- This evangelical rhetoric is better than another type which is quite common: "become a visionary builder of some type of ministry enterprise"--the John Piper "don't waste your life" theme. This leads to the second comment:
- Notions of success and leadership in evangelicalism are all oriented towards "ministry" -- think of the fact that for many evangelicals mentions of "elite" invoke Tim Keller, etc. Until evangelical culture broadens beyond this ministryism and clericalism, it will remain hard to produce elites in its ranks.
Evangelicals are churchy people. The church doesn't want risky people. Its been remarked that the risk-takers in eva spaces are the very lauded missionaries and the church-planters. That's where people think an impact needs to be made.
The comment about how the world-system is seen in any big institution is apt. So don't build a big thing because if it gets to a certain size it just means satan runs it (somehow).
I wonder how many entrepreneurs that can afford failure and learn from it literally can afford it. Like they have access to capital to risk. Do most middling churchgoers in evangelical spaces?
Anthony is right about evangelicals not producing leaders, but what groups are producing leaders today? This rhymes with Aaron’s recent comments on the downturn in local institutions. There might be something to over saturation and fragmentation of modern society that naturally smothers potential leaders.
When someone attempts to become a leader, they get pushback from a variety of groups. I think many would be shocked at the amount of criticism, harassment, and threats that many of people in the public eye, even at a local level, receive. Who wants that?
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Indians, blacks, Hispanics, women as a bloc (feminists), and "trans" people are all producing leaders who go to bat for them in public institutions.
Evangelicals do well in athletics, law enforcement, and the military. They could use some serious scholars and professionals (lawyers, doctors, accountants, actuaries) as well. Defense also presents great opportunities that would combine well with their current influence in military. College is the common factor in all of these.
Side note: one of the things I see denounced is the "husband acquires, wife spends" model, and at a certain level: A. isn't this how things have been for most of recorded history? And B. If you can't trust your wife to spend wisely, why did you marry her?
Regarding the first point: we don't live in most of recorded history; we live in a 50-year period where women are, for better or worse, allowed free roam of the universities and professions, and possess earning potential equal to or greater than their male counterparts. It's a brave new world! Besides this, women have always worked (American women in particular) and acquired together with their husbands, albeit not in the professions. That their work was not denominated in terms of money does not matter -- it was still work. What has changed is that marriage (and thereby the work performed within the marriage/family) is no longer viewed as an institution in which the family increases its impact and influence on the world; rather, both marriage/family and career have become consumer lifestyle experiences for women to consume.
Regarding the second point: It seems pretty obvious to me that many American women today are financial liabilities, lacking any sense of thrift that previous generations may have possessed. Examination of student loan repayment statistics ought to confirm this. Watching Caleb Hammer should also confirm this, although he does select for particularly awful examples. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, women are encouraged to feel entitled toward men's money to compensate for this (although many in practice do not feel this way). Evangelical complementarianism in particular explicitly encourages this feeling, which is one of the reasons why I stopped looking for a wife in nondenominational churches. A significant subset of American women really believe that marriage will simply happen to them regardless of what they do, and that the primary function of marriage is a money spigot for them in particular, and that they are unconditionally owed this for getting married -- no question of mutual obligation enters their minds. While obviously discretion is required for picking a wife at an individual level, in aggregate this phenomenon shrinks the pool of women who are legitimate "wifeable" prospects, increasing the time and cost for men to marry prudently.
I've been on dates where the woman offered to pay for my meal; I've been on dates where the woman, long-term, expected me to retire her and buy her an Escalade. There's lots of different types out there. It's the wild west.
My answer to this is….so what? Honestly, so what? Paul spends a lot of ink instructing Christians to be humble and to seek to live godly, quiet lives. I’m 100% a “cubicle man,” and my two children, if my parenting is used by God to save them, are eternal beings who will outlive Tesla or anything else. I believe AB is onto something real but I see no attempt here to reckon with the fact that Christians are called to live lives of quiet faithfulness. Or the reality that most people—at any time in history—have not welcomed “high variance systems.” Ours is a faith for the poor and “low agency” of the world as much as the striver because ultimately we believe the eternal fate of our souls matters far more than anything else.
