Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
There are some things that Christians could learn about how Jordan Peterson engages so successfully with his audience. First, lean into reenchantment. This is a big reason why the Eastern Orthodox church has such an appeal today. Hyper-rationalistic Protestant theology or the emotion laden evangelical style don’t speak to this longing to reconnect with an enchanted world. I do believe in our modern, scientific era, we’ve lost parts of the genuine Christian life and experience. People who dismiss reenchantment will miss out on opportunities for evangelism. The symbolism in scripture is a good place to start.

Jordan Peterson first became a viral YouTube sensation because of his lecture series on Genesis. The Bible is a subject he’s continued returning to, adding an Exodus series, and next a forthcoming book called We Who Wrestle With God.
Peterson is doing a national tour on the theme of wrestling with God, which I attended last week in Indianapolis. He sold out a 2,500 seat theater with a minimum ticket price of over $100, so he’s still a big draw. I’d say the median audience age was 35-40, with lots of couples attending.
He first used the failures of Google’s Gemini AI to launch into an hour long discussion of the nature of language, ideas, and symbolic structures, positioning the Bible as “the oldest collection of stories by the oldest people that survived.” To him, this makes it a bulwark against the societal equivalent of AI hallucinations (e.g., fascism) and thus worth studying. His take here is similar to Nassim Taleb’s “Lindy Effect.”
He then gave a much shorter presentation of the call of Abraham from the start of Genesis 12. The presentation was clearly unbalanced with too much preamble and not enough actual Bible analysis. This was very different from what Jake Meador saw from Peterson in Omaha.
Peterson views the Bible as myth and symbol (in the good sense), and deploys it therapeutically.
He talked about how he analyzes things like the Bible through multiple lenses: psychology, evolutionary biology, etc. Referring to his first book Maps of Meaning, he said that he only includes what all the perspectives agree on. Notably, orthodoxy theology is not one of his lenses.
The best way to view Jordan Peterson’s religious perspective is as New Age. That is, he believes in a sort of vague spirituality that has implications for how we are supposed to live our lives. It’s about an encounter with spiritual truth and the spiritual voice within. Or perhaps an understanding of the deep structure of reality and the human condition. This spirituality is esoteric, and apprehended indirectly and partially through a symbolic understanding of the world.
Peterson deploys this approach therapeutically. When God calls Abram, it’s the voice within telling him to get out of mom and dad’s house and go out in the world to make something of himself. But it’s not just a call to “Man up!” but also, critically, a call to adventure.
When Abram builds an altar to the Lord, his sacrifices are the giving up of the parts of himself that interfere with his becoming who he is called to be and achieving his destiny. The fire in the burning bush is also interpreted that way, as a sort of refining fire.
Last year I noted the turn towards a reenchanted world. One way to understand the appeal of Peterson is the way that his ideas are aligned with this way of thinking. Unearthing the Jungian collective unconscious and such are not unlike what people are seeking when they go to South America for an ayahuasca trip. Both are about looking for spiritual meaning and a spiritual encounter without an actual God or a real religion. Both are also a quest for therapeutic personal transformation – the quest for self-actualization – without sanctification.
The draw of an enchanted world is part of what is drawing people to Eastern Orthodoxy, as I also noted.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
If people can publicly promote polyamory or whatnot, then I can promote abstaining from vice. And let’s be honest, do you want to live in a neighborhood full of tatted up potheads who spend their days watching porn, playing video games, and betting on sportsball – and who drop f-bombs every other sentence while out and about? Would America be a better or worse place if these vices didn’t exist? Would your life be better or worse if you avoided them? That’s the question you need to answer for yourself. 

In his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe wrote, “If you want to live in New York, you’ve got to insulate, insulate, insulate.”
Today you also need to insulate yourself if you don’t want to end up devoured by social pathologies like fentanyl or gambling addiction — or even just ending up as an under-achiever.
Much of the focus of the discussion of the Negative World focuses on sexuality and the church. But it’s much bigger than that. The emergence of a post-Christian order has also led to the metastasizing of vice in our society.
