It’s been pointed out that some Big Eva types have been dismissive of Renn’s “three worlds” model, including his claim that we turned to negative world around 2014. Why is this? One major reason is that these Big Eva leaders and their failed strategies are precisely why we landed in negative world. If we are now in negative world, it is a judgment on those previous strategies, like the “seeker sensitive” model or the “cultural engagement” strategy. They probably don’t want to admit their failure or complicity in what has happened.
I’ve already said that it is really the church’s negativity towards the lordship of Christ that produced negative world. In some cases, this negativity was underwritten by a novel theology, e.g., dispensationalism. In other cases, it was a matter of privatizing the faith as a way of pursuing respectability and favor in the eyes of the world, e.g., the seeker and engagement models. But whatever, the case it has not worked, and the previous strategies need to be serious critiqued and scrapped where they fall short of what God calls us to do.
Another criticism I have seen comes from those who claim either (a) we have lived in negative world since Genesis 3, so nothing has really changed, or, (b) we have lived in positive world since the resurrection of Jesus and so the “three worlds” model does not do justice his present and unchanging reign. But both of these criticisms miss the point of Renn’s model, at least as I understand it. They both have the effect of flattening out history. It is true that we have had to deal with the fallenness of the world since Genesis 3. Sin is by definition opposed to God and his Word, so the presence of sin means there will be some kind of negativity towards the people of God and their mission. It is also true that Jesus’s resurrection inaugurated his kingdom, and that means the grace of God is always present in the world to counteract sin in positive ways. I can certainly affirm that (in a certain sense) we have lived in positive world since Jesus rose from the dead because his kingdom is growing and will triumph in history as the nations are discipled.
But I do not understand Renn to be denying these realities. What these criticisms miss is that the church’s relationship to culture is dynamic and fluid, not static and fixed. In other words, the church is going to experience varying degrees of positivity or negativity in any given cultural situation, depending on how successful she has been in her mission of discipling the nations at any given moment. Even the negative world we seem to have entered into in America in 2024 looks very positive compared to the status of the church in China, where Christians have never gotten to experience positive world. The “three worlds” model aims to tell a story, to give us a way of understanding what has happened and is happening in the world around us. The different periods, or worlds, are more about a vibe or feel that discrete events. 2024 certainly feels different than 1984 to most American Christians. If there’s a Christian old enough to remember the 80s (or 90s) who does not sense that change, I’d like to talk to him!
Think about Old Testament history. Sometimes Israel enjoyed great positivity, so to speak. They were faithful and flourishing. But then they would fall into sin and suffer judgment. Other gods and other nations would rule over them. Renn’s three worlds model should not be any more problematic than distinguishing the high point of Israel’s monarchy from low points when they sinned (such as in the book of Judges) or when they were carried off to Assyria and Babylon in exile. OT history is not static. Sometimes Israel prospers under God’s hand, other times his hand brings judgment against her. These can be correlated (at least to some degree) with positive and negative worlds. All of this was prophesied by Moses in Dueteronomy 28.
Consider church history as well. The apostolic era until the conversion of Constantine was largely negative world for the church. Christians were persecuted in big and small ways. It was unpopular to be a Christian. To convert often meant dropping to a lower status. There was a heavy price to be paid. But after Constantine professed faith, the Christian church was viewed in more neutral terms. It did not necessarily help to be a believer but it did not hurt you as much as before. Over time, especially after the collapse of the Roman Empire when Christians asserted themselves to pick up the pieces and build a new civilization, the church entered into positive world. The church conquered society as a whole, at least in principle. Christendom was born.
Here’s another test case. Suppose in 100 years, China’s communist order has collapsed and China has largely become a Christian nation (some have predicted this based on current trends). Would anyone think the Chinese Christians crazy if they looked back on the current period of suppression and persecution as a negative time compared to the positive period they later entered into?
