Mr. Renn’s schema is straightforward. Modern American history, he argues, can be divided into three epochs when it comes to the status of Christianity. In “positive world,” between 1964 and 1994, being a Christian in America generally enhanced one’s social status. It was a good thing to be known as a churchgoer, and “Christian moral norms” were the basic norms of the broader American culture. Then, in “neutral world,” which lasted roughly until 2014 — Mr. Renn acknowledges the dates are imprecise — Christianity no longer had a privileged status, but it was seen as one of many valid options in a pluralist public square.
About a decade ago, around the time that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, Mr. Renn says the United States became “negative world.” Being a Christian, especially in high-status domains, is a social negative, he argues, and holding to traditional Christian moral views, particularly related to sex and gender, is seen as “a threat to the public good and new public moral order.”
As one example, Mr. Renn shares the story of the Crossing, a large evangelical church in Columbia, Mo., that sponsored and supported a local secular film festival for years. The close relationship between the conservative church and the progressive arts institution was noted positively in national publications, including The New York Times. The church worked hard to win trust and cultivate a relationship with the local creative community. But when a pastor at the church preached in 2019 that “God is not pleased when we blur genders,” the film festival bowed to a community outcry and cut those ties.
It’s just one instance of what Mr. Renn depicts as a pattern: Christians who hold traditional beliefs about a range of social and political issues have come to be treated as pariahs by secular elites even if they have made an effort to avoid gratuitous offense. The phenomenon goes beyond “cancel culture” to describe a kind of wholesale skepticism of many Christian beliefs and behaviors in domains like academia and the corporate world.
“It just instantly connected with my experience,” Josh McPherson, the pastor of a large church in Washington State, said of Mr. Renn’s “negative world” construct. For him and other conservative pastors, he said, “it explained the world we’re living in: ‘Oh, this is why this is happening.’” Mr. McPherson and another pastor in Texas recently released a podcast series intended to equip pastors for ministry in “negative world.”
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