Life in the Negative World
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If you pay any attention to public affairs in Canada, you already know that we live in a world that views Christianity negatively. To cite just one recent example, Canada’s public broadcaster ran a story decrying ARPA’s reception for MLAs at the BC Legislature, with MLAs on both sides of the political aisle finding it abhorrent that a Christian group would be welcome in the legislature.
But it hasn’t always been that way. Many Canadians likely remember a time when Christianity was viewed much more positively, or perhaps neutrally. At least, that’s the thesis of cultural critic Aaron Renn.
In 2024, Renn wrote Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture. The book describes three general views that that the culture has had of Christianity: the positive world, the neutral world, and the negative world.
In the positive world, Christianity had a privileged status in culture. Not everyone professed to be Christian, but most did. Christian norms dominated society. Even if people didn’t necessarily believe these norms in their hearts, a person generally needed to respect them to be recognized as a fine, upstanding citizen.
The neutral world describes the era when it was neither advantageous nor disadvantageous to be an orthodox Christian. Espousing Christian beliefs or practicing Christian morals didn’t make you more likely to be elected or earn a promotion, but it generally didn’t hurt your chances.
Finally, in the negative world, being a professed Christian and living out orthodox beliefs in public brings public hardship. Whether it is espousing a biblical view of sexuality and gender or opposing abortion, these beliefs can get you in trouble. In many sectors of society, particularly in the white-collar class of academia, media, or business, refusing to celebrate Pride, for example, can even imperil your job.
Shifts in the culture
Renn dates the positive world in the United States as pre-1994, the neutral world as between 1994 and 2014, and the negative world as 2014 to the present. While this dating is more of an art than a science, Renn notes certain events as potential key factors in the transitions. He considers the end of the Cold War and the clash of identities between atheist communism and Christian America, the decline of evangelical political power from its height in the Moral Majority of the 1980s, and the urban resurgence as key in the transition from a positive world to the neutral world. Then the “Great Awokening”, the rise of social justice and critical race theory, and the legal redefinition of marriage in the Obergefell decision, marked the transition from the neutral world to the negative world.
Renn writes for an American audience in an American context, but the story is similar in Canada, though Canada entered the negative world a decade earlier. The tipping point into the neutral world is arguably 1982, the year of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While the Charter did recognize the supremacy of God in its preamble, courts soon interpreted the Charter’s freedom of religion as freedom from religion, striking down the federal Lord’s Day Act as unconstitutional in 1985. A few years later, prayer in public schools was also removed. The year 1981 also coincided with the beginning of the precipitous drop in affiliation with Christianity. Although the decline began earlier, it really began dropping off in the 1980s. From 1951-1981, the percentage of Canadians who identified as Christian declined by an average of 2.2 percentage points per decade, but from 1981-2011 it declined by 7.4 percentage points per decade. After 2011, the decline of Christian affiliation accelerated further, dropping 14 percentage points from 2011-2021.
Canada arguably tipped into the negative world around 2012. That year, three provinces (Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba) added the term “gender identity” to their human rights laws. Over the next five years, every other province and the federal government followed suit, intensifying the culture war on the topic of gender. In the following year, Trinity Western University was denied accreditation for its law program over its community covenant’s requirement for chaste living. In 2014, Justin Trudeau announced that pro-life candidates would no longer be welcome in the federal Liberal party. In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s anti-prostitution laws, and they struck down Canada’s euthanasia prohibition in 2015.
Canada is also further entrenched in the negative world than the United States. The United States boasts a far higher number of practicing Christians than Canada does. Approximately 30% of Americans attend a religious service around once a week, compared to only about 10% of Canadians.
In addition to Canada’s lower rate of religious practice, the Americans have had at least one term in the last decade of a federal government that slowed the decline into the negative world. Whatever you may think of Donald Trump, his administration respected traditional values (even if they weren’t explicitly Christian) far more than Justin Trudeau’s government. While Mark Carney doesn’t seem so intent on plunging Canada further into the negative world, he isn’t likely to nominate Supreme Court justices who will overturn previous court decisions on abortion or change policy to recognize only two sexes, as Trump has.
The call to Christians
The precise dating of the positive, neutral, and negative world is not Renn’s main concern. Rather, his purpose is to help Christians rightly understand the world we’re facing so that we can respond with the best strategy of engagement. Taking a 10,000-foot view, Renn encourages Christians to strengthen our personal, institutional, and missional strategies.
On the personal front, Renn commends obedience, excellence, and resilience. In the face of cultural hostility, we can be tempted to go with the cultural flow and compromise our beliefs, as many mainline Protestant Christians have. But we need to remain obedient to every word of Scripture. We need to be excellent in every human endeavour, using our excellence as a way to demonstrate the truth and goodness of Christianity. In particular, Renn encourages individuals to excellence in the intellectual world, raising up a new generation of academics, lawyers, politicians, journalists, preachers, and apologists who can go toe-to-toe with the best of their secular counterparts and defend the Christian faith. And we need to be resilient, picking vocations that minimize the risk of being fired for our beliefs and pursuing financial freedom as much as possible so that, if our jobs are threatened for standing up for our beliefs, we have the resources to make a principled stand.
We also need to build more and better Christian institutions, Renn says. Our churches, schools, non-profits, and businesses need to be built on integrity and avoid scandals that entrap both secular and Christian institutions alike. Renn stresses community strength, and the value of creating our own institutions (like schools) to incubate a Christian worldview. While Reformed Christians have excelled at this at the K-12 level in Canada, there is a dearth of Christian post-secondary institutions in Canada to continue this tradition in higher levels of education.
Additionally, Christians need to own and control their own institutions rather than piggyback on others. Whether that ownership is medium-sized businesses able to employ swaths of the Christian community or churches owning their own building outright to be less dependent on the whims of their landlords, Renn thinks ownership is crucial.
Renn’s final section on living missionally is the most applicable to ARPA’s work. With such hostility in the negative world, Renn knows that Christians will be tempted to retreat from public life and live their faith in private. He counsels against this, calling the Church to be a light. In a world where even men’s consciences and the law that is written upon their hearts no longer convict them of their sin, Christians need to spread the light of the gospel to the world. In an era where truth is relative and information is super-abundant, we need to be a clear voice of truth. Renn warns against disengaging or engaging recklessly with the culture around us but advises Christians to engage prudently.
That is what ARPA aims to do. Stemming from our love for God and neighbor, our mission is to educate, equip, and encourage Reformed Christians to political action and to bring a biblical perspective to our civil authorities. Our We Need a Law, Care not Kill, and Let Kids Be campaigns are designed to help Reformed Christians engage prudently on difficult issues, advocating for Christian principles in politically discerning ways. As one of those Christian institutions Renn talks about, we strive for excellence in intellectual work, training the next generation for engagement through ARPA school clubs, youth conferences, and internship opportunities. Despite the negativity towards Christianity in our world, we are committed to being honest, patient, and hopeful, knowing the battle is the LORD’s.
We hope that you continue to join us in this mission.
