Last year, we briefly touched on the concept of ‘negative world’ in Christianity. It’s the idea that modern American/Western society now feels hostile toward Christianity rather than neutral or even positive toward it. Of late, though, the concept has gotten attention from some secular news outlets. So today, let’s explore what ‘negative world’ means, how right-wing Christians engage with the idea of it—and most importantly, see why they are dead wrong about exactly what’s happening and why.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 3/11/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! From introduction: Unwarranted self-importance; privilege distress; and heck, why not also learn about Schrodinger’s rapist?)
SITUATION REPORT: ‘Negative world’ gets discussed at the New York Times
Last week, New York Times printed a story about ‘negative world.’ This is an idea created by Aaron Renn, a right-wing Christian and men’s rights type. This past year, he published a book on the topic called Life in Negative World.
‘Negative world’ is a buzzword in right-wing Christian circles right now because they think it describes American culture in relation to their beliefs. Right-wing Christians believe that normie American culture has come to view them with great negativity because of their beliefs and values.
This is not at all the first time we’ve heard the term ‘negative world’ around here. In fact, I talked about it in passing just last summer.
Aaron Renn came up with ‘negative world’ years before that, though, perhaps around 2017. But with the overall collapse of Christianity in general in recent years, right-wing Christians are turning their attention to this concept all over again. Their hilarious non-solutions to living in ‘negative world’ probably won’t surprise anybody.
Defining negative world
In February 2022, Aaron Renn wrote about ‘negative world‘ for a right-wing Christian journal called First Things. It soon became a very popular article.
See, according to Aaron Renn ‘positive world’ lasted up until 1994. Americans generally thought well of right-wing Christians and assumed that being a properly loyal American meant adopting right-wing Christian values and norms.
Along similar lines, ‘neutral world’ lasted from 1994-2014. Right-wing Christians began to notice that their beliefs and values didn’t carry the same cultural cachet.
Since 2014, as you might guess, right-wing Christians have existed in ‘negative world.’ In ‘negative world,’ Americans are hostile to right-wing Christians and consider their values and norms regressive and perhaps even threatening to society.
Quick segue: Who’s buying this ‘negative world’ idea?
For the most part, I only see the more hardline evangelical leaders and sites discussing negative world. In 2017, Rod “Benedict option” Dreher mentions getting a digital issue of The Masculinist containing this notion. He describes the newsletter as covering “the intersection of Christianity and masculinity,” and more importantly he names Aaron Renn as its creator and writer. The different ‘worlds’ and their cutoff dates are the same. Dreher appears to have gotten ahold of this newsletter because Renn briefly sorta-criticized the Benedict Option in it.
In that 2017 post, Dreher describes Renn’s idea as “one of the most insightful things I’ve read in a long time.” But for years after that, it didn’t get a lot of traction at all in the Christ-o-sphere.
In 2021, American Reformer ran a post by Renn called “Welcome to Negative World.” There, he expresses his consternation that his hardline Calvinist evangelical crowd hadn’t updated its evangelism strategies for their new normal.
Then in 2022, Juicy Ecumenism ran a post by Bart Gingerich about evangelicals’ poor strategies around negative world. That’s the post I briefly mentioned last year.
In 2022, Aaron Renn continued to write about negative world on his personal site, of course, with one post speculating about its causes. If you’re wondering, he lands on meaniepie “religiously skeptical elites” taking advantage of major cultural shifts “to impose their vision on society.” A few months later, Trevin Wax over at the Calvinist hardliner site The Gospel Coalition (TGC) agreed with this assessment.
Then we jump ahead to 2024. In February 2024, Brian Mattson at TGC thought the entire concept of ‘three worlds‘ was self-serving hogwash and not Jesusy enough. A few months later in May 2024, a writer for Christianity Today felt frustrated by Renn’s lack of real-world, concrete suggestions. Still, overall he liked the concept itself and thought “it should age well.” Also in May 2024, Al Mohler interviewed Renn over at his personal site.
Otherwise, Christians in general don’t seem to notice or care much about this whole ‘three worlds’ stuff.
Negative world and the curious cutoff dates: Why 1994 for ‘positive world’?
It’s so interesting to me to see where Aaron Renn sets his cutoff years.
Speaking as a former Pentecostal, I can 100% assure you that Pentecostals were in negative world long, long before 1994. Everyone around me thought I’d joined a wackadoodle religious cult—and in some significant ways, I had. (But I did avoid a worse one!)
