The Aaron Renn Show

In 2013 Bill Hybels foretold a looming succession crisis for churches. He ended up being more right than he knew. He observed that there had been an explosion of mega-churches, many still led by a founding pastor approaching retirement age.His prophecy has very much come true. Not only did his own succession not go well, we've seen several succession plans unravel recently. John Piper's successor at Bethlehem Baptist recently resigned. There are pastoral searches underway for two of the three major locations at the spin off churches of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. And the challenges facing David Platt and McLean Bible Church likely also have some roots in succession.There are three major models of succession: the internal successor, the external peer successor, and the unofficial interim. In this podcast I discuss these models, as well as other considerations of succession.  Given high profile succession challenges we've seen at churches run by world class leaders, this is an area requiring significant attention. Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

The media glamorizes people making the choice to defer marriage and children in order to focus on other priorities like career. While this is a free country and people absolutely have the right to live their lives how they want, the longer term consequences of this for many is not as well advertised. The proliferation of older singles in the pews is in part a downstream consequence of these decisions. The church should not simply become an underwriter of other people's choices to live life on their own terms. While the church absolutely be adjusting to the new realities of more singles in congregations, it should also make sure the role of individual choice in how people ended up where they are is fully acknowledged. And people should be challenged to make different choices going forward.I also look back at a famous sermon on abuse by Jason Meyer, the successor to superstar evangelical John Piper as senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Blog post on Jason Meyer's sermon: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/bethlehem-baptist-churchs-jason-meyerText and video of Jason Meyer's sermon: https://bethlehem.church/sermon/fooled-by-false-leadership/NYT article on deferring marriage:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/declining-birthrate-motherhood.htmlSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

It's been 70 years since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of spying for the Soviets and sentenced to death.  The left continues to discuss this case and argue that the Rosenbergs (or at least Ethel) were victims of injustice. We can learn patterns of left-wing behavior from observing this case, including that they are relentless and never give up, that they are loyal, and that they use ever shifting rhetoric that often "disguises their power levels."  I discuss these patterns and then apply them to show how we might expect the sexuality debates in the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) to play out over time (in part).Links to articles about the Rosenberg case.London Review of Books: How Utterly Depraved - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n13/deborah-friedell/how-utterly-depraved NYT: The Rosenbergs, 50 Years Later; Yes, They Were Guilty. But of What Exactly?  - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/weekinreview/nation-rosenbergs-50-years-later-yes-they-were-guilty-but-what-exactly.html The Guardian: The Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. Can their sons reveal the truth?  - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/rosenbergs-executed-for-spying-1953-can-sons-reveal-truth NPR Boston: Why Ethel Rosenberg Should Not Be Exonerated - https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/01/05/julius-rosenberg-soviet-spying-mark-kramerWikipedia: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_RosenbergSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Conservatives and Christians are very enamored of classical education. Studying the classics, the American founding, etc. are important things to do.  But there are other important areas that people living in today's world. These items, including intersexual dynamics, the impact of industrialization, the revolution in scale, and the implications of mass media are often understudied. This leaves conservatives with key blind spots.This episode also includes further thoughts on playing for keeps and whether or not pastors should use packaged sermons, research assistants, or other help. Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Darren Beattie once noted that "there is a profound psychological gulf between playing for scraps and playing for keeps."  This podcast is a short discussion of how people on the left play for keeps while too often conservatives seem to be playing for scraps. Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

People on the internet throw the term "red pilled" around a lot. It obviously derives from the film the Matrix. But how should we think about the term and what it means? I discuss in using the examples of the statistics I've highlighted about how women initiate around 70% of divorces, doomsday cults, the Matrix, and Plato's Republic. To be red pilled involves some sort of painful disconnecting from beliefs that have shaped our reality or identity. This is difficult to do, which is why we need to think as much about how we deliver information as what information we are delivering.Subscribe to my newsletter:  https://www.aaronrenn.com/

In this final podcast installment looking at the fall of the old WASP establishment, we'll compare sociologist E. Digby Baltzell's conservative defense of organic social hierarchy with today's movement conservative that rejects social distinctions.Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

This episode looks at the implications of the fall of the WASP establishment by looking at the life and career of J. Irwin Miller, a WASP industrialist whose commitment to and investment in his town of Columbus, Indiana helped make it the Rust Belt city that never rusted. The town never went into decline and remains a top architectural destination in the United States due to Miller's leadership.Miller was also an important national figure. The first lay leader of the National Council of Churches, an advocate for the Civil Rights Act, a leader in divestment from South Africa over Apartheid, and board member of AT&T, Yale, the Ford Foundation, and the Museum of Modern Art.Recognizing his caliber of leadership, Esquire magazine featured Miller on its cover with the caption, "This man ought to be the next president of the United States."Miller's life illustrates a tradition of leadership and community service that's largely disappeared in the wake of the collapse of the establishment.The Atlantic (written by me): The Rust Belt Didn't Have to Happen - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/the-rust-belt-didnt-have-to-happen/603523/Esquire: Is it too late for a man of honesty, high purpose, and intelligence to be elected President of the United States in 1968? - https://classic.esquire.com/article/1967/10/1/is-it-too-late-for-a-man-of-honesty-high-purpose-and-intelligence-to-be-elected-president-of-the-uniNancy Kriplen: J. Irwin Miller: The Shaping of an American Town - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0253043816/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Conservatives today bemoan the fact that men no longer behave as gentlemen. Yet their exhortations on the topic are without effect. E. Digby Baltzell's writings on the American upper class shed light on this decline of the gentleman. He notes that an upper class establishment, as American had until the 1960s, made the social, moral, and behavioral codes of the upper class normative, or at least aspirational for society at large. The end of the establishment meant that those standards also went out the window.It's also the case that the gentleman's code as we understand it was a product of the Anglo-American upper class and especially the Victorian era. It was not universal. This period had organic social hierarchy, patriarchal families, and significant restrictions on female behavior, all of which those who argue men should behave like the gentlemen of that era reject.The largely Boomer social conservatives bleating about being a gentleman should be ignored. Instead, we as men should start thinking about the social norms that we want to have in our groups in the 21st century.Rediscovering E. Digby Baltzell's Sociology of Elites: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/rediscovering-e-digby-baltzells-sociology-of-elites/Trad Cons Are the Enemy of the American Man: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/tradcons-are-the-enemy-of-the-americanThe End of the Gentleman: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-end-of-the-gentlemanSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

This episode in my series on the historic Protestant Establishment in the United States looks at the role the collapse of that establishment played in many of the dysfunctions of our age. These include the erosion of political norms, the decline of the gentleman, the fading away of the ethos of "fair play," the rise of charismatic politicians like Trump, and the decline of trust in institutions.Rediscovering E. Digby Baltzell's Sociology of Elites: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/rediscovering-e-digby-baltzells-sociology-of-elites/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/