“Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”
– C.S. Lewis
Aaron Renn developed a helpful paradigm for understanding the changing landscape of American culture over the last few generations: we have moved from positive world (where being a Christian was socially advantageous) to neutral world (where being a Christian neither helped nor hurt) to negative world (where it’s a liability to be a Christian).
I suggest that, post Kirk’s martyrdom, we are in polarized world. In polarized world, there is no middle ground, culturally or politically. The antithesis is sharper and clearer. The “third way” (which was tailored to neutral world, and already exposed as bankrupt in negative world) is dead. Whether or not being a Christian is advantageous or a liability in polarized world largely depends on where you work, where you live, etc. Polarized world means coming to grips with the fact that there is very little, if anything, that holds America together as a people. The legal bonds are still there, making us one nation, but everything (literally everything!) is contested. There are two Americas and even if you don’t really want to pick a side, you will have to sooner or later. In polarized world, we cannot agree on some of the most basic, fundamental realities of life, like “what is a nation?,” “what is a marriage?,” “what is a family?,” and most famously, “what is a woman?” Reality itself is at the heart of this polarization. There is no way to compromise or negotiate over the things that divide us. There will be a winner and a loser. Polarization explodes the myth of neutrality – and since secularism was largely built on that myth, it changes the rules of the game. Secularism will no longer simply be assumed; it will have to argued for, which most secularists are not prepared to do.
The polarization is not just religious and political; it is also largely geographic. In terms of raw numbers, using the last election as a real but imperfect proxy, America is pretty evenly split. In some places, it feels a lot like we are back in positive world, but in other places, negative world has intensified into ultra-negative world.
Polarized world is also social media driven. People will more and more live in their own algorithm-driven social media bubble. The result is that people will have fewer and fewer human interactions with those on the other end of the political polarization – making it easier to dehumanize their opponents. This is a feature of polarized world Christians will have to carefully navigate. We are called both to love enemies and speak truth to sinners – unfortunately, in polarized world, speaking the truth about the issues of the day, no matter how shaped by love, no matter how humbly that truth is delivered, will be experienced as hate by the other side, producing even more polarization. The right and left already speak different languages and live in different (virtual) realities; polarized world will intensify this divide.
In polarized world, what Christians think of as the culture war and the spiritual war will collapse into one another almost completely. Christians will use (rightly in my view) demonic language to describe much of what they are up against.
The biggest question might be what will happen to young men and women in polarized world. Men and women have been moving apart from one another quite rapidly, politically and culturally. The “great sort” now has a gender component, with men becoming more conservative (and Christian), while women become more progressive and feminist. More young men than young women attend church regularly, which is an unprecedented development in modern history. Somehow, the gender divide must be bridged – but how?
It seems likely that with the collapse of the soft middle, the so-called complementarian way of looking at relations between the sexes will die out. Renn has already predicted complementarianism (which was always a compromise position) will be eclipsed when the Boomers fade away. The two viable options for understanding intersexual dynamics in polarized world will be Christian patriarchy and feminist egalitarianism. One advantage that patriarchalists have is that they simply have more children – and the future belongs to the fertile. But in order for Christian patriarchalists to outbreed their political opponents, they will have to keep their children in the faith – and that means securing for their children a consistently Christian education. Look for a continued rise in private Christian schools and homeschools as the leftwing, Marxist nature of public education becomes more and more apparent even to those conservatives who have their heads buried in the sand. But this means that in polarized world, education will become an even bigger political battleground than it is right now.
Polarized world means liberalism as we have known it is over. We are now officially post-liberal. We no longer have any cultural consensus on what things like free speech mean. Of course, post-liberal Christians want to (or should want to) preserve the best features of classical liberalism, which was quite different from modern liberalism, and much more compatible with biblical faith. But modern liberalism is obviously broken and cannot be sustained or fixed. This presents a great opportunity for the church. Modern liberalism marginalized the church, even as it privatized religion. Public religion – specifically Christian faith, in light of Charlie Kirk’s memorial service – is now coming back and will play a much bigger role in political debates in polarized world. Look for more and more politicians on the right to be outspoken about their Christian convictions and more willing to use make explicit use of the Bible in their policy formation. All of this also means the church can play a much bigger role; indeed, if the church in America was not so fractured, it would already be playing a bigger role. My expectation is not that denominations per se will go away, but conservative and engaged Christians will band together across denominational lines more than in the past because the stakes are just too high to not act as co-belligerents in the cultural battles we face going forward. The progressive left obviously needs to regroup, but it has not been defeated and is not going away. Indeed, the real battle for America is just now getting underway.