Today, many practices that used to be the province of shady characters like the mob are now fully socially legitimized big business, like bookmaking (phone betting), drugs (legal pot), and loan sharking (payday lending).
While some people can take advantage of these recreationally with no problem, many others are vulnerable to falling prey to addiction or exploitation by their purveyors.
Once, our society saw it as its responsibility to protect people from these harms through outright bans or restrictions like usury laws. Those day are long gone. In fact, our governments are now in on the action.
How should we protect ourselves from this?
Creating an Alternative Moral Ecology That Rejects Vice
A country’s wealth is ultimately in its people. A wise country builds up its people, its human capital. Ours is degrading it. There’s no better sign of that than our declining life expectancy.
You have to insulate yourself from those forces. You have to be staying healthy and actively working to develop your potentialities so that you can be a force for good in the world.
Swimming upstream against the culture is easiest when you are part of an alternative moral ecology, part of a community that lives by a different set of rules, that holds itself to a higher standard, that expects more, and elevates your aim.
A community with this moral ecology would be valuable to anyone. A logical place to create one would be the church. But I think it would be very difficult for evangelical churches to create this culture when it comes to vice. They struggle with anything they can’t describe as objectively sinful or linked to some Biblical proof text. Porn is obviously wrong. But is it a sin to buy a lottery ticket or get a tattoo? I’d say no.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that anti-vice movements are emerging from secular society. Abstaining from alcohol is now a trendy movement. Any hip restaurant worth its salt now has an extensive – and expensive – mocktail list. It’s the online right that has made a huge push against men watching porn – often getting attacked by the media in the process.
I’m a critic of Mark Driscoll, but one of his best lines was, “Some things aren’t sinful, they’re just dumb.”*
Or, as someone more respectable put it, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. We should avoid unprofitable activities. Vice falls into that category.
Churches should figure out how to get in the game here. But whether it’s a church, a band of brothers, or an online tribe, finding a community with a moral ecology that rejects vice is one way to insulate yourself from trouble.
What rejecting vice means to me is: no porn, no pot, no gambling, no video games, no tattoos, no profanity.
The point here is not to condemn other people for their choices – it’s a free country after all – or to argue that all of these things are objectively morally wrong. It is to say that’s not who we are and not how we choose to live. We are setting a different standard for ourselves.
No Porn
Watching porn is wrong – but it’s also pathetic.
A majority of prime age men are watching porn, usually a lot of it. It’s super easy to do – and super-addictive. It’s difficult to give it up once you’ve gotten hooked. And it seems to cause a lot of problems. There are now men in their 20s with erectile dysfunction.
I was not Christian for my early adult life and happily watched lots of porn. Today, not only do I not watch it, I don’t want to watch it. It’s not a temptation for me.
A key shift came when I was reconstructing my idea of what it meant to be a man. Like many, I went through a phase of naively trying to become an “alpha male.”
Whatever the flaws of that, one benefit was that as soon as I started thinking of myself as aspirationally high value, I no longer had any desire for things like porn.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Monday, February 19, 2024
I’ve noticed that it’s becoming harder for some of these folks to engage in the public square without managing to work in some kind of bashing of those ultra-conservative evangelicals over there that they don’t like. We see that here. Last year I noted that some of the people behind the He Gets Us campaign explicitly view various other Christians as a key problem for Jesus’ image. Nevertheless, they really didn’t let that attitude shine through in the ads that I saw. Now, they apparently can’t restrain themselves anymore and have declared open war against conservative Christians they don’t like.

The $1 billion dollar ad campaign for Jesus called He Gets Us has been controversial from the start. And there was controversy again this year when they ran two new Superbowl ads on Sunday.
If you didn’t see them, they are available on Youtube under the titles “Foot Washing,” and “Who Is My Neighbor?”