I think the broader point is that Evangelicals need to accept that this mindset leaves them in the same position as the Amish: a cute oddity to be observed from a distance and chuckled at, but not in any way running things.
(1) We do produce a lot of church planters. That's highly risky---failure is likely, and it can be humiliating. I think the problem is that we discourage every other vocation, and espeically the ones with possible big upsides like starting a business or becoming a politiican or becoming a lawyer. Those aren't holy eough for us, rather as in medieval Europe.
(2) Evenagelical churches are often woman-oriented-- that is, oriented against risk and ambition, and in favor of making your own family work and secondarily helping out at church. Women get nervous when ambition comes up, once they've nailed dowb a husband, tho they love ambition single men.
The answer to this is honestly for Evangelicals to take their current philosophy for institutions they dominate (athletics and the clergy come to mind, not to mention law enforcement and the military) and apply it to literally all other domains holding power, or those that they believe will hold power in the future. Evangelicals currently have Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense/War! They already know what needs to be done.
These risks need to be framed more as concrete, objective vocations worthy of pursuit for their own sake, with vision, and less as the nebulous idea of "risk taking." Risks should not be taken for their own sake. You do not blunder the queen; you sacrifice her to obtain victory. Work and labor has to be framed as honorable again, for its own sake, for what it accomplishes in the world; and it is because of this that it benefits the family. A man's vocation is not a lifestyle experience product for his wife to consume.
My first thought is of CS Lewis's Abolition of Man, originally published in 1943:
"...And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. you can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful..."
Interesting thoughts, but the issue seems created from a patchwork of reality, rather than an accurate reflection of it! Plus it misses the whole teaching of Jesus and the Apostles in the NT about the purpose of God's kingdom during its time on earth IMO - unless of course the goal is to get better culture warriors for Evangelicals so they can compete better in a society of wolves.
Also it seems part of the masculinity "question", just thinly veiled and reflected in the author's worldview. IMO this issue is cobbled together from broad assertions that can't be proved or confirmed, since the subject is so big and has so many moving pieces...
I would want to hear how this perspective interacts with prescriptions such as we find in Paul:
"Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody." (1 Th 4)
I agree that safetyism is stifling young people, especially young men. (It's stifling our society at large.) Yet I wouldn't recommend entrepreneurship for entrepreneurship's sake.
Is the disappearance of a "frontier" the issue? A young man can no longer simply "go west."
Living on Long Island for five years, I see the difficulties that safetyist bureaucracy creates for young people. I have recommended to many of them that they do go west. Move to places where you can mind your own business, without others minding it for you, and build.
One thing I found missing from your analysis there was how dang expensive life has gotten. I tell young men to go on a road trip in the summers. See if you can take extra time off around a holiday, drive with a buddy or two. Sleep in the car or in cheap lodging. Pack some road snacks and eat cheap food, and just make sure you get a few showers. But that's expensive now! If they don't have a decent job already, stashing away cash for a trip like this is hard.
Maybe something else which you've recommended is important here: Parents need to give their kids money now, not later. I toured South America in college, mostly with money from my college jobs, but underwritten by my parents toward the end. That experience was deeply valuable. Parents should recognize such value. I hope to do so as my kids grow.
We're reading the Little House series to our kids, and the life of Almanzo Wilder is interesting to consider. As a preteen, he was working alongside his dad in dangerous conditions. He learned how to take appropriate risk.
If you are a parent you will be risk adverse-- because your kids come first. If we exclude people from consideration who came from established fortunes, and people with hereditary power, many of history's transformative leaders were childless: Plato, St Paul, Justinian, assorted popes, assorted great saints, Elizabeth I.
Genghis was a transformative leader with many children. I think my comment is nonsense. But an entirely appropriate response to JonF311 comment about transformative, but childless, leaders; which is also nonsense. He left out Hitler!
