I have seen what your commenter describes as men being pulled leftward by their wives. Two examples:
First, I moved in emergent/neo-anabaptist/somewhat progressive evangelical circles for around 20 years before leaving them in 2022. I helped to plant a church in 2010/2011 in which progressive leaning women had an outsized influence on the direction of the church. I think of one of our pastors in particular, whose theology was basically conservative but whose wife was very influenced by progressive voices like Rachel held Evans, Michael Gungor, Greg Boyd, and others. While the husband did not become a full-blown progressive, I feel like to a significant degree he was neutralized by both our churches ethos and his wife's divergent theological views. In general, I would say that most of the men of the church, with a couple of exceptions, were neutralized by their wives leftward lean.
A second, more pointed example, is of an acquaintance I know of, who was complementarian, but after marrying and egalitarian woman, embraced an egalitarian outlook.
I guess the question this brings up for me, as a 53 year old never married conservative Christian man, is "What do we do about this? Is it even possible to do anything about it?" For a variety of reasons, I currently feel like it might be better for me to remain unmarried and this is one of them. I still believe in marriage but it feels more and more like an unsafe and profoundly uncertain bet for Christian men.
There seem to be two scenarios, one in which the wife influences the husband, the other in which the husband influences the wife. I think as a man, you need to have a strong sense of integrity around your values and mission, and that means you need to think about how the woman you marry fits in with that. Few men have this sort of deeply rooted "frame" or mission, and so when they marry then then tend to be pulled along by their wives.
It occurs to me that the general theological/sociological church environment I was in for a long time also mitigated strongly against the influence of conservative husbands, as their beliefs and convictions were not supported strongly by the ethos of the church culture I was in. This would seem to add emphasis to your observation that men need to have a strong sense of their values and mission in both their relationship with their wives and with their church, and should exercise appropriate wisdom, to the degree possible, in choosing both.
BAP’s tweet seems to criticize all religions. There are thinkers frequently quoted by the Dissident Right that specifically criticize Christianity for its universality and egalitarianism. Matthew Rose’s book A World After Liberalism shows some of those thinkers: Spengler, Evola, Francis, etc.
Yes, I think BAP has made these sorts of points before.
I think Dobbs has made intra-right criticism of Christians more topical. For libertarian sorts, this is because they're genuinely pro-choice and were prepared to ignore the pro-life movement when it couldn't actually ban abortion but are scared of it now that it perhaps can.
But for the more Nietzschean sorts, it's more of a concern that this costs the Republicans and Trump at the ballot box, and more broadly that it's a needless waste of political capital for something that does nothing to advance the right's cause.
That's not to say their objections to Christianity aren't longstanding and sincere, but when you see the secular right going out of its way to bash Christians during this election year instead of bashing the left, I would suppose this is the underlying reason why.
Being willing to bash both Jews and Muslims, and not merely Christians (and especially, not merely evangelicals) is, again, both a sincere belief and a way to code one's criticism as still very rightist and at least a little transgressive. If BAP were merely writing about evangelicals this way, perhaps some of his fans would wonder if he were slipping and starting to listen too much to the left.
I think there is appetite for some gambling regulation on both sides , the books are pretty centralized , could maybe impose default loss limits per customer of 5k or something , have to show tax return to increase your limit to x% of income
I’m not sure if that would make the biz model not work anymore though , pretty sad if it does
"Marriage had a big neutralising impact though on the guys. I can’t think of any women from that context who became more conservative via marriage but I can think of quite a few men who over time shifted their views to align with their wives."
This is interesting. Maybe it's because some of my friend groups formed around shared interests in economics and libertarian ideas that I have a biased sample, but I have only seen the opposite in terms of wives coming closer to husbands' views.
I was just about to comment the same thing. The husband pulled left by his wife is not a creature I've observed in the wild. In large part this is because men tend to be dramatically more interested in politics and ideas more generally.
In addition to influence from their husbands, having kids also tends to narrow women's focus towards their family as opposed to society more broadly. And per Conquest's First Law -- "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best" -- this often naturally leads to a rightward shift.
However, there is a finding that Gen Z men are especially apathetic about the world and about politics, and more apathetic than the women, in which case maybe it's more plausible for them. Perhaps a phenomenon like this reached Australia first.
I at least believe there's a certain type of single young man without strong ideas who will start mirroring the opinions of attractive young women in his environment in order to seek their approval, but I would think the damage would be mostly done by the time he's married.
I just subscribed in part because of this post.