In 1994, evangelicals hadn’t fully fused with fundamentalists yet, but it would soon. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) had almost finished up its ultraconservative hijacking, which is now known as the Conservative Resurgence. Their fusion with fundamentalism finished up before the end of the decade. Afterward, evangelicals were indistinguishable from the fundamentalists they’d mocked years earlier for their legalism, emotionalism, and childish misinterpretations.
So yes, absolutely I can attest that evangelicals had a pretty good reputation in 1994. They were known for being more ritual-oriented and scholarly, less orgiastic, and less focused on personal revelation. They’d only lose that reputation through their relatively-recent idolization of inerrancy and literalism.
Segue: The specific Christians inhabiting Aaron Renn’s world
Now they’re legalistic, overemotional, and childishly misinterpreting the Bible, while at the same time acting like totally distinguished scholars who are far above all that nonsense. In that interview Al Mohler did with Renn last year, he himself even confirms my assessment:
What threw me off when I read your article in First Things [relink] was, I’m sorry, I was alive at the time and it was not a positive world. We were already facing the onslaught. I was involved in court cases long before that.
Yes, because Al Mohler was an early made man of the Conservative Resurgence. Early on, he switched camps from the previously-respected end of evangelicalism to dive into the deep end with the fundamentalists.
(See also: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind,” a quote from Mark Noll’s 1995 book. And: Come see me being completely unimpressed by a Biola apologetics class lecture.)
In short, modern evangelicals act like the fundamentalists of the 1990s. And fundamentalists in the 1990s were already knee-deep in ‘negative world.’ If I were to set an end date for ‘positive world’ for fundamentalism, I’d set it around 1970—toward the end of the Jesus People movement. It was this movement that gave rise to the Conservative Resurgence itself—and from there, set evangelicals’ feet on their fusion path with fundamentalism.
Son of Segue: A massive blind spot in ‘negative world’
That’s exactly why the three examples of each ‘world’ that Renn gives in his 2017 newsletter (relink) are so nonsensical. He lists the big sex scandals of each ‘world’ and how they impacted the scandal-causers’ political careers. Simply put, the Christians of each ‘world’ were entirely different people with entirely different priorities.
That may be why an August 2024 review of Renn’s book specifically states that he’s really only talking to and about one particular group of Christians:
The “three worlds” schema only applies to traditional forms of Christian faith. Progressive Christians are unlikely to experience any negative consequences for their beliefs.
Indeed. That’s not the only place you can find criticisms like that, either. In January 2024, another Calvinist guy at American Reformer wrote extensively about the timeline and groups that Renn appears not to notice. For what it’s worth, it’s a good essay. He concludes that the seeds of Christian decline in America were “baked into the cake,” which sounds about right. (NB to Timon Cline: You mean “nimble and alert,” not “nibble and alert,” right?)
The Christians Renn has in mind in his work are regressive, power-hungry hypocrites. These Christians want complete temporal power over all of us—and they do not care who or what they must support to get it.
At least 2014 makes more sense for ‘neutral world’
It is likewise extremely interesting to me that Renn defines ‘neutral world’ as 1994-2014. Those were the grandest years of the Great Evangelical-Atheist Keyboard Wars. Evangelical apologists who could think quickly on their feet appeared on debate stages all over the place. They argued with atheists and sometimes even won. Evangelical keyboard warriors launched themselves into commenting battles against their dread enemies at the time, atheists.
Blogs—including Roll to Disbelieve on WordPress in 2013—sprouted up everywhere to discuss why Christian claims are ridiculous and untrustworthy. Of course, evangelicals often drove by these blogs with tired logical fallacies and zingers—and, of course, threats of Hell when nothing else worked.
But by 2015, it seemed like evangelicals had thrown everything they had against the wall—and they’d still failed. Their religion was in perma-decline in the West, with nobody reputable even daring to say when the bottom would be hit. Social media made it easy for aggrieved evangelicals to gather like crickets to sing and chirp together about how hard-done-by they were. Social media made it even easier for ego-stung evangelicals to curate who could push back against their claims and argue with them.
Also in 2015, Pew Research finally put words to what many observers had already noticed: Yes, Christianity was undergoing a major decline. Finally, evangelicals had to face reality—insofar as they’ve ever been able to do so.
More than that, perhaps, individual forums became ghost towns after 2015. So did many blogs. So did blog gathering-sites, to a large extent. In their stead, people flocked to social media sites. These new watering holes skewed liberal. In opposition, various right-wing social media sites opened. Alas for them, they attract a fraction of the population of sites like Twitter/X, TikTok, and Reddit.
The secularization and politicization of right-wing Christianity
Something else happened after 2015, though. It’s more than just the ebb and flow of internet usage. It’s more than just the decline of Christianity, even.