I’m someone who defended the He Gets Us campaign after last year’s Superbowl outing. I said they might be flawed but were aiming at the right target, focused in on the key area of pre-evangelism that’s needed in today’s world. I even mentioned He Gets Us positively in my new book Life in the Negative World.
Given my record, I am clearly not biased against the He Gets Us. And given the psychological principle of consistency, where we are biased to take actions consistent with our previous actions, I should be primed to defend them again this year.
Unfortunately, this year’s He Gets Us Superbowl outing was terrible – unconscionable actually.
There are several problems with these advertisements.
1. These Ads Present Jesus as an Ethical Teacher and Moral Example Rather than a Savior
Many of the He Gets Us ads try to show Jesus as able to relate to our condition. A good example is this ad called “Physician.” This relates to the Bible’s teaching from Hebrews that because he was made in all ways like us, he is able to sympathize with our condition, temptations, and weaknesses. It also makes reference to Jesus’ miraculous healings, as well as to his being sent as the Great Physician to those whose souls are sick with sin.
By contrast, the 2024 Superbowl ads portray Jesus exclusively as ethical teacher and moral example. He “didn’t teach hate” but rather he “washed feet.” He taught us to love our neighbor as yourself.
Clearly Jesus was an ethical teacher and moral example, but the view of Jesus that’s being portrayed here is identical with the view promoted by liberal mainline Protestantism. This ad is very much in line with a traditional liberal theological view.
Last year’s Superbowl ad “Love Your Enemies,” also links to a teaching. But the content of the ad emphasizes Jesus’ love for everyone – “Jesus loved the people we hate.” In fact, had the ad not included a URL with “LoveYourEnemies” in it, this ad may not have been connected in anyone’s mind with that particular verse. The other ad, “Be Childlike,” links directly to Jesus’ instructions on what one do to be saved (“become like little children”).
In short, there’s a big difference in the presentation of the ads in 2023 vs. 2024. In 2023 there was about Jesus’ love and about the path to salvation. In 2024, it’s about Jesus’ ethical teaching and moral example – a liberal Protestant emphasis.
One implication of that difference is that this year’s Superbowl ads were really more focused on us than on Jesus.
2. The Ads Are Explicitly Left-Wing Culturally and Politically
Last year’s ads did a great job of avoiding appearing to take sides on cultural or political matters. This year, they explicitly endorsed a culturally and politically left view of the world. Or, as the left wing pundit Matthew Yglesias, a secular Jew, correctly observed, “Jesus has gone woke.” 
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
Why can’t churches be working to identify people whom they believe would be highly effective pastors – using whatever criteria they think is most Biblical and appropriate – and encouraging those people to go into ministry? There’s a lot of opportunity in local churches to do a stealth vetting of these folks before tapping them on the shoulder, such as by asking them to volunteer in more purely service roles, giving them leadership opportunities, etc. and seeing how they perform. Rather than waiting for people to decide they want to go into ministry, instead encourage high potential people to strongly consider doing so.

I had always assumed that there was a surplus of people pursuing careers in ministry. There are many seminaries, each with an incentive to attract students. And people seemed to have to go through a sort of waiting room process in college ministry or as a youth pastor before getting an actual pastor or associate pastor position.
But what I’m hearing from widely divergent sources is that there’s actually a big talent shortage in this area.
This first came on my radar a decade ago when Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church started talking about the looming succession crisis in megachurches like his. There were hardly any megachurches in 1975, but there are a huge number today, often still run by their founding pastor. Replacing all these soon to be retiring folks with someone who could successfully operate at that level would be a challenge. Of course, Hybels’ own carefully crafted succession plan blew up.
Today even churches that can afford to pay a solid salary are finding it difficult to recruit pastors. Many seminaries have seen significant enrollment declines. For example, Gordon-Conwell saw its enrollment fall by half between 2012 and 2021, and it is selling off its gorgeous campus north of Boston. I increasingly hear people talking about this talent shortage issue. I just watched a video of one pastor noting that new church startups will be increasingly difficult to pull off in today’s climate because there’s no pipeline of talent to launch them.
