Book Review: "Life in the Negative World" by Aaron Renn

If you’re a new reader of my blog, I may need to give you an autobiographical heads up - I’m a reader.¹ This entry will begin a three-part series which will include three book reviews:

1. A book seeking to explain how Christians should interpret and involve themselves in culture

2. A book magnifying the beauty and dignity of relationships in our occupations - which urges us to answer the question, "Knowing what I know, what will I do about it?”

3. A book that sheds light - uncomfortably so - on many of evangelicalism’s most recognizable names and asks whether they have “sold out” to a well-orchestrated influence scheme from secular sources.

I’d encourage you to subscribe so that you won’t miss the next two books!

Life in the Negative Word by Aaron Renn

This is a book I’d seen recommended on Twitter by several pastors I follow. It was probably the one I was most curious about and wound up most disappointed in.

“For the first time in the four-hundred year history of this country, society now disfavors Christianity.” (41)

This bold assertion and our anecdotal verifications of it (things just “feel” off these days) is the hinge upon which the book swings. Garber looks back in history and similar to other culture students identifies three approaches that Christians have had to relating with culture. He calls them:

1. Culture warriors. (think the Religious Right, Moral Majority, and even the Tea Party movement) Adherents to this posture/strategy of relating with culture strive against it.

2. Seeker sensitive advocates. (think Rick Warren with Saddleback Community Church, Bill Hybels with Willow Creek Community Church) Adherents to this posture/strategy of relating with culture stepped into culture. They sought to be relevant and attractive to the culture, bringing secular and business models of organization, engagement and entertainment into the church into to be sensitive to those supposedly “seeking” religious answers.

3. Cultural engagement model. (Think urban churches like Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC and Hillsong Church in L.A.) Adherents to this posture/strategy of relating with culture strive joined the culture in attempt to “fix” or address some of the culture’s problems (racism, poverty, climate change, etc)

Garber builds his book on the chronological narrative that Christianity in the U.S. used to have a positive image (1964-1994), then was sidelined into a more neutral image (1994-2014) and that today (ala the title of the book), we are living in a negative world (2014-present).

The rest of the book offers… honestly vague suggestions for how to “live in the negative world.” Topical headlines in his chapter “Strategies for Living in the Negative World” are things like:

• Thinking like an explorer

• Living as a moral minority

The next three chapters are three "Be’s” - become obedient, become excellent and become resilient. While the chapter on obedience offers some strong reminders that the church must be distinctive from our culture in behavior, it was too short. Just as it got “good,” the author moved on the next chapter.

The book itself seems like a long blog entry (which makes some sense since it began as a magazine article.² I would recommend that rather than the book.

Read or not?

The book really hinges on whether we’d agree with the author’s overall synopsis - that our culture is opposed to the church now, and Christians in America should accept the lost influence, create insular communities and alternative, self-sustaining modes of surviving what’s coming. In this vein, Renn seemed to echo many of the claims of Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. In that book, Dreher said:

“Rather than wasting energy and resources fighting unwinnable political battles, we should instead work on building communities, institutions, and networks of resistance that can outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the occupation.” (12)

I appreciated Trevin Wax’s review of The Benedict Option and think it could also summarize my feelings toward Garber’s book:

“We sense the world wobbling a little more than usual these days, but that should lead us to a recommitment to Christian mission. The fundamental posture of the Christian should be missionary, not monastic.”³

I thought Renn got some things really right in this book, but his overall assessments missed the mark. It’s only deep into the book that we learn that he based his observations on his limited experience working for a “thinktank.”

“I am neither a political scientist nor a political theologian. I have five years’ experience working for a major conservative thinktank, though, so I do know the conservative political world.” (194)

That announcement felt a bit like a recent college graduate professing, “I just spent four years in college, so I do know the academic world.”

Still, as I said, Renn had some good things to offer. There are just other books that tackle Christianity and culture with more to offer. While his framework of positive-neutral-negative is thought-provoking, I think it failed to account for the biblical reality that Christians have always been told to expect to live in a negative world. It’s nothing new. Jesus said:

“You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33)

Peter reminded us:

“Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you.” (1 Peter 4:12)

John chimed in:

“Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.” (1 John 3:13)

It should be the posture of every Christian to learn to live as a missionary in their own culture. That doesn’t mean withdrawal with a “hunker-down; build-it-better” mentality. Jesus was clear. Go and make disciples. That means involvement. And it means redemption-transformation of what was bad into what is beautiful. It’s what Jesus did with us.

1. Visit my post on last year’s books I read. I promise you’ll be find at least one to add to your reading list!

2. The Benedict Option: Good Strategy, Bad Posture, by Trevin Wax (The Gospel Coalition: March 20, 2017)

3. The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism, by Aaron Renn (First Things, February 2022)