Genghis Khan came from a polygamous culture. I assumed we were talking about modern day Christian-based cultures-- which are all monogamous, and most of us think monogamy is right, for reasons both moral and practical.
I am wondering if the aversion to taking risk and building something significant in society simply reflects the view in evangelical circles that the "negative world" is no longer a place where a Christian man would want to build something. The thinking might be that it would just require too much frustration and moral compromise. If you try to build a company, for instance, you couldn't hire the people you wanted either because of DEI pressure or because the only people available would be tattoo-covered, nose-pierced weirdos who are more interested in protesting their latest grievance than working. If you stand up for Christian values in a new enterprise, you'd be subject to lawsuits. Most of the new growth businesses are menacing technologies, like robots and AI. So the best thing is to keep your head low and concentrate on serving God (which we should be doing in any event), raising a family, earning good income in order to support the family, and pursuing challenging hobbies. If the reasons cited here aren't enough to stifle worldly ambition, another deterrent is that there are very few good role models of successful Christian men. Most of the successful men in high places are not examples of Christian virtue.
I do agree that a man should try to punch through this kind of thinking to pursue his dreams and do something positive for the world. However, with all the headwinds, it is understandable if he doesn't.
I can recall the attitude from a pastor back in positive world years that any work to build institutions would only serve to help Satan's World System. Definitely something that's taken a long time to unlearn.
Mostly agree. I've never encountered evangelicals describing failure as a lack of prayer or anything. However, I do feel ambition can be quickly ascribed to a lack of contentment and worldliness, and anything outside the 9-5 risks that gravest of sins: missing a church service. As an Indy Baptist I certainly feel like many of my brethren make an idol out of church attendance. All any institution would have to do to cut out Indy Baptists out of any institution is to schedule meetings Wednesday nights during midweek service.
Rings true. Certainly for the PCA, which I refer to as, "The First Church of Middle Management." The PCA isn't Tony Stark, it's Pepper Potts--administrative assistant.
The author is correct about the fundamental assessment that the Christian world, generally, creates "cubicle dwellers", not leaders, though the general concept of "leaders" also needs review. Most real leaders aren't maintainers of the status quo, they're disruptors, but in a world which values people who are simply "large and in-charge" they tend to just be jerks, and bullies, not innovators. Also, there is a firm belief in the majority -- if the majority believe it, then it must be true, and right. Anyone who goes against the majority is also going against the received religious/theological thinking, and ought to be cast out. After all... to my second thought....
Religious authority trumps all. Having grown up around Christian ministries, and then working in one for a dozen years, the theological dimension trumps all. A guy gets promoted (seldom women), and even if he feels inadequate or beyond his abilities, he was promoted by his theological "betters", so they must be right. This follows all the way up the chain, such that there can never be any questioning if a guy is a jerk, or incompetent, or worse. It can also foster an attitude of entitlement. This goes equally for accounting and other professional practices: "We are good people, we don't need to follow FASBs or other rules for "those" other people."
Finally, all of the above leads to people who are looking for approbation, but more than that, waiting for permission. I spent time in a European country last year where it was pointed out to me that if there isn't a sign clearly giving permission, the behavior must be prohibited. This is all over the country, and quite the opposite of the prevailing thinking here in the U.S. It's probably what is making a colleague of mine a bit crazy, because he can't get the people helping him with a project to get off the dime. I've found the same mentality all throughout the Christian world, and doubly so because of the theological implications of bucking the prevailing opinions. Disagreeing about anything isn't just disagreeing, it's potentially heresy.
I agree with a lot of the article. Two comments.
- This evangelical rhetoric is better than another type which is quite common: "become a visionary builder of some type of ministry enterprise"--the John Piper "don't waste your life" theme. This leads to the second comment:
- Notions of success and leadership in evangelicalism are all oriented towards "ministry" -- think of the fact that for many evangelicals mentions of "elite" invoke Tim Keller, etc. Until evangelical culture broadens beyond this ministryism and clericalism, it will remain hard to produce elites in its ranks.
