Living faithfully in ‘Negative World’: March ‘Lutheran Witness’

Last year, evangelical thinker and writer Aaron M. Renn put out a book titled Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture (Zondervan, 2024). In it, Renn recounted the shifts in American culture’s view of Christianity over the past 60 years: from the 1960s, when being a churchgoing Christian was a social advantage; through a couple of teetering decades (1994–2014) when our society struggled to maintain a sense of pluralism and tolerance and Christianity was viewed neutrally; to our “Negative World” of the past decade, a society in which holding biblical Christian beliefs comes with many social and material disadvantages.

In the March issue of The Lutheran Witness (LW), Renn has written one of our feature articles, unpacking the concept of the Negative World. “Much of Protestant America has been built on the assumption that it represents the mainstream of American society. That is no longer true. Hence, Protestant Christians need to go through a major adjustment in order to faithfully flourish as a minority in America,” he writes.

The shift has been gradual, but you have certainly sensed it. For some, it may have come as a slowly increasing tension, an uncertainty in speaking with strangers out in public, a growing shock at and disconnect from mainstream music, movies and media. For others, this tension may be much more central: Difficult conversations with co-workers every day. Moral dilemmas about when to hide your beliefs and whether you should. Loss of job or friends. Children leaving the church.

How shall we then live? Alongside Renn’s article in the March LW are reflections from LCMS pastors and thinkers on life in this negative world: how to hold to the Gospel faithfully in a shifting culture, and how to be faithful in our lives, marriages, workplaces and homes in a culture that hates God’s Word.

We encourage you to pick up a copy. We also encourage you to remember that, as the Rev. Scott Adle writes in the issue, “We do not have to fear what is coming. Even in a Negative World, God is still in control, Christ has atoned for our sins, and our eternal future is not in doubt.”

To subscribe to the print LW, and to read select print content and additional web-exclusive articles, visit witness.lcms.org .

Posted March 19, 2025