There appears to be a similar problem in the Roman Catholic Church, which has an aging cadre of priests and far fewer young people electing to pursue a priestly vocation.
At the same time, vast numbers of churches in the US seem poised to close. There are simply too many small, non-viable congregations, and it’s unlikely that more than a few of them will be successfully revitalized. Christianity’s decline in America also augurs for a decreased demand for ministers. So while there appears to be a pastoral shortage, the demand level is also highly uncertain. It’s easy to see how this sort of uncertainty would discourage people from going into ministry.
But given that there does seem to be a talent shortage today, that presents an opportunity to rethink the pastoral recruitment and training process.
Entry into the pastoral career track seems to rely almost entirely on self-selection. That is, someone has a desire or senses a call to ministry, then goes to seminary, etc.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Friday, February 2, 2024
While Christians might experience persecution, just because you are in trouble doesn’t mean you are being persecuted for being a Christian. In the case of this church, it is willfully violating the city’s zoning code, which is religiously neutral – if anything, religious institutions are privileged in zoning – and not to single this church out or because of some anti-Christian animus. The city may be unwise or even heartless, but that doesn’t mean they are persecuting the pastor. 

I saw several articles posted about a pastor in Ohio who is being charged with several zoning code violations because he allowed homeless people to stay in his church during freezing weather. He’s apparently allowed homeless people in the church previously, had been warned against it, and is de facto using the church as an overflow facility for the homeless shelter next door.
Per the article, some people have called this persecution:
Ashton Pittman, editor of the Mississippi Free Press, said Avell’s story was a rare example in the U.S. of “actual religious persecution of a Christian by the state.”
I beg to differ. The city may be heartless here, but this is the sort of zoning dispute people of all stripes run into all the time in cities. It’s not unusual for even those who have followed all the rules to end up in kafkaesque situations. (Also, it’s not clear if his case, which is in a municipal court, is actually a criminal one).
As the guy who coined the term “Negative World” to describe the way post-2014 American culture now views Christianity negatively (or at least skeptically), you might think I would be aligned with people talking about persecution in America. But I’m not.
Christians are not actually being persecuted in America today. I’m sure there are individuals who have been attacked by a disturbed whack job or something because of where they go to church. But such cases are surely rare.
When I think of persecution, I think of places like China, where pastors get thrown in prison and churches get demolished by the state. Or India, where some Christians groups have been the target of sectarian violence. Or North Korea. Or perhaps some Muslim countries where Christians suffer various legal or cultural debilities.
This is not what is happening in the United States.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
If you are on the political right and want to change institutions, your best bet is to think like a private equity firm: take it over, restructure from the top, and be indifferent to the squawking about the changes. This isn’t always easy to do, of course. But as the case of state universities show, red state governments actually have the ability to do a lot of things they are not actually doing.

One of the principles I keep highlighting between left and right is asymmetry.
The left and right have different values, operate in different ways, and are in different positions in society.
Hence, if you are on the right, you have to remember that what worked for the left won’t work for you. You need to use different tactics.
Yes, there are some techniques that are available to anyone, but it doesn’t work to simply read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and think you can make those same rules work for you.
Today I want to highlight that institutional capture works completely differently for the right vs. the left.
The left seems to do well at burrowing into organizations, working their way into positions of authority or leverage, and then using those to transform the institution from the inside out.
People on the left typically don’t care about the actual mission of the organization. In fact, they frequently think the organization has a bad mission, and that it’s their job to change that. Hence, they can devote all of their efforts to institutional capture and transformation. Conservatives are often bad at stopping this because they are more interested in the mission than organizational politics.
This left approach is sometimes called the “long march through the institutions.”
Some people have advocated that conservatives try to do the same thing. However, it’s highly unlikely to work. For one thing, left controlled institutions are not dumb enough to let conservatives in the door, or allow them to do any sort of subversion. And by nature, few conservatives have the interest, conscience, or stomach for successfully capturing institutions from the inside.