Evangelicals are churchy people. The church doesn't want risky people. Its been remarked that the risk-takers in eva spaces are the very lauded missionaries and the church-planters. That's where people think an impact needs to be made.
The comment about how the world-system is seen in any big institution is apt. So don't build a big thing because if it gets to a certain size it just means satan runs it (somehow).
I wonder how many entrepreneurs that can afford failure and learn from it literally can afford it. Like they have access to capital to risk. Do most middling churchgoers in evangelical spaces?
Anthony is right about evangelicals not producing leaders, but what groups are producing leaders today? This rhymes with Aaron’s recent comments on the downturn in local institutions. There might be something to over saturation and fragmentation of modern society that naturally smothers potential leaders.
When someone attempts to become a leader, they get pushback from a variety of groups. I think many would be shocked at the amount of criticism, harassment, and threats that many of people in the public eye, even at a local level, receive. Who wants that?
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Indians, blacks, Hispanics, women as a bloc (feminists), and "trans" people are all producing leaders who go to bat for them in public institutions.
Evangelicals do well in athletics, law enforcement, and the military. They could use some serious scholars and professionals (lawyers, doctors, accountants, actuaries) as well. Defense also presents great opportunities that would combine well with their current influence in military. College is the common factor in all of these.
Side note: one of the things I see denounced is the "husband acquires, wife spends" model, and at a certain level: A. isn't this how things have been for most of recorded history? And B. If you can't trust your wife to spend wisely, why did you marry her?
Regarding the first point: we don't live in most of recorded history; we live in a 50-year period where women are, for better or worse, allowed free roam of the universities and professions, and possess earning potential equal to or greater than their male counterparts. It's a brave new world! Besides this, women have always worked (American women in particular) and acquired together with their husbands, albeit not in the professions. That their work was not denominated in terms of money does not matter -- it was still work. What has changed is that marriage (and thereby the work performed within the marriage/family) is no longer viewed as an institution in which the family increases its impact and influence on the world; rather, both marriage/family and career have become consumer lifestyle experiences for women to consume.
Regarding the second point: It seems pretty obvious to me that many American women today are financial liabilities, lacking any sense of thrift that previous generations may have possessed. Examination of student loan repayment statistics ought to confirm this. Watching Caleb Hammer should also confirm this, although he does select for particularly awful examples. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, women are encouraged to feel entitled toward men's money to compensate for this (although many in practice do not feel this way). Evangelical complementarianism in particular explicitly encourages this feeling, which is one of the reasons why I stopped looking for a wife in nondenominational churches. A significant subset of American women really believe that marriage will simply happen to them regardless of what they do, and that the primary function of marriage is a money spigot for them in particular, and that they are unconditionally owed this for getting married -- no question of mutual obligation enters their minds. While obviously discretion is required for picking a wife at an individual level, in aggregate this phenomenon shrinks the pool of women who are legitimate "wifeable" prospects, increasing the time and cost for men to marry prudently.
I've been on dates where the woman offered to pay for my meal; I've been on dates where the woman, long-term, expected me to retire her and buy her an Escalade. There's lots of different types out there. It's the wild west.
My answer to this is….so what? Honestly, so what? Paul spends a lot of ink instructing Christians to be humble and to seek to live godly, quiet lives. I’m 100% a “cubicle man,” and my two children, if my parenting is used by God to save them, are eternal beings who will outlive Tesla or anything else. I believe AB is onto something real but I see no attempt here to reckon with the fact that Christians are called to live lives of quiet faithfulness. Or the reality that most people—at any time in history—have not welcomed “high variance systems.” Ours is a faith for the poor and “low agency” of the world as much as the striver because ultimately we believe the eternal fate of our souls matters far more than anything else.
