The Aaron Renn Show

The American conservative movement was founded by people who were largely socially outside the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment of America at the time. William F. Buckely's book God and Man and Yale and the reaction to it cannot be understood without looking at this social dimension. He was an Irish Catholic criticizing the citadel of the Protestant Establishment that had graciously allowed him in the door.  At the same time, the conservative movement was also unrepresentative of its current voting base of Evangelicals.The Christian side of conservative intellectualism has always been heavily Catholic dominated, from William F. Buckley at its founding to people like Ross Douthat today. The large number of people within conservative intellectual circles that are Catholic converts (both historically and today) attests to the normative status of Catholicism within the conservative movement. Evangelicals, while constituting perhaps the largest and most loyal voting block within conservatism, have never played a material role in its leadership, particularly at the intellectual level. When Evangelical leaders or voters have asserted themselves (as in the person of Pat Robertson in the 1980s or by supporting Trump today), the incumbent conservative establishment has frequently been appalled. Conservatism's social origins and continued existence on the social margins helps explain its lack of cultural success in the country. And the social difference between the Catholic dominated intellectual leadership class and the Protestant dominated voting base with different preferences is a key fault line that enabled Trump's victory. The fact that the conservative elite are a leadership group without a natural constituency in the country is a big challenge for them in a post-Trump world.  For Evangelicals, their lack of input at the leadership level of conservative intellectualism is a key reason they need to rewrite their relationship with the conservative movement and Republican Party.Links:First Things on  Samuel Francis: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/the-outsider Michael Lind's "resignation letter" from conservatism: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/pdfs/lind.pdfHow the WASPs betrayed the country to communism: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/18/weekinreview/witching-hour-rethinking-mccarthyism-if-not-mccarthy.htmlSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Many if not most conservatives in the United States have very little idea where the conservative movement originated and how it developed. This episode provides an extremely condensed summary of the founding of conservatism in the wake of World War II, as well as a bit about its history since then. Key points include:·      American conservatism is a modern political movement with postwar origins. It does not extend back to the founding, Edmund Burke, etc.·      Contrary to its stated commitment to timeless principles, the beliefs of conservatism have continuously and even radically changed over time. ·      Conservatism was originally a tiny movement of people on the margins who achieved successes that were probably inconceivable to their founders. ·      Conservatism was originally separate from the Republican Party, then one faction within, and now today has become indistinguishable from it. The Republican Party is monolithically conservative today.·      Social conservatives, as we understand the term today, were not originally part of the conservative movement and joined it much later in the 1970s and 80s. Further reading for those interested in the history of conservatism:George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (considered the canonical history of the movement up through the mid-1970s)George Hawley, Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism  (written by a University of Alabama professor)Paul Gottfried, Conservatism in America (the "loser's history" from a paleoconservative, written on an academic press).Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Evangelical Protestants and socially conservative Catholics have been among the most loyal voting blocks for the Republican Party. The electoral base of the Republican Party is increasingly non-college educated, middle to working class whites.  Yet it does very little for either of these constituencies in terms of delivering on their policy preferences. Instead, the Republican Party, its donor class, and its movement conservative intellectuals largely have their own set of preferences. These are not necessarily bad or nefarious preferences, but they are out of sync with the preferences of the voting base of the Republican Party. They utilize that voting base to achieve political power but predominantly for the purpose of implementing their own agenda.  Quite frequently, they actually betray their voters. A few even seem to hate the actual people who vote for their party.This episode kicks off a series examining conservatism and the Republican Party, its history, and dynamics that  few Christians actually understand. Bill Kristol on Immigrants Being Better than Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zks6WK1HsokRoss Douthat on conservative manipulation of populism: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/opinion/campaign-stops/what-the-rights-intellectuals-did-wrong.htmlNYT on racial slurs and the University of Tennessee: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.htmlHorrific Indianapolis rental housing: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2019/06/27/ex-fox-friends-host-clayton-morris-partner-bert-whalen-got-rich-tenants-lived-horrible/1351737001/Findings from nursing home investigation: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2020/12/31/indiana-nursing-homes-takeaways-indystars-investigation/6545944002/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Too many Christians today evince an attitude of hopelessness and despair. Such attitudes can drain your morale and make it likely that you will preemptively surrender or sell out your posterity without a fight. It's very important that the Christian avoid hopelessness and not give in to the counsels of despair. While we should be realistic in our diagnostics, we should also understand that expected help or even victory can come from quarters we never expected.The Last Christian Generation: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/final-christian-generation-jeremiah/Westminster Larger Catechism Q129: https://www.opc.org/lc.htmlTweet regarding Nick Kristof and porn: https://twitter.com/aaron_renn/status/1337191256431144965The superiority of the tit for tat strategy: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/axelrod.htmlSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Liberal groups have always treated non-incumbent conservative positions as illegitimate. Thus they do not substantively engage with them, debate or engage with their practitioners, provide platforms or space in their publications, etc. Conservatives, by contrast, frequently give respectful hearings to liberal views, engage in substantive debates, etc. They fail to appreciate that even engaging with heterodox views in order to refute them bestows a kind of legitimacy on them. If those ideas ever achieve supremacy, however, conservatives will soon find that their own long held views will be deemed illegitimate. All debate and engagement will be ended.We should be very thoughtful about how we engage with opponents and situations in order to avoid accidentally legitimizing the illegitimate.John Piper, "Prayers Cause Things": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krzwmhDMvv8Rod Dreher on Dialogue: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-orthodox-left-wails-schmemann-lecture-orthodoxy-rod-dreher/On Sam Nunberg's drunk TV interviews: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/former-trump-adviser-says-screw-mueller-subpoena-in-intense