Another criticism I have seen is that Renn’s time-frames are too short. How can cultural change happen so quickly, that we could go from positive world, through neutral world, and into negative world, all within a span of about 20 years? But this is simply ignorance of how history works. Cultures can turn on a dime. Revolutions, for good or ill, can happen over night. Just read the book of Judges. Sometimes the people only had rest (= a positive world situation) for twenty years before they fell into a negative world situation. Other times, negative world lasted for twenty years before the people repented and God raised up a judge to re-establish positive world. The ping-ponging of the American culture wars also indicate that the cultural vibe can change very quickly. Think of how much changed into the 1960s (and early 1970s). The same electorate that put Obama in the White House twice turned around and put Trump there. It’s not surprising that observers from other countries often get whiplash watching American politics zig and zag. People are fickle. Especially in an information age, cultures can change direction quickly. Trends and fashions rise and fall at high velocity. Sometimes decades of change get packed into just a few years.
Finally, some have pointed out the various oddities and anomalies that Renn’s scheme creates. For example, according to Renn, prayer got driven out of public schools (making them officially secular and atheistic) while we were still in positive world. The mainline denominations collapsed into liberalism while we were still in positive world. Machen got run out of his denomination while we were still in positive world. On the other hand, Roe got overturned in negative world. How could the greatest political achievement of conservative Christians in decades happen in negative world conditions? These are great questions and I think they do show the limitations of Renn’s paradigm. If we pull back a bit, and look at much larger cultural forces and trends, we might date the start of negative world much earlier — like the French Revolution of 1798 or the ratification of the First Amendment of US Constitution in 1791 (which O’Donovan calls the symbolic end of Christendom since it disestablished the Christian faith at the national level).
But I think this criticism can be answered in another way that saves the paradigm. Renn’s model does not depend on keeping the three worlds separated as air tight compartments. It’s not as if nothing negative happened to the church in positive world. And likewise, it’s not as if nothing positive for the faith can happen in negative world. But events that are foreshadowing what is to come (e.g., outlawing prayer in schools as a portent of a rising secularism) or that represent the last gasp of a dying order (such as Roe being overturned) do not negate the basic shifts that have taken place in our culture. Do not let events that are outliers cause you to miss the forest for the trees. The seeds of negative world were planted long before they bore fruit. The momentum of positive world is still not completely tapped out; as has been said many times, we are living off the spiritual capital our ancestors built up and it is not quite completely depleted.
One last word of encouragement: Negative world is not here to say. Instead of talking about ours as a post-Christian age, I think we should still describe it as a pre-Christian age. Negative world will have to run its course, but at some point (if it has not already happened), the progressives will overplay their hand. A conservative and Christian snap-back will take place. I’m not saying I will live to see it (though I might!), but I am still confident it will happen. Some are already forecasting that the young, rising generation is and will be the most conservative generation in a long, long time. The ideas of the left are so dumb, so out of touch with reality, that they cannot sustain themselves. In the long run, stupidity never works. Communism in the USSR collapsed and wokeness will collapse in the US as well. We best be preparing for the rebuild right now. In Vashal Mangalwaldi’s tome The Book that Made Your World, he recounts the low ebb that Britain sank to in the 18th century. The church had largely apostatized. The universities were bastions of anti-Christian bigotry. Sexual perversion, including prostitution, homosexuality, and transvestism were rampant. There was widespread economic corruption, drug abuse, and alcoholism. There was a massive slave trade protected by law. But then God acted. He raised up the Wesleys, Whitefield, and host of other gospel preachers to thunder his Word. He raised up Wilberforce. What became known as the Great Awakening revitalized Great Britain and then colonial America. The Great Awakening not only transformed culture, extending the power and dominance of the British Empire, ending the slave trade, and empowering the colonists to form the United States, it also produced the greatest global missionary movement in history. Another Great Awakening is on the way and it will overrun the Great Awokening.
A final question: Many are saying we have entered a post-liberal age. In many ways post-liberalism correlates with negative world. Post-liberals basically argue that the liberalism enshrined in the American constitution (however “liberalism” is defined) is now dead. The Constitution was designed for a virtuous and religious people (as our founders told us) and now that we are no longer virtuous and religious, it can only be a dead letter. As Christopher Caldwell has demonstrated, we have abandoned the Constitution for a rolling civil rights revolution that steamrolls everything that would stand in its way. One of the challenges of negative world for American Christians is this: What do you do when your Constitutional system is no longer functional? The premise of the Constitutional order is that we would be governed by laws, not men. But now those laws are rooted in nothing more than the demented secular dreams of depraved perverts. The principles of the Constitution are no longer functioning as designed. This is the political challenge of negative world. Figuring out an answer is crucial to our future.
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