‘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.