I think the broader point is that Evangelicals need to accept that this mindset leaves them in the same position as the Amish: a cute oddity to be observed from a distance and chuckled at, but not in any way running things.
(1) We do produce a lot of church planters. That's highly risky---failure is likely, and it can be humiliating. I think the problem is that we discourage every other vocation, and espeically the ones with possible big upsides like starting a business or becoming a politiican or becoming a lawyer. Those aren't holy eough for us, rather as in medieval Europe.
(2) Evenagelical churches are often woman-oriented-- that is, oriented against risk and ambition, and in favor of making your own family work and secondarily helping out at church. Women get nervous when ambition comes up, once they've nailed dowb a husband, tho they love ambition single men.
Church planters and missionaries are evangelicals' primary high risk vocations, and the only ones that seem to be lauded.
When is the last time you've heard anyone praised for getting into politics or entrepreneurship in church?
The answer to this is honestly for Evangelicals to take their current philosophy for institutions they dominate (athletics and the clergy come to mind, not to mention law enforcement and the military) and apply it to literally all other domains holding power, or those that they believe will hold power in the future. Evangelicals currently have Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense/War! They already know what needs to be done.
These risks need to be framed more as concrete, objective vocations worthy of pursuit for their own sake, with vision, and less as the nebulous idea of "risk taking." Risks should not be taken for their own sake. You do not blunder the queen; you sacrifice her to obtain victory. Work and labor has to be framed as honorable again, for its own sake, for what it accomplishes in the world; and it is because of this that it benefits the family. A man's vocation is not a lifestyle experience product for his wife to consume.
My first thought is of CS Lewis's Abolition of Man, originally published in 1943:
"...And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. you can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful..."
There is nothing new under the sun.
Interesting thoughts, but the issue seems created from a patchwork of reality, rather than an accurate reflection of it! Plus it misses the whole teaching of Jesus and the Apostles in the NT about the purpose of God's kingdom during its time on earth IMO - unless of course the goal is to get better culture warriors for Evangelicals so they can compete better in a society of wolves.
Also it seems part of the masculinity "question", just thinly veiled and reflected in the author's worldview. IMO this issue is cobbled together from broad assertions that can't be proved or confirmed, since the subject is so big and has so many moving pieces...
I would want to hear how this perspective interacts with prescriptions such as we find in Paul:
"Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody." (1 Th 4)
I agree that safetyism is stifling young people, especially young men. (It's stifling our society at large.) Yet I wouldn't recommend entrepreneurship for entrepreneurship's sake.
Is the disappearance of a "frontier" the issue? A young man can no longer simply "go west."
Living on Long Island for five years, I see the difficulties that safetyist bureaucracy creates for young people. I have recommended to many of them that they do go west. Move to places where you can mind your own business, without others minding it for you, and build.
Your article from last year raises good points around this: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/adventure-and-entrepreneurship
One thing I found missing from your analysis there was how dang expensive life has gotten. I tell young men to go on a road trip in the summers. See if you can take extra time off around a holiday, drive with a buddy or two. Sleep in the car or in cheap lodging. Pack some road snacks and eat cheap food, and just make sure you get a few showers. But that's expensive now! If they don't have a decent job already, stashing away cash for a trip like this is hard.
Maybe something else which you've recommended is important here: Parents need to give their kids money now, not later. I toured South America in college, mostly with money from my college jobs, but underwritten by my parents toward the end. That experience was deeply valuable. Parents should recognize such value. I hope to do so as my kids grow.
We're reading the Little House series to our kids, and the life of Almanzo Wilder is interesting to consider. As a preteen, he was working alongside his dad in dangerous conditions. He learned how to take appropriate risk.
If you are a parent you will be risk adverse-- because your kids come first. If we exclude people from consideration who came from established fortunes, and people with hereditary power, many of history's transformative leaders were childless: Plato, St Paul, Justinian, assorted popes, assorted great saints, Elizabeth I.
One in every two hundred human beings living today descend from Genghis Khan.
What sort of cultural legacy did he leave?
