Continuing a review of Billy Abraham’s Divine Agency and Divine Action: Systematic Theology, v.3, there is a passage that touches on phenomena Aaron Renn interprets in his recently popular book, Life in the Negative World.

We stand currently at a time of tension and renewal in the church. We live for the most part in a pluralist world. We also live in a world that has to be evangelized; and a world where the church is in need of comprehensive renewal. In some circles the opposition has become paranoiac. There is tension because Christians still want to hold on to their older privileged position as chaplain to the culture and hence are tempted to go wherever the culture goes.

As far as I know, Abraham never interacted with Renn’s concept of the “Negative World” (which he first put out in 2017). That we now live in an era less friendly to the church and Christian faith than previous eras is not new (and is not the heart of Renn’s thesis). Renn’s thesis is build on a periodization of movement from a “Positive World” to “Neutral World” to “Negative World” since the mid 1960s.

When Renn misses, as I’ve read him, is what Abraham acknowledges at the end of the quote above: the stance of the church toward our host culture in America. Starting long before Renn’s “Positive World,” the American church, imagined itself to be the “chaplain to the culture.” We related to the church not just from the context of a positive relationship, but from a superior position. We were the “conscience” of the culture; we felt the need to specify and police public morality. Occasionally church influence on culture led in the direction of alignment with Jesus and his ways. Too often what we’ve done as chaplain is add a biblical veneer to the culture’s values and practices. We’ve led the culture and our own people to think that the culture is doing is the Christian thing.

The negativity of the culture highlighted by Renn is often, as Abraham calls it, “paranoiac.” Sometimes it is rooted in sin and hatred of the ways of God. Too often, however, it finds its rational in the way the church has exerted its control/influence. Demographically, Christian’s are less of a majority than we used to be. We are more fragmented than in the past. We have failed to differentiate ourselves from the world when it has been to our advantage.

Abraham rightly notes that two things are needed. The world need to be “evangelized,” the church needs “comprehensive renewal.” If we are indeed now in a “negative world” our stance cannot be merely to stand up for ourselves and fight for our rights. We retain the calling from God to represent Jesus, take up his ways, and give our primary and ultimate allegiance to his kingdom in ways that demonstrate the good news to the people of the world.