Aaron Renn is one of the most perceptive commentators on American evangelicalism as well as the broader culture.
A few years ago, he turned an online post into an article for First Things, an influential American journal on Christian public engagement, in which he described what he called the three worlds of evangelicalism. It became one of the most read and talked-about articles in the Christian world and even the secular media in the United States. He has now turned the article into a book.
What is this ‘negative world’? It is the third of three phases that evangelicalism has experienced since the 1960s. The first phase was the ‘positive world’ which, emerging from the post-war Christian boom, lasted from roughly 1964–1994 and in which society was broadly positive towards Christianity. Churchgoing was socially advantageous and Christian morality was broadly accepted as normal.