However, there’s a right wing version of institutional capture. Rather than attempting a bottom up project of capture and infiltration, the right wing model is a top down restructuring of an institution modeled on a private equity approach.
The way someone on the right captures and restructures a failing institution is to take it over from the top, the way a private equity firm would buy out an underperforming company, and then reform the organization to function well and on mission.
I will highlight some examples of this.
The first is what Ron DeSantis is doing at New College of Florida (NCF). In many states, governors nominally control state universities because they appoint a majority of the board. But most of them stuff those boards full of milquetoast cronies who rubber stamp what the administration wants and even enthusiastically support the administration in empire building endeavors.
DeSantis saw an opportunity with NCF. It would be very politically challenging to try to shake up, say, Florida State. But NCF was a very small, liberal arts type public school without a high profile. Thus it was a good test bed for his approach.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Friday, January 19, 2024
Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, but it’s not simply a product of biology either. It’s exists at the intersection of biological, cultural, and individual factors. It is much more malleable than we think. And what we find beautiful is broader than what is publicly expressed. Men should be careful not to let manosphere influencers psych them out of getting married or dating women they genuinely find attractive.

Physical beauty is a big part of what we find attractive in the opposite sex. The degree to which beauty determines how attracted we are does differ by sex. Whereas men are heavily attracted to youth and beauty in women, women are attracted to a wider range of characteristics that includes physical appearance, but also power and status, confidence and charisma, and resources like money.
In fact, one reason youth is such a big factor in women’s attractiveness is because it is so heavily driven by physical appearance. We universally believe that both men and women are better looking when younger than older. The difference is that as men age, they can offset their declining looks by accruing power, money, etc.
Nevertheless, physical appearance plays an important role in how both men and women see the opposite sex.
Beauty seems to be in innate and ineffable quality. And we seem to be able to recognize it easily. Studies show that there is very widespread agreement about which people are attractive.
At the same time, there seems to be a trend online of assuming that beauty is completely objective and largely innate. This seems in line with the general post-Christian trend of viewing human characteristics as dominated by genetic factors. People in the manosphere would likely say that while there’s a lot a beautiful woman can do to make herself ugly, there’s not much beyond surgery that can improve over baseline beauty.
This is a big over-simplification. There are four major factors that determine what we find beautiful, only one of which is linked to genes. I will briefly discuss each of these determinants of beauty.
Beauty Is Biologically Determined

But one need not posit an evopsych rationale to see that there are certain physical factors are that are judged more attractive than others. For example, we view facial symmetry as more attractive. Women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 are viewed as most attractive. And men find smaller feet in women more attract than larger ones. See this NIH study for more of these correlates for both sexes.
So there is something of a genetic or biological basis to beauty. We are hardwired to prefer symmetrical faces and such.
Beauty Is Culturally Determined

The easiest way to see this is in styles. I look back at photos from the 1980s and think to myself, we thought this looked good? It’s similar with the 70s and many other historic eras too.
You frequently hear that in the past, bigger people were considered more beautiful, because it indicated you were wealthy and could afford to eat plenty of food.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Monday, January 15, 2024
One particular effort that Alberta highlights was the creation of a curriculum on politics targeting churches called “After Party.” After Party is a venture of Moore, French, and a Silicon Valley consultant named Curtis Chang. Chang had come out of nowhere to become a high profile voice calling on evangelicals to get vaccinated against Covid-19. He got an op-ed published in the New York Times, for example. One of his videos caused controversy when it attempted to assuage evangelicals who might be worried that the vaccine used cells from aborted babies by saying that the Covid-19 vaccine redeems abortion. 

I just finished reading Tim Alberta’s interesting new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. I am going to be reviewing it for the Claremont Review of Books.
One of the things I found interesting is Alberta’s behind the scenes look at the evangelical “resistance” movement. That is, those who vociferously oppose the evangelicals who support Donald Trump.