After 2015, hardline right-wing Christianity transformed itself. Its talking points became the worst, most regressive right-wing political platforms and ideas in American history. Since evangelicals could not convert people honestly to their banner, they’d instead force everyone to obey their demands. But they needed to force people’s obedience in a way that wasn’t obviously fundagelical in nature.
Here’s where the magic happens, folks:
They transformed themselves by secularizing their overall political message and goals, which attracted much greater support from people outside their tribe.
A similar secularization had already happened around abortion. Right-wing Christian leaders so successfully divorced religious terminology from forced-birther talking points that a number of atheists embrace them even today! So I’m sure it wasn’t difficult for evangelicals to restate their political goals and values in secular ways. Dysfunctional-authoritarian men can belong to any religion or none, after all, but it’s been downright creepy to watch them set their religious differences aside to agree together that women shouldn’t have human rights or civil liberties.
That’s why it’s almost impossible to guess, these days, if a given ultraconservative guy is a hardline Catholic, a Calvinist evangelical, or an edgelord atheist. The people in these three groups now sound identical to each other. Their reasons for accepting those talking points varies, of course, but their acceptance of them is a given. At the same time, right-wing Christian churches became political clubhouses full of zealots practicing their purity spirals.
The American Republican Party has, by now, been completely captured by right-wing Christianity. I don’t see it getting free anytime soon. The secularization of that end of Christianity is complete. It doesn’t even matter if Christian churches keep emptying and closing. If Christian leaders get the power they want through politics instead, that’s just as good a gravy train.
Why these cutoff dates are so important
There’s a reason why I’ve spent so much time describing the three time periods Renn has categorized as “worlds.”
The evangelicals of each time period were completely different from the others. So was their overall practice and understanding of evangelicalism.
1990s-era evangelicals weren’t anything like the 2000-2014 models. And the 2015-onward models aren’t anything like the first two. They’re completely different crowds with completely different worldviews.
I don’t think a time-traveling evangelical from 1989 would even recognize the sheer lunacy of the tribe in 2025. And I doubt they’d approve. Somehow, modern evangelicals have managed to lap 1990s Pentecostals in sheer unpleasantness and wackadoodlery!
‘Negative world’ isn’t a thing because everyone’s bein’ meaniepies to TRUE CHRISTIANS™ all the time fer jus’ bein’ KRISchin. In truth, nobody cares what any group of Christians believe or why. They’re irrelevant, as well they and their beliefs should be.
No, if modern evangelicals are noticing that normies don’t like them much these days, then they should know that this dislike derives from their own antics. They have made ‘negative world’ for themselves. Through their own behavior, they have created a public reputation that runs completely counter to the way they think of themselves.
At most, modern society doesn’t extend self-styled TRUE CHRISTIANS™ much deference anymore. If that upsets and angers these Christians, then I suggest they read up on privilege distress. It might help them contextualize their feelings a little better. (But then again, this idea challenges their self-image. Whoops! Can’t have that!)
If evangelicals can’t correctly diagnose their problems, they sure won’t be able to fix them
Over the years, I’ve seen a vast number of self-soothing platitudes come out of the right-wing Christ-o-sphere. ‘Negative world’ is simply one of those many attempts. Evangelicals who embrace the notion of ‘negative world’ don’t have to interrogate themselves for their own part in their religion’s decline.
No, no, it’s just persecution, is all. It’s unfair by its very nature. Evangelicals are totally the maligned, innocent victims of ickie meaniepies. Indeed, even though TRUE CHRISTIANS™ know exactly how to run the country, the military, the courts, the presidency, the healthcare and educational systems, and really just in general everyone else’s private lives, everyone else refuses to obey these (self-)Designated Adults.
How very dare we! The audacity!
From there, evangelicals’ beliefs give them a premade framework for understanding why we keep refusing their control grabs. We’re sinful, or we’re infested with demons, or whatever else gives them permission to keep on grabbing till they have it all. Something something the ways of a man seem right to him but lead to something something.
The sheer dysfunction I’m describing here is a big part of why nobody serious gives Christianity even a ghost’s chance of reviving to its former dominance—though Aaron Renn himself thinks that normies will soon gravitate to his flavor of Christianity again simply to access its cultural and political power.
So there you have it. After ten solid years of decline that they’ve been fully aware of, they still can’t even correctly diagnose why it’s happening. Evangelicals’ solution to their flaws is always going to be to keep doing what they’re doing, except harder and more of it. They literally lack the mental tools needed for introspection and course-correction. So they are nowhere near fixing anything.
In its way, that’s good news. I’ll take it.
NEXT UP: Jesus, Jesus, who’s got the Jesus? We’ll find out next time. See you soon! <3
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