[A version of this article will appear in The Federalist soon.]
Can you feel it? The winds have shifted. The vibe has shifted. Suddenly all the cultural momentum is on the right. That doesn’t mean it will stay shifted; culture is fickle, and it could shift back leftward at some point. The vibe shift does not mean we have completely escaped what Aaron Renn has called “negative world” – that remains to be seen. But, for the moment, the cultural vibe has definitely shifted right, and the end of that rightward shifting is not in sight. While I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, it feels more like this is the beginning of a longer term shift than a fleeting momentary one. No one ever gets to declare final victory in the American culture wars, because the culture wars never end, but for the first time in a long time, the right is going forth conquering and to conquer. We need to enjoy our victories and build off of them.
What is the vibe shift? And how did it happen? The vibe shift is a reversal of the Great Awokening that made radical leftism and progressivism the dominant cultural force in recent years. The vibe shift is a rejection of the left’s delusions (e.g., transgenderism) and of wokeness. The vibe shift is a return to reality, to normalcy, to tradition, to civilization. The vibe shift is a rejection of racial identity politics, critical theory, and cultural Marxism. The vibe shift means doing away with DEI and the “longhouse,” which made everyone feel like the entire culture was under the oversight of an HR department full of Karens. The vibe shift means a renewed appreciation for masculinity, for working with one’s hands, for large families, and for physical health. For many, it means a return to church and Christian faith. It’s a call back to the particularities of localism and nationalism, and so a shift away from the faceless globalism and multiculturalism that were being foisted on us. The vibe shift is a rejection of the progressive gaze so many were living under until recently. The vibe shift has brought with it a renewed courage to speak the truth in the public square without compromise or apology.
Signs of the vibe shift are all around us. The rise of Donald Trump has been instrumental in shifting the vibe, even though Trump himself is not particularly conservative, much less Christian. Trump paved the way for the vibe shift because his populist instincts recognized how much of the country was growing restless under the thumb of the left and was ready for a change. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (now X) was also instrumental. It broke the left’s stranglehold on media and gave conservatives a true free speech platform. While X is a cess pool at times, it has become a culture-wide gathering place where conservatives and Christians can speak without fear of censorship or cancellation. Other signs of the vibe shift are popping up, including an upsurge in church attendance (especially on the part of young men) and a rise in patriotism. The incredible popularity of figures like Charlie Kirk over the last few years also signaled the vibe shift – and Kirk’s martyrdom could be the catalyst that powers the vibe shift to reverberate for decades to come.
For more evidence of the vibe shift, consider what we’ve seen in the aftermath of Kirk’s tragic murder. Vice President J. D. Vance gave a stirring tribute to Kirk, in which he recited both the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. It was the most explicit and theologically detailed declaration of Christian faith by a top level political executive in America in my lifetime. This was not a vague reference to a nameless higher power or to religion in general or to a privatized faith. It was an explicitly public Christian confession and Vance owned it. Vance presented the gospel, summarized in the language of the Nicene Creed, as public truth. To put it bluntly, the seeds of Christian nationalism that have been planted in recent years are starting to sprout. They are not in full bloom yet, of course, but spring is in the air. Vance 2028 anyone?
Further, not long after Vance’s very public declaration of Christian faith, late night “entertainer” Jimmy Kimmel got cancelled for lying about the shooter who took Kirk’s life. Kimmel intentionally misled his audience about the political allegiances of Kirk’s killer and, as a result got fired. It’s hard to imagine that kind of accountability for a major leftwing figure even just two years ago. Likewise, many men and women who openly mocked Kirk after his death got fired from their jobs. That would have been virtually unthinkable just a few years ago. Even the NFL, usually a bastion of idiotic woke slogans and political correctness, saw many franchises take a moment to honor Kirk before games last weekend. And now, to top it all off, Trump is bringing law and order to deep blue inner cities and has declared Antifa a terrorist organization (which, of course, it is). The wins keep coming.