While I don’t think it’s any surprise to people, and has been reported on elsewhere in part, this book makes clear with new details I had not seen before that this is a very organized movement, and one funded at least in part with non-Christian financial backing.
The Outliers
Anti-Trump evangelicals started getting organized at least as far back as 2015.
In the fall of 2015, [Russell] Moore met with “The Outliers”, a group of friends and fellow high-profile believers: Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City; Pete Wehner, the former head of strategic initiatives in the George W. Bush White House; Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health; and David Brooks, the New York Times columnist.
They discuss the GOP primary, and the attraction of Trump and their differing views of how things would play out when it came to evangelical support for him.
A few things are interesting here. First, this group of people gave themselves a name, “The Outliers.” So they were probably gathering or talking even before this meeting to have reached the point of giving their group a name. Note that Russell Moore is portrayed as a guest of this group.
Second, they are meeting in Fall 2015, a time at which very few people believed Trump would win the GOP nomination, much less the presidency. I did a podcast with my father (on my old feed which is no longer online) at the end of October 2015 saying that based on my interactions with folks back home, Trump was a serious candidate. This actually got some attention from people, so unusual was that at the time. The fact that this group was in existence so early makes me wonder when it was formed and if they actually predated Trump and were already alienated from the mainstream of evangelicalism.
Third, note the presence of elite journalist David Brooks. He quoted every attendee of this meeting other than Francis Collins in his 2022 essay on “the dissenters trying to save evangelicalism from itself.” Brooks was clearly not just writing as a columnist or sympathetic observer; he’s part of this movement.
I think it’s fair to say that Alberta, too, if not an official member of this movement, is certainly at least a fellow traveler, playing a role in the elite media similar to Brooks.
Fourth, this illustrates how a lot of high level evangelicals have applied the work of sociologist James Davison Hunter. Hunter argues that overlapping elite networks at the cultural center are what drive cultural change. We see here that these “high-profile” people are networked with each other, and also with people in the elite media.
I think it’s fair to say that this efforts has produced no change in American culture as a whole, but it has given the people at the top of those networks immense power over what sociologist Brad Vermurlen called the “evangelical field.” They very much have had a powerful impact on major evangelical institutions.
Additionally, their relationship with the elite media gives them the equivalent of a nuclear arsenal they can use to bomb to their evangelical opponents, who have no such vehicle for retaliation. Very few people in mainstream professional society or major institutions are capable of standing up to the elite media, which is why I call this a nuclear weapon.
For example, these relationship likely saved Russell Moore’s job with the SBC back in 2017. After his attacks on Trump voters in the New York Times and elsewhere, his job was in danger. An article broke this story in the Washington Post, and the reporter called Moore aligned black pastor Thabiti Anyabwile for a quote. Anyabwile said Moore getting fired would have a “chilling” effect and that, “The fallout will be the denomination signaling to African American and other ethnic groups that they’re tone deaf and disinterested in that membership.”
In other words, if the SBC fires Russell Moore, the Washington Post, and other major publications that subsequently covered the story, were going to call them racists for doing so. Realistically, almost nobody or no institution can handle being called racist by elite media. So no surprise Moore kept his job. (I think there’s a good chance he was actually the original source of the story).
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
If you criticize your in-group in the out-group’s forum, using the value system of the out-group, don’t be surprised if you alienate a lot of people and receive a lot of hate in return. Maybe that’s something you don’t care about or even relish. Sadly, in today’s world, hate is a commodity you can monetize. Regardless, thinking about the venue where you say something is a important as thinking about what it is you actually want to say. 

Where you say something can be as important as what you say.
It’s a good thing to want to hold your own people accountable. But where and how to do that is important.
I recently wrote an op-ed criticizing the idea of Christian nationalism. I said Yes when asked to do this because it was for the American Mind, a publication of the very conservative Claremont Institute. I would not have written it for a liberal publication or one with the reputation of being hostile to Christian nationalism.
