First Things Podcast The Evangelical Elite Gap (ft. Aaron Renn)
9 snips
Feb 5, 2026 Aaron Renn, author and cultural commentator, argues evangelical Christians lack a cohesive elite in key institutions. He maps where evangelicals are underrepresented and why institutional distrust and biblicist tendencies matter. He discusses reviving prestige congregations, vocational ambition, and practical pathways for talented young evangelicals to enter leadership. Conversations cover history, culture, and concrete advice.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Evangelical Elite Largely Absent
- Aaron Renn observes there is no coherent evangelical elite occupying high-status cultural institutions today.
- Evangelicals are numerically large but underrepresented in universities, media, finance, and other high-leverage sectors.
Success In Profit, Not Cultural Power
- Evangelicals succeed electorally and in business but mostly in low cultural-leverage industries.
- That leaves them with profit but little influence over culture-shaping institutions like Google or major media.
Loss Of Protestant Intellectual Resources
- Modern evangelicalism is strongly biblicist and disconnected from historical Protestant social thought.
- This severs access to rich traditions of civic ideas that produced major progressive-era reforms.
