‘Imposing a status penalty on members helps keep conservative organizations conservative’

Aaron Renn writes:

The more liberal churches such as the mainline denominations have been bleeding people for decades. They are often boring and with an attendee base that skews older. More conservative evangelical churches are much younger, more vibrant, have great community, etc. This draws people by itself quite apart from the theology – which might even be a secondary factor. Many of these new folks are actually uncomfortable with more conservative theology, and become a constituency for shifting away from that…

Status signaling counts for a lot, too. In today’s America, liberal positions are high status and conservative ones low status. Most of us rationally prefer to embrace high status rather than low status views.

Many conservatives in the “MAGA” world have openly embraced a low status, low class, cringe style. The net result is a Republican party that’s been bleeding college educated people who are very turned off by this type of behavior.

But there’s something to be learned from this. The repelling effect of low status actually can play a role in inoculating conservative institutions against attracting a more liberal constituency that would fight to push the organization to the left.

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What Jordan Peterson Can Teach Church Leaders

Aaron Renn writes in the WSJ:

Mainstream institutions and authorities—churches, schools, academia, the media—could learn a few things from the online gurus about how to speak to young men effectively.

Young men today often feel as if their needs are secondary to those of their female peers…

Online influencers treat men’s hopes and dreams as important in their own right.

Many offer teenage boys an aspirational vision of manhood. Some, like Mr. Peterson, say men are important for the sake of others, but present it as part of a heroic vision of masculinity in which men flourish as well. “You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world,” he writes in “12 Rules for Life,” his 2018 bestseller. “You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.” Traditional authorities, especially in Protestant churches, talk about men being “servant leaders” but reduce that primarily to self-sacrifice and serving others. Pastors preach sermons wondering why men have so much energy left at the end of the day, or saying men shouldn’t have time for hobbies. No wonder young men tune them out.

Online influencers challenge men to work harder and get better. Former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink encourages his followers to get up at 4:30 a.m. to work out. But they also give practical advice and true if sometimes politically incorrect facts, such as those about the opposite sex. Men’s relationships with women are primal. Nothing enhances these influencers’ credibility like helping young men succeed with women. Teenage boys are hungry for information on what women find attractive. The gurus tell them it’s status, confidence, charisma, appearance and style. That’s the opposite of what they’re used to hearing, which is that women want men who emotionally affirm them and are ready to commit for the long term. Guys who go the sensitive nice-guy route only to be rejected can end up frustrated and bitter.

“Godliness is sexy to godly people,” says Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Matt Chandler. Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, says, “Girls are attracted to boys who win status contests with other boys.” Which rings truer to you?

…In an era of growing loneliness and social isolation, teenage boys can bond over furtively watching Andrew Tate videos that their parents and teachers deem dangerous. Because the traditional authorities typically don’t have much of an organic following among young men, they don’t generate the same kind of community. Where they do have a male audience, such as in churches, attempts at creating community are often hokey and weird. Most young men aren’t drawn to groups that ask them to “hold each other accountable” for watching porn.

An obvious if overlooked component of these influencers’ success is that they’re all men. It’s common, especially in mainstream media, for women to be the ones sounding off about men’s issues and shortcomings. In July, Politico published a “Masculinity Issue,” featuring four articles on the theme—every one of them written by a woman.

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The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (2024)

Aaron Renn reviews Tim Alberta’s book:

His portrayal of the anti-Trumpers is almost a photographic negative of the pro-Trumpers he decries. Pro-Trumpers believe they are fighting a culture war to save America from those who want to destroy it. But Alberta’s anti-Trumpers are likewise fighting a culture war, only theirs is internal to the church, waged against more conservative evangelicals. They too seem to believe they are engaged in a Manichean struggle between good and evil. And they, too, sometimes worship America, as shown in David French’s table-pounding over the First Amendment, a quintessentially American principle.

In fact, in his own apocalyptic style and over-the-top denunciations of pro-Trump evangelicals in his book and articles, Alberta resembles the very people he castigates. He too believes America is facing a mortal threat. For example, on Christmas Day 2023 he warned in an Atlantic column of the danger Christian nationalism poses to the future of America. He uses disease metaphors to describe pro-Trump evangelicals—terms like “contagion” and “depollute” that echo how his targets might describe the Left. He writes in the book, “many [pro-Trump] American evangelicals cannot let go.” Neither can he.

…Alberta’s book is ultimately yet another piece of evangelical writing that ardently criticizes conservative evangelicals, in a liberal secular forum, using arguments aligned with liberal secular elite values.

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10 Pillars of Masculinity | Aaron Renn

Aaron Renn writes:

The ten pillars I discuss are:

Identity.

Mission.

Agency.

Virtue.

Knowledge.

Wisdom.

Fraternity. Every man needs a band a brothers.

Family.

Suffering.

Legacy. What are you going to leave behind when you are gone?

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Cities Are Actively Hostile To Conservatives, Why Would Conservatives Not Want To Retaliate Against Liberals?

Aaron Renn writes:

Cities also give the green light to people creating a very hostile environment for anyone who is openly conservative, or even merely insufficiently liberal. We’ve all seen the videos of BLM activists harassing diners at outdoor cafes, for example. Here in Indianapolis, a group of activists ran the donut shop around the corner from our old house out of business for political reasons. Not a single person or entity in the city came to the defense of that shop. Implicitly, every single civic leader in Indy is ok with conservatives actively getting run out of town.

So based on what liberals already do day in and day out in the places they control, red state leaders are well within their rights to pass laws that are culturally offensive to liberals in order to encourage them to leave, or not to come in the first place…

Ron DeSantis actually did a good job of reshaping Florida’s demographics politically, mostly through conservative “popularism” with substance: going against Covid shutdowns, restructuring a university, eliminating sexual content from kindergarten, etc. Notably, he has not pushed for anything like the Ten Commandments display.

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