Polarized world will not be friendly to secular, Christless versions of conservatism. Yes, some of the biggest names in conservatism right now are of the secular variety. There is no doubt that crass “bar stool conservatism” helped propel Trump to electoral victory. Christless conservatives see themselves as the guardians of common sense and reason; they at least know which bathroom people should use. But Christless conservativism does not have a strong enough foundation to build anything lasting, and doesn’t have the cultural weaponry needed to actually defeat progressive Marxism. Christless conservatives can join forces with conservative Christians, but expect Christian voices to more and more dominate the right end of the political spectrum. Charlie Kirk himself is a good illustration of this – as he became more mature and serious in his Christian faith, his voice was amplified in reach and effectiveness. The “faith” division of TPUSA became the most prominent part of the organization precisely because it could give better answers than the faith-less conservatism that TPUSA was known for in its early days. Further, consistent Christians are finding their political voice more and more, of necessity, which means more Christians are going to be engaging these kinds of public debates than in past generations. Christians are becoming general equity theonomists, not necessarily for well-thought out theological and exegetical reasons, but out of instinct.
Polarized world also means we have not seen the last of political violence. The glee from so many on the left after Kirk was killed is sickening, but also revealing. Political violence is built into the DNA of the left and it is now manifesting itself as the left becomes more epistemologically self-conscious. Of course, the more violence we get from BLM, Antifa, and leftwing vigilantes, the more the polarization will intensify. The left shows no signs of toning down its heated rhetoric vs. political opponents. It’s a well known fact there are far more psychologically unstable people on the left; indeed, leftism itself may be considered a kind of mental illness. This will become more and more of a factor in polarized world. We need to keep in mind that despite recent electoral and cultural defeats, the left still has a wealth of accumulated cultural capital that it will not easily relinquish. Cultural Marxists still control the university, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and most inner cities. These will continue to be breeding grounds for leftwing politics for the foreseeable future, even if these institutions do not have the same power as in past decades.
In polarized world, one thing to keep an eye on is the uneasy alliance between progressives and hardcore Islam. Progressives and Islam are on opposite sides of many issues (e.g., they have very different views of women). Progressives have given Islam a pass, as seen in the Muslim take over of Dearborn, MI and Minneapolis changing noise ordinances to accommodate Islam (you can be assured the same allowances would never be made for the ringing of church bells). Muslims are getting more and more outspoken about their desire to implement Sharia law and ultimately take over America. The one thing that has bound progressives Muslims together is a shared hatred for biblical Christian faith and its heritage in Western civilization. Progressives have given Islam free reign because Muslims are considered an exotic and oppressed group; adopting Muslims in their political coalition has been an intersectional move. But assuming Islam continues to grow and gain traction in various places in the US, progressives will find Islam increasingly hostile to them. But when that breaking point is hit, it is unlikely that progressives will have the backbone to stand up to Islam. That means polarized world could give way to a Christian vs. Muslim showdown in the West. This scenario may be somewhat unlikely in the US, simply because Muslims are still a long way from a numerical tipping point. But in places like the UK, it is not a distant reality. If and when Muslims come to control the UK, the globe will have its first Muslim run nation with nuclear warheads, and geopolitical realities will shift dramatically.
Faithful pastors need to think hard about how to minister most effectively in polarized world – and the details will likely depend on where they live. The seeker-sensitive approach, the “faithful presence” approach, “third-waysim,” the “gospel-centered” paradigm (which was really the “gospel-only” or the “gospel-bounded” paradigm), etc. models no longer work. They were already out of date in negative world anyway. In polarized world, my hunch is most faithful pastors will look more Charlie Kirk or Doug Wilson than Tim Keller or David Platt – they will be clear, blunt, confrontational, and will move seamlessly from talking about the gospel to its social and political applications. Pastors who do not want to talk about “culture war” issues will seem irrelevant, out of date, and out of touch. Pastors who do not like confrontation with the culture will have a much harder time because pastoral ministry will require a new level of courage – especially in those places that are on the pole that opposes Christian faith (the blue parts of the electoral map). The response in those places will look a lot like what Paul got in the book of Acts – riots and mob violence, even arrests, were common most everywhere he preached. Violent persecution is on the table. It’s time to buckle up because polarized world will not be easy. Churches in more faith-friendly locales may need to help support churches in more hostile areas, almost as if the latter were foreign missionaries.
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