If you have been paying much attention to evangelical Twitter in the past year or so, you may have noticed quite a few heated arguments involving the word “elite.”
If you doubt this, run a basic Google search for “Tim Keller,” “evangelical” and “elite.” Then try “David French,” “evangelical” and “elite.”
What you’ll find is more evidence of the relevance of this recent GetReligion “Memo” by religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling: “Is evangelical Protestantism breaking into five factions in the United States of America?”
You may want to click a few of these links if you are planning to read, write or report about the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention, which is June 12-15 in Anaheim, Calif.
There is a very good chance that, at some point, one or more Baptists taking part in speeches or in floor debates will use one or more of these terms — “Positive “World,” “Neutral World” and “Negative World.” Most people will “get” the references being made.
However, I think that it would be good — as a weekend “think piece” — to point to the source of those terms as they were used earlier this year in a First Things essay by social-media scribe Aaron M. Renn. The logical title: “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.” Here is the overture:
American evangelicalism is deeply divided.
Some evangelicals have embraced the secular turn toward social justice activism, particularly around race and immigration, accusing others of failing to reckon with the church’s racist past. Others charge evangelical elites with going “woke” and having failed their flocks. Some elites are denounced for abandoning historic Christian teachings on sexuality. Others face claims of hypocrisy for supporting the serial adulterer Donald Trump. Old alliances are dissolving. Former Southern Baptist agency head Russell Moore has left his denomination. Political pundit David French has become a fearsome critic of many religious conservatives who would once have been his allies. Baptist professor Owen Strachan left an establishment seminary to take a leadership position in a startup one. Some people are deconstructing their faith and leaving evangelicalism, or even Christianity, behind. Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself.
I think some of that is rather simplistic, to tell you the truth. When it comes to opposing abortion or defending basic First Amendment freedoms, evangelical leaders of all stripes need to realize that Moore and French are still fighting for them, period.
But back to Renn’s three “world” definitions, which focus on different “strategies of public engagement” linked to what he calls three stages of American secularization. This is the material that journalists, in particular, need to bookmark for future reference.
The three worlds, according to Renn:
* Positive World (Pre-1994): Society at large retains a mostly positive view of Christianity. To be known as a good, churchgoing man remains part of being an upstanding citizen. Publicly being a Christian is a status-enhancer. Christian moral norms are the basic moral norms of society and violating them can bring negative consequences.
* Neutral World (1994–2014): Society takes a neutral stance toward Christianity. Christianity no longer has privileged status but is not disfavored. Being publicly known as a Christian has neither a positive nor a negative impact on one’s social status. Christianity is a valid option within a pluralistic public square. Christian moral norms retain some residual effect.
* Negative World (2014–Present): Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.
In the “positive era,” the so-called “culture war” and “seeker sensitivity” models of engagement were used by most. For example:
The very name of its leading organization, Moral Majority, speaks to a world in which it was at least plausible to claim that Christians still represented the majority of the country. The religious right arose during the so-called New Right movement in the 1970s, in part as a response to the sexual revolution and the moral deterioration of the country.
That’s the political lens, of course. What about the church itself?
A second strategy of the positive-world movement was seeker sensitivity, likewise pioneered in the 1970s at suburban megachurches such as Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek (Barrington, IL) and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church (Orange County). This strategy was in a sense a prototype of the neutral-world movement to come. But the very term “seeker sensitive” shows that it was predicated on an underlying friendliness to Christianity; it’s a model that assumes that large numbers of people are actively seeking. Bill Hybels walked door to door in suburban Chicago, surveying the unchurched about why they didn’t attend. By designing a church that appealed to them stylistically, he was able to get large numbers to come through the doors.
Seeker-sensitive churches downplayed or eliminated denominational affiliations, distinctives, and traditions.
In the next stage, evangelicals moved on to “cultural engagement.”
The neutral-world cultural engagers were in many ways the opposite of the culture warriors: Rather than fighting against the culture, they were explicitly positive toward it. They did not denounce secular culture, but confidently engaged that culture on its own terms in a pluralistic public square. They believed that Christianity could still be articulated in a compelling way and had something to offer in that environment. In this quest they wanted to be present in the secular elite media and forums, not just on Christian media or their own platforms.
Who are we talking about? Readers will not be surprised to find out that the #NeverTrump world (former evangelical folks like me, I guess, teaching in Washington, D.C.) enter the picture
The leading lights of the cultural engagement strategy were much more urban, frequently based in major global cities or college towns. The neutral world emerged concurrently with the resurgence of America’s urban centers. …
Most of the urban church world and many parachurch organizations embraced the cultural engagement strategy, and some suburban megachurches have shifted in that direction. Major figures and groups include Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York City), Hillsong Church (New York City, Los Angeles, and other global cities), Christianity Today magazine (suburban Chicago), Veritas Forum (Boston), Sen. Ben Sasse (Washington, D.C.), contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura (New York City), and author Andy Crouch (Philadelphia).
Now, it is interesting that Reno’s first goal in his “negative world” material is to note the widespread rejection of my friend Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” book by evangelicals. I would note that Dreher’s book — which very few people appear to have read — was rejected by evangelicals on both the left and the right, for different reasons.
Dreher is, after all, an urban public intellectual who openly rejected Trump, but was very sympathetic to the hopes and fears of many Americans who felt driven to vote for Trump. Dreher is Eastern Orthodox and has never worshipped in evangelical pews at any point in his life.
This brings us to this important point:
… [R]ejection of Dreher’s Benedict Option was not about too much Catholic terminology or disagreements over strategic elements. It was rooted in a denial of reality. Evangelicals were, and to a great extent still are, unwilling to accept that they now live in the negative world.
So how has this transition into world No. 3 affected the wars inside evangelicalism? Why is there more to this than partisan politics?
News producers and consumers don’t have to agree with all of this (I am raising my hand, for sure), but it will help — in the coming SBC week, especially — to understand what is going on in this essay. Here is one final quote:
Evangelicalism is in flux, and its future as a coherent movement is in doubt. In part, this crisis has resulted from the failure of evangelicalism to develop strategies designed for the negative world in which Christians are a moral minority and secular society is actively hostile to the faith. The previous strategies are not adequate to today’s realities and are being deformed under the pressures of the negative world.