When I worked for the Manhattan Institute, I observed that one of the easiest ways for a conservative to get positive coverage or an op-ed placed in the in an elite media publication was to criticize Republicans or conservatives using the left’s value system as the rationale. Some Never Trump types turned this into de facto full time gigs.
I myself once wrote an article criticizing Protestant church architecture for a Catholic architecture journal. I did it because I held the editor and the publication in high regard – and still do. But I realized in retrospect I should not have done that. I should not have criticized an element of Protestantism in a Catholic publication. It would only reinforce the Catholic sense of their own superiority.
I think my ideas were broadly right, but I chose the wrong venue to express them.
I resolved not to do that again. For example, I have been a critic of the how Indiana’s Republicans have governed the state. Surely one of the national publications where I have bylines would love to receive a pitch from me trashing the Indiana GOP. But I don’t want to create bad national press for my state. And I especially don’t want to do it by catering to the left’s value system, reinforcing their moral hegemony. So I elected to write a long piece in a niche policy journal American Affairs instead.
When I started this newsletter, I set as one of my guiding principles, “Don’t criticize other Christians in the liberal secular media if you can avoid it, and certainly do not criticize them from the secular value system of the publication in question.”
I’d rather have a smaller audience for my ideas than gain a big one by flattering the sensibilities of people who don’t like evangelicals or conservatives.
Elite media like the Washington Post and New York Times figured out that the lure of a byline in those places would be too tempting for many conservative Christians to ignore. Those Christians were willing to write harshly critical op-eds for those publications that used the value system of the secular publications for their critiques.
We’ve seen this many times already, from Russell Moore, David French, and a relatively small group of others whose names repeatedly occur in anti-evangelical media hit pieces.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Many influencers 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.

The name of the violent radical left group Antifa stands for “antifascist action.” On twitter you will sometimes see people say to those criticizing Antifa, “Antifa stands for anti-fascist. So if you don’t like Antifa, you must support fascism.”
The term “servant leadership” functions similarly in evangelical circles. They embue the phrase with particular, specific meanings that transform it from a self-evidently good concept into an evangelical term of art. If you criticize those meanings, you might be accused supporting selfish leadership.
Servant leadership properly understood is an almost self-evident virtue. Of course we want leaders who lead in the genuine service of others and of the institutions they direct.
But there are problems with the way evangelicals talk about servant leadership, particularly when it comes to married men. It’s part of why men turn to online influencers instead of the church. As I noted in my WSJ op-ed on that topic, online influencers provide an aspirational vision of manhood. Traditional authorities like the church provide a “servant leader” vision that is extremely unappealing, and, more importantly, wrong in important ways.
The Call to Servant Leadership
Conservative evangelicals, ones who hold to the so-called complementarian gender theology, affirm that husbands are the head of the home. This is heavily qualified, however, and one such qualification is that headship means service rather than authority. Or at least to the extent that such authority exists, it can only be used for service.
The term “servant leader” was present early in the complementarian movement, though was not especially stressed. John Piper, in his opening chapter from the complementarian ur-text Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, wrote, “The call to leadership is a call to humble oneself and take the responsibility to be a servant-leader in ways that are appropriate to every differing relationship to women.” But the world servant leader only occurs a handful of times in this long book. (I haven’t come across Wayne Grudem, the other principal architect of complementarianism, using it).
Women’s studies professor Mary Kassian, who was among the originators of complementarianism, echoed Piper when she wrote, “Men have a responsibility to exercise headship in their homes and church family, and Christ revolutionized the definition of what that means. Authority is not the right to rule—-it’s the responsibility to serve.”
British evangelical John Stott, shaped in a different tradition but who was a sort of soft complementarian, uses similar language to deny that headship means authority but does mean responsibility. He wrote, “Headship implies some degree of leadership, which, however, is expressed not in terms of ‘authority’ but of ‘responsibility.’” (From Decisive Issues Facing Christians Today).