The vibe shift is full of encouraging lessons Christians and conservatives should take to heart. Let’s take stock of what has happened. In January, 2021, things looked quite bleak. Biden’s suspicious victory was confirmed, the January 6 protest turned into a disaster for conservatives, and it looked like progressivism’s rolling revolution would keep steamrolling all of us. Christians and conservatives could have easily thrown in the towel and swallowed the black pill. We could have waved the white flag of surrender in the culture war. Instead, we did something I don’t think the left really expected: We fought back. We fought back hard. And we fought to win, even though it looked like a lost cause. We have lived out that wonderful line from G. K. Chesterton: “The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle – and not lose it.” That’s what we’ve done: everything looked lost, we fought back anyway, and we found that we really can turn our country around.
Yes, there is a lot more work to be done. We’re only in the beginning stages of what needs to be accomplished. Every victory in the culture war is fragile, so let no man boast. Our nation is still a long way from where we need to be. But this is the point: just when it looked like the culture war was over, and the left could declare total victory, the right staged an astounding comeback. This chapter of our nation’s story will make exciting fodder for historians in the future. The right was a heavy underdog, but pulled off a huge upset. Who knows what the future holds, but there are countless reasons for optimism right now.
The political right as it exists in America today is far from perfect. Every political movement has its flaws and its riffraff (see, e.g., David’s band of outlaws who joined his movement in the wilderness in 1 Samuel 22). That’s true of our movement too. But the quality of leadership, the widespread respect for the Bible and the church, and the kind of cultural/political discussions taking place on the right (like overturning Obergefell and outlawing porn) are in sharp contrast to the explicit “celebration” of perversion and the total lack of leadership in the Democratic Party. The differences really could not be more stark. The left has no vision for the country. They have no love for America and her heritage. They want to drive God and prayer out of public life. The left is all about promoting sexual deviance and the coming climate catastrophe. It’s all about accusing normal, decent people of being racists and bigots and fascists. It’s all about advocating for the most shallow form of racial identity politics and the divisiveness of cultural Marxism. It’s all about government-run grocery stores (like that’s never been tried!) and the willingness to use political violence, including mobs, riots, and shootings (Kavanaugh, Scalise, Trump, Kirk, etc.). The left claims to be side of peace, tolerance, and open-mindedness — but this is just one more example of how the left inverts reality. In truth, the left is prone to violence, hatred, and ideological dogmatism. The left is the party of death (60 million abortions and counting) and darkness of mind (not even knowing what a woman is). The left analyzes every relationship through a Marxist lens that always finds a guilty oppressor and an innocent victim; thus, the left is always perverting justice. This is why many people have realized that the left simply cannot and must not be trusted with political power ever again. It’s simply too dangerous. The two sides of the political spectrum are further apart than at any time in our nation’s history (including the War Between the States, when at least both sides professed to worship the same God).
But the contrast of right vs left is not the only contrast worth noting. The right of 2025 is siginifcantly different from the right of previous generations – and this is really the key to the vibe shift. Yesterday’s right settled for participation trophies. Today’s right fights back – and fights to win. This is why I think today’s right is so much more potent than in the past. We are better historically informed, more widely grounded in the Christian faith, and more willing to actually fight back instead of getting steered and manipulated by the left’s false accusations. And now that left’s name-calling is no longer working, the total lack of substance on the left is being fully exposed. The left is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Meanwhile, the right has a treasure of riches from which to draw. The left has no real viable leadership; the right has both stars and a deep bench.
Charlie Kirk deserves a lot of credit for the vibe shift that has taken place, especially among young men. Kirk’s ministry and martyrdom likely cemented a whole generation of men to the right. Kirk’s role in the 2024 election cannot be overstated. Kirk is a perfect illustration of how the right has become resilient and savvy. What I appreciated most about Kirk is that he presented a fully integrated worldview at just the time when many Big Eva-type leaders were telling us we needed to go silent on political/culture war issues for the sake of evangelism. Kirk took the opposite approach, constantly mixing evangelism and politics, and it paid huge dividends. He proved that fighting the culture war and evangelizing the lost go hand in hand. He used culture war issues to gain a platform for the gospel. He showed how the Christian faith coherently answers not just the “How do I get my sins forgiven?” question, but all the other major cultural and political questions of our day. He could move seamlessly from talking about Jesus as the only way of salvation to talking about the importance of marriage and the wisdom of the second amendment. In Kirk’s on-campus apologetics, as well as in his life, everything was integrated under Christ’s lordship. May God give us more like him. I trust the he will. And if he does, the vibe will keep shifting.
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