What Does Donald Trump's Victory Mean for the Negative World?

The electoral prospects of the Republican Party are not the same as the status of Christianity in America

Rod Dreher’s 2017 book The Benedict Option argued that the culture was turning implicitly hostile towards Christianity such that Christians needed to form stronger local communities to sustain and transmit their faith in this more difficult environment.

The book got a chilly reception from Christians at that time. Why?

There are many reasons, but one of them is surely that the book came out right after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. The Benedict Option was not dependent on Hillary Clinton winning, but was written assuming she would. I believe Dreher had to make some hasty revisions after Trump’s win.

Trump’s victory made people think the situation was not as dire at Dreher portrayed.

My own thesis, developed about the same time, was that Christianity had entered a “Negative World.” The status of Christianity in America went into decline starting in the 1960s, going through three phases or worlds, the Positive World (1964-1994) in which Christianity was declining but still viewed positively, the Neutral World (1994-2014) in which it was no longer seen positively but not yet negatively either, and the Negative World (post-2014) in which for the first time in the 400 year history of America, official, elite culture now views Christianity negatively, or certainly at least skeptically.

People have been asking me what Trump’s victory last week means for my Negative World thesis.

One of the point I made in my book is that it’s important not to conflate the electoral prospects of the Republican Party with the status of Christianity in America.

The Republican Party’s fortunes will ebb and flow, but it’s likely to be very competitive into the future. Political parties exist to win elections, and they will pivot to where they need to go to stay relevant and competitive. That’s why we should assume the Democrats will be back before too long.

Indeed, what we see is that the Republicans won with a strategy that pivoted away from traditional social conservative issues like abortion. Once it became clear that abortion was an electoral loser, Trump and other Republicans dropped it like a hot rock.

This is part of the transformation of the conservatism and the Republican Party in America into a post-Christian right. It’s not overtly hostile to Christianity. There will be many Christians that are part of it. But it won’t be animated by a Christian moral vision or be particularly concerned with the issues that have traditionally been priorities of American Christians. It likely also augurs for a pivot in Christian politics towards a different set of issues, particularly among the young.

Contrary to what some people might think, American history has not been a straight line pointing in a more liberal direction. The Victorian era was somewhat straight laced. By the Roaring 20s we were in a more libertinist era. Postwar America pivoted towards a more conservative culture, followed by the upheavals of the 60s and 70s, and the pivot back to the right in the 1980s.

The idea that we could enter another phase of cultural consolidation that is more conservative is very possible. Much like the 1980s, this would reject the more extreme elements of the past decade while confirming and institutionalizing many of the changes. It might also involve disciplining but not eliminating social media and smart phones, especially among minors, curtailing some of the abuses in the online gambling world, etc.

Possibly there could also be a new consensus on the economy as well, one that’s more China skeptical, focusing on growth at home, building more housing, reindustrialization, etc. This might be similar to how in the 1970s and 80s there was a consensus around the need for reform and deregulation.

I have called something like this the woke consolidation phase.

What are the implications of this for American Christianity?

In this environment, the Democrats have an incentive to reject their most extreme and unpopular policies, and curtail the power of their left flank. Should this come to pass, it could certainly have some benefits for American Christians.

For example, the hard left cultural movements were often explicitly anti-white and anti-Christian. We already see that this is getting dialed back, as corporations cutback, eliminate, or rebrand their DEI initiatives.

This will mean a less hostile environment to be sure. I use the term “negative” in the Negative World but perhaps “skeptical” would be a better term. Even at the height of woke, merely identifying as a Christian would not necessarily get you in trouble. Ask Sen. Raphael Warnock or Pete Buttigieg. You only got in real trouble if you went against the new public moral order. It’s easy to see how this could evolve into a more moderate direction. The left’s bogeyman du jour is Elon Musk, not someone like Pat Robertson.

However, various Christian provocateurs are going to keep saying and doing things intentionally designed to anger secular society. For example, Indiana just elected a pastor and podcaster to be Lieutenant Governor. This guy undoubtedly craves attention, and is already mixing it up with the press on social media. Late in the campaign he stirred controversy by saying Democrats have the “Jezebel spirit.” I’d expect more like that not just from him, but many other people. This will keep ginning up a negative view of Christians in some quarters. There’s not much that can be done about that.

Regardless of how it plays out, American culture is not going to be aligned with Christianity by any means. In fact, it seems likely to keep diverging further. That means that even if explicitly anti-Christian rhetoric declines, the implicit levels of hostility will remain high. In this environment, something like the Benedict Option or the ideas I outlined in my book remain a necessity.

Lastly, I’ll point out that Christians have often tended to favor non-Christian right wing governments as offering them protection. For example, secular dictators in the Middle East have often been perceived as protecting Christian minorities against hostile Islamist factions. The toppling of Saddam Hussein led to the near total destruction of Iraq’s Christian community for example. The Christians of Syria seem to support Bashir al-Assad, who protects them in return for support. Even in the Shia theocracy of Iran, Christianity is flourishing. (See my podcast with professor Austin Knuppe on Middle Eastern Christianity for more on this).

This positioning comes with a lot of risk. If the right wing government falls and the left comes to power, Christians can be targeted for retribution (see Iraq). This suggests political wisdom in terms of alignments to say the least.

While it’s possible there might be a more conservative, or certainly less hard left, phase in America in coming years, I see still us as in a longer term liberal supercycle. So I’d expect a resumption of leftward movement at some point in the future. People need to think about that contingency.

But the most important thing to recognize is that we can’t predict the future. Who on January 1, 2015 thought that two years later Donald Trump would be the next President? Probably not even Trump himself. Who in January 2020 predicted pandemic that would turn our world completely upside down? Who a decade ago would have imagined Hispanic men voting majority Republican?

The future has more possibilities, for both good and ill, than any of us can imagine. Hence we should be careful about having an overdetermined view of the future. American culture and politics are going to continue surprising us.

Cover image: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0