Genghis was a transformative leader with many children. I think my comment is nonsense. But an entirely appropriate response to JonF311 comment about transformative, but childless, leaders; which is also nonsense. He left out Hitler!
Hitler is a negative example of course.
Genghis Khan came from a polygamous culture. I assumed we were talking about modern day Christian-based cultures-- which are all monogamous, and most of us think monogamy is right, for reasons both moral and practical.
Oh, sorry Plato confused me
I am wondering if the aversion to taking risk and building something significant in society simply reflects the view in evangelical circles that the "negative world" is no longer a place where a Christian man would want to build something. The thinking might be that it would just require too much frustration and moral compromise. If you try to build a company, for instance, you couldn't hire the people you wanted either because of DEI pressure or because the only people available would be tattoo-covered, nose-pierced weirdos who are more interested in protesting their latest grievance than working. If you stand up for Christian values in a new enterprise, you'd be subject to lawsuits. Most of the new growth businesses are menacing technologies, like robots and AI. So the best thing is to keep your head low and concentrate on serving God (which we should be doing in any event), raising a family, earning good income in order to support the family, and pursuing challenging hobbies. If the reasons cited here aren't enough to stifle worldly ambition, another deterrent is that there are very few good role models of successful Christian men. Most of the successful men in high places are not examples of Christian virtue.
I do agree that a man should try to punch through this kind of thinking to pursue his dreams and do something positive for the world. However, with all the headwinds, it is understandable if he doesn't.
I can recall the attitude from a pastor back in positive world years that any work to build institutions would only serve to help Satan's World System. Definitely something that's taken a long time to unlearn.
Mostly agree. I've never encountered evangelicals describing failure as a lack of prayer or anything. However, I do feel ambition can be quickly ascribed to a lack of contentment and worldliness, and anything outside the 9-5 risks that gravest of sins: missing a church service. As an Indy Baptist I certainly feel like many of my brethren make an idol out of church attendance. All any institution would have to do to cut out Indy Baptists out of any institution is to schedule meetings Wednesday nights during midweek service.
Perhaps this is a manifestation of passivity, because we don't have a good model of how to work with God.
Rings true. Certainly for the PCA, which I refer to as, "The First Church of Middle Management." The PCA isn't Tony Stark, it's Pepper Potts--administrative assistant.
Yes, the PCA is the church for middle management, something I didn't recognize until fairly recently myself.
The author is correct about the fundamental assessment that the Christian world, generally, creates "cubicle dwellers", not leaders, though the general concept of "leaders" also needs review. Most real leaders aren't maintainers of the status quo, they're disruptors, but in a world which values people who are simply "large and in-charge" they tend to just be jerks, and bullies, not innovators. Also, there is a firm belief in the majority -- if the majority believe it, then it must be true, and right. Anyone who goes against the majority is also going against the received religious/theological thinking, and ought to be cast out. After all... to my second thought....
Religious authority trumps all. Having grown up around Christian ministries, and then working in one for a dozen years, the theological dimension trumps all. A guy gets promoted (seldom women), and even if he feels inadequate or beyond his abilities, he was promoted by his theological "betters", so they must be right. This follows all the way up the chain, such that there can never be any questioning if a guy is a jerk, or incompetent, or worse. It can also foster an attitude of entitlement. This goes equally for accounting and other professional practices: "We are good people, we don't need to follow FASBs or other rules for "those" other people."
Finally, all of the above leads to people who are looking for approbation, but more than that, waiting for permission. I spent time in a European country last year where it was pointed out to me that if there isn't a sign clearly giving permission, the behavior must be prohibited. This is all over the country, and quite the opposite of the prevailing thinking here in the U.S. It's probably what is making a colleague of mine a bit crazy, because he can't get the people helping him with a project to get off the dime. I've found the same mentality all throughout the Christian world, and doubly so because of the theological implications of bucking the prevailing opinions. Disagreeing about anything isn't just disagreeing, it's potentially heresy.