The most consequential conservative Protestant victory of the last 100 years was likely the battle to expel liberal theology from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Concordia Seminary was the center of modernist theology in the LCMS, and its faculty ignored numerous denominational resolutions against their position. When a newly elected conservative leadership in the denomination suspended Concordia Seminary's president, 90% of the faculty and most of the students walked out. The LCMS let them go and rebuilt the seminary from nearly nothing. The liberals created their own institution, the Concordia Seminary in Exile, or Seminex, which failed after only about a decade. Also, 200 liberal congregations left the LCMS and created a new, liberal denomination that ultimately merged with today's Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.In this battle, the opposite of every similar episode to date, the conservatives won and the liberals departed, leaving the LCMS the conservative denomination we know today. This battle was a key inspiration for the similar conservative resurgence effort in the SBC.Rather than studying institutional losers like Gresham Machen, today's conservative Christians would be better served to study examples like Seminex where conservatives actually won.The Concordia-Seminex Affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeminexSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Conservatives have long tended to underestimate the value of institutions, and to get out maneuvered by liberals in institutional battles. As a result, it's usually conservatives who exit from institutions in order to form new ones. But because nothing has changed with them, their new institutions frequently undergo a reprise of the same problems that plagued the original ones they left.The proposed United Methodist Church split is a good example of conservative thinking on institutions. Although the conservatives won the previous rounds of denominational votes, it is they are who are heading for the exists and leaving all the denominational infrastructure in the hands of the liberals.Their split protocol is also a terrible deal for conservatives. It establishes the liberal position by default, and sets possible supermajority thresholds at every level to get out. This suggests many fundamentally conservative congregations will end up trapped in a now officially liberal denomination with no way out.United Methodist Split Protocol: https://www.umnews.org/en/news/diverse-leaders-group-offers-separation-planIndianapolis Plan for Separation: https://indyplanumc.org/

This week's episode is a look at how major coastal elite cities have created an economic model that depends on the exploitation of a largely immigrant labor class who serve the wants and needs of the upper middle class in these cities. Urban dwellers heavily rely on minority or immigrant nannies, nail technicians, maids, Uber drivers, food delivery workers, laundry people, etc.  Rarely are these people paid a living wage. Many of them are not even employees, with zero benefits, and who are illegally paid cash under the table. And unlike with the Ellis Island generation of immigrants, many, perhaps even a majority, of their children and grandchildren will not experience upward economic mobility. The growth of this model with an upscale class at one end and an exploited labor class at the other has fueled political discontent, with rising left-wing populist politics and the election of people like NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio who explicitly campaigned on a theme of "two New Yorks," one rich, one poor.Members of upscale churches in these cities often depend on and profit from this system of labor exploitation. And their pastors talking about justice do not often speak against this system.

No one is more associated with the rise of the urban church than Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC. Increasingly, however, Keller has been a source of controversy and target of criticism online.  What accounts for this? Is Tim Keller selling out?Tim Keller's actions today need to be seen in the context of his entire ministry. Keller has proven himself over many decades by serving faithfully in a small town church for seven years early in his career, not publishing any books until his 50s, being willing to start Redeemer at a time when every rational person would have said he was crazy, and demonstrating high levels of competence in what he's doing. He's also shown generosity to those less famous than himself.The root of Keller's problems today stem from a change in the times. The link below talks about the three eras of Christianity in modern America, the positive, neutral, and negative world. His ministry was perfectly tailored to the neutral world, but after the transition to the negative world he's become increasingly ineffective as he keeps pushing his neutral world formulas into a negative world context.Keller will hopefully survive his fight with cancer. Assuming he does, he has many years of fruitful work ahead of him as a minister. But should he continue pushing neutral world themes as a public intellectual in today's world, there's a risk he could damage his reputation. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and former Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar provide cautionary examples of what could go wrong.  Hopefully Keller manages to avoid their missteps.The positive, neutral, and negative world: https://themasculinist.com/the-masculinist-13-the-lost-world-of-american-evangelicalism/

Catholic neoreactionary writer The Social Pathologist drew on the work of G.K. Chesterton to note how and de facto form of Buddhism had grown in the Christian church, more as a result of a loss of balance or a particular temperament or feeling than outright theological error. This manifests itself concretely in many parts of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches today, including the urban church. We see it in how any desire that causes people to become upset can be defined as a form of idolatry. This is true especially for the supposed "idolatry of the family."  A large number of people, especially women, in churches who deeply desired to be married and have children did not. Their grief over this is not evidence of idolatry but of legitimate loss. Similar things are true of teachings about dealing with things such as career failures or not getting into someone's desired college.In essence, to be very hurt or upset by desires unfulfilled is treated as evidence that we've put our hope in something other than Christ. The answer is thus to purge ourselves or desire or to moderate them to low levels so that this does not happen. Thus the path of righteousness is similar to the Buddhist emptying oneself of desireThe Social Pathologist on Christian BuddhismPart One: https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2019/06/christian-buddhism.htmlPart Two: https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2019/07/christian-buddhism-ii.htmlPart Three: https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2019/07/christian-buddhism-iii.htmlPart Four: https://socialpathology.blogspot.com/2019/07/christian-buddhism-iv.htmlThe Litany of Humility: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/christianity-rachel-held-evans-the-power-of-being-wronged/