The main popularizer of the term “servant leader” as applied to husbands today may well be Tim Keller. In their book very popular book The Meaning of Marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller write:
But an even bigger leap was required to understand that it took an equal degree of submission for for men to submit to their gender roles. They are called to be “servant leaders.” In our world, we are accustomed to seeing the perks and privileges accrue to those who have higher status…..But in the dance of the Trinity, the greatest is the one who is most self-effacing, most sacrificial, most devoted to the good of the other…Jesus redefined all authority as servant-authority. Any exercise of power can only be done in service to the Other, not to please oneself.
Nancy Pearcey’s new book The Toxic War on Masculinity has an entire chapter that expands on this topic. She’s gotten a lot of flack over it. While I think it’s fair to say she probably draws from some egalitarian (Christian feminist) leaning material, she’s basically only summing up what conservative evangelicals actually do teach. Here’s just one short passage:
For example, a man attending a nondenominational church said, “Being the head doesn’t mean that you’re a ruler or something. It’s more of a responsibility.” A middle-aged Charismatic man said, “I have learned that being the head, as you say, is really being a servant because you got to swallow hard and put somebody else first.” A Presbyterian woman said a biblical concept of headship “actually makes his burden even heavier, because he is also supposed to be the kind of man that can hear his wife’s needs, that can be there for his wife, that can respect his wife . . . and that’s a big responsibility.”
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, explains that when a man gets married, he stops living for his own ambitions and instead channels his energies into supporting his family: “He discovers a sense of pride—yes, masculine pride— because he is needed by his wife and family.” Needed not only for protection and financial provision, but also for love and affection.
Because Jesus said that he came not to be served, but to serve, these people would all seem to be on solid ground. But there are some problems with the way they talk about this. I will address two of them today.
What Service Should Be Provided?
The matter of servant leadership immediately prompts certain questions:

What is the service to be provided?
To whom?
Who makes those decisions?
Who decides whether or not the man is doing a good job at serving?

These are pretty fundamental. But evangelicals tend not to address them explicitly. This is the first problem. Their patterns of rhetoric, however, imply that that servant leadership essentially means catering to the desires of your wife and children. And if that’s the case, they also implicitly get to be the judge of whether you are doing a good job.
Kathy Keller said in a Family Life Today interview that, “A head’s job is to use their authority to please, meet needs, and serve.  A head does not get all the perks, all the privileges—you know, choose control of the remote—all this—pick the color of the car you buy, etc.  Your headship is expressed in servant-hood, primarily.” There’s a similar line in The Meaning of Marriage. “He does not use his headship selfishly, to get his own way about the color of the car they buy, who gets to hold the remote control, and whether he has a ‘night out with the boys’ or stays home to help with the kids when his wife asks him.”
We see here that clearly the correct answer is for him to say home and help with the kids when his wife asks him. This is an example of the patterns of rhetoric used to suggests servant leadership means catering to your wife’s desires. “Please, meet needs, and serves” sounds like what a restaurant waiter does.
They are even more direct later in the book, writing, “Jesus never did anything to please himself. A servant-leader must sacrifice his wants and needs to please and build up his partner.” Note that the husband must not only sacrifice his wants but his actual needs as well to “please” his partner. Following Jesus, he’s never to do anything to please himself.
Mark Driscoll operates similarly. In newsletter #77 I quoted him saying:
There are, however, moments in the marriage where the husband and wife don’t agree. And we’re not talking here about a lesser, secondary issue. It’s date night and he wants steak and she wants fish and they can’t agree on where to go. Those are easy. Just give her what she wants. Those are easy. Just love her, just serve her, do what she wants.
Most of the time, husbands are simply to give their wives whatever they want, even if the wife is behaving selfishly.
Russell Moore said similarly in his book The Storm-Tossed Family:
A husband’s leadership is about a special accountability for sabotaging his own wants and appetites with a forward-looking plan for the best interest of his wife and children. Headship is not about having one’s laundry washed or one’s meals cooked or one’s sexual drives met, but rather about constantly evaluating how to step up first to lay one’s life down for one’s family.
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