I have seen what your commenter describes as men being pulled leftward by their wives. Two examples:
First, I moved in emergent/neo-anabaptist/somewhat progressive evangelical circles for around 20 years before leaving them in 2022. I helped to plant a church in 2010/2011 in which progressive leaning women had an outsized influence on the direction of the church. I think of one of our pastors in particular, whose theology was basically conservative but whose wife was very influenced by progressive voices like Rachel held Evans, Michael Gungor, Greg Boyd, and others. While the husband did not become a full-blown progressive, I feel like to a significant degree he was neutralized by both our churches ethos and his wife's divergent theological views. In general, I would say that most of the men of the church, with a couple of exceptions, were neutralized by their wives leftward lean.
A second, more pointed example, is of an acquaintance I know of, who was complementarian, but after marrying and egalitarian woman, embraced an egalitarian outlook.
I guess the question this brings up for me, as a 53 year old never married conservative Christian man, is "What do we do about this? Is it even possible to do anything about it?" For a variety of reasons, I currently feel like it might be better for me to remain unmarried and this is one of them. I still believe in marriage but it feels more and more like an unsafe and profoundly uncertain bet for Christian men.
Thanks for subscribing!
There seem to be two scenarios, one in which the wife influences the husband, the other in which the husband influences the wife. I think as a man, you need to have a strong sense of integrity around your values and mission, and that means you need to think about how the woman you marry fits in with that. Few men have this sort of deeply rooted "frame" or mission, and so when they marry then then tend to be pulled along by their wives.
It occurs to me that the general theological/sociological church environment I was in for a long time also mitigated strongly against the influence of conservative husbands, as their beliefs and convictions were not supported strongly by the ethos of the church culture I was in. This would seem to add emphasis to your observation that men need to have a strong sense of their values and mission in both their relationship with their wives and with their church, and should exercise appropriate wisdom, to the degree possible, in choosing both.
BAP’s tweet seems to criticize all religions. There are thinkers frequently quoted by the Dissident Right that specifically criticize Christianity for its universality and egalitarianism. Matthew Rose’s book A World After Liberalism shows some of those thinkers: Spengler, Evola, Francis, etc.
Yes, I think BAP has made these sorts of points before.
I think Dobbs has made intra-right criticism of Christians more topical. For libertarian sorts, this is because they're genuinely pro-choice and were prepared to ignore the pro-life movement when it couldn't actually ban abortion but are scared of it now that it perhaps can.
But for the more Nietzschean sorts, it's more of a concern that this costs the Republicans and Trump at the ballot box, and more broadly that it's a needless waste of political capital for something that does nothing to advance the right's cause.
That's not to say their objections to Christianity aren't longstanding and sincere, but when you see the secular right going out of its way to bash Christians during this election year instead of bashing the left, I would suppose this is the underlying reason why.
Being willing to bash both Jews and Muslims, and not merely Christians (and especially, not merely evangelicals) is, again, both a sincere belief and a way to code one's criticism as still very rightist and at least a little transgressive. If BAP were merely writing about evangelicals this way, perhaps some of his fans would wonder if he were slipping and starting to listen too much to the left.
I think there is appetite for some gambling regulation on both sides , the books are pretty centralized , could maybe impose default loss limits per customer of 5k or something , have to show tax return to increase your limit to x% of income
I’m not sure if that would make the biz model not work anymore though , pretty sad if it does
"Marriage had a big neutralising impact though on the guys. I can’t think of any women from that context who became more conservative via marriage but I can think of quite a few men who over time shifted their views to align with their wives."
This is interesting. Maybe it's because some of my friend groups formed around shared interests in economics and libertarian ideas that I have a biased sample, but I have only seen the opposite in terms of wives coming closer to husbands' views.
I was just about to comment the same thing. The husband pulled left by his wife is not a creature I've observed in the wild. In large part this is because men tend to be dramatically more interested in politics and ideas more generally.
In addition to influence from their husbands, having kids also tends to narrow women's focus towards their family as opposed to society more broadly. And per Conquest's First Law -- "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best" -- this often naturally leads to a rightward shift.
However, there is a finding that Gen Z men are especially apathetic about the world and about politics, and more apathetic than the women, in which case maybe it's more plausible for them. Perhaps a phenomenon like this reached Australia first.
I at least believe there's a certain type of single young man without strong ideas who will start mirroring the opinions of attractive young women in his environment in order to seek their approval, but I would think the damage would be mostly done by the time he's married.
Lysander and Thomas match my observations.