportunity to reach people for the gospel is when things

[00:58:59] are going poorly.

[00:59:00] You know, when you hit rock bottom, so I think that's a lot of it.

[00:59:05] You know, is that sort of thing gonna be gonna be big.

[00:59:08] There's a lot of people in pain out there.

[00:59:10] It's a good word.

[00:59:12] And I think sometimes that can be lost, you know, when you're just thinking abstractly about

[00:59:18] ideas and culture and all this stuff.

[00:59:19] And you realize that, you know, the human, human suffering and the things that people are

[00:59:25] dealing with, there is a hope that you can give them.

[00:59:31] And you know, I think that's always the thing that's, I guess in any age, that's always

[00:59:35] something you can bank on, or something to offer people in suffering.

[00:59:38] Yeah, I mean, I tell you like, I mean, I do think it's weird that one of the takeaways

[00:59:44] people've got from taking from my book is that we need to be harder core on politics.

[00:59:50] Because I mean, to be honest, I think, you know, the culture war is kind of a loser.

[00:59:54] You know, I mean, I think if you're in a minority and you're trying to like cram your beliefs

[00:59:58] down people's throats, it's not gonna work.

[01:00:01] You're just gonna make them not like you.

[01:00:04] And so I really think you gotta think twice about that sort of stuff.

[01:00:09] No, you know, that's something that I thought was really interesting about your book.

[01:00:13] You talk about that.

[01:00:17] You talk about how some of the reactionary movements just aren't realistic and that,

[01:00:22] you know, it's not necessarily compromised to be prudential about these types of things.

[01:00:29] And just to, you know, I just think you had a very real kind of view of how the world

[01:00:37] works and what's possible.

[01:00:40] And what can actually be achieved without being overly pessimistic.

[01:00:45] But yeah, I think it's true.

[01:00:47] I think you even talk about just like caring for the homeless and caring for people in need.

[01:00:54] I mean, that's just basic Christian stuff.

[01:00:56] You don't have to be something that you're, you know, overtly political.

[01:01:00] You know, there are some things that we can do just locally and publicly.

[01:01:04] I think so.

[01:01:05] I mean, I think localism is a big thing we think about.

[01:01:09] Yeah, for sure.

[01:01:11] For sure.

[01:01:12] Well, Aaron, I feel like I could talk to you for another hour.

[01:01:15] I mean, this was just a fascinating conversation.

[01:01:16] Appreciate the work that you're doing.

[01:01:18] Appreciate you taking the time on to come and talk on our show.

[01:01:22] We're going to put a show.

[01:01:23] We're going to put a link in our show notes to your book so people can go get it.

[01:01:27] Let's put a link to your YouTube channel as well as your sub-stack.

[01:01:31] If you subscribe to a sub-stack, it's a lot of great stuff.

[01:01:34] It puts out.

[01:01:35] And Aaron, thank you for your work.

[01:01:37] Appreciate you coming on.

[01:01:38] I hope to help you on again sometime.

[01:01:40] Thanks for having me.

[01:01:41] Thanks for listening to this podcast.

[01:01:43] I hope you enjoyed it.

[01:01:44] You can visit our website, our YouTube channel.

[01:01:47] You can subscribe to our podcast.

[01:01:48] All those links are in the show notes and also consider supporting us on Patreon.

[01:01:52] That would be a great benefit to us.

[01:01:55] You can find that link in the show notes as well.

[01:01:57] Thank you for listening to the show.