Then They Came For the Christians

Aaron Renn wrote a whole book about how America's becoming anti-Christian. Can Muslims relate?

Many of the Muslims I know take education, career, and family really seriously. We didn’t just get told to go to college; we got told to go to Harvard. Sometimes—okay a lot of times—that produced an inordinate amount of pressure. But behind the overbearing expectations was a backhanded compliment: Of course you can get into Harvard. Just because you’re Muslim, or brown, shouldn’t stop you.

But what if that’s the reason the elite institutions stop us? I know plenty of Muslims who have the confidence to navigate all kinds of spaces. But there’s also a lot of Muslims who can tell you when those spaces couldn’t handle them. Whether that’s expecting us to socialize after work at a bar—what am I going to do with that one?—or, yet again, scrutinizing us for our beliefs in ways no one else is.

Enter Aaron Renn, who wants you to know you’re not alone. A religious Christian, but not a theologian, he’s one of the most intriguing conservative thinkers out there, who combines a deep commitment to his faith, the places he was raised, and the country we live in, to come to conclusions we should all be paying attention to. I first came across Aaron Renn some years back; I’ve been fortunate to sit down with him, too.

On the one hand, Aaron is a conservative Christian skeptical of elite institutions (or, maybe I should say, those elite spaces might be skeptical of him). Sound familiar? On the other hand? He built a career in management consulting and urban policy, which means maybe Aaron moves across worlds some people want to believe are incompatible. And I’m sure a lot of us get that.

I can’t tell you how many times people would ask my mom (may God’s mercy be on her), who wore a hijab, or headscarf, if she spoke English. And this would be after they found out she was a radiation oncologist. (A strong, confident, pious Punjabi woman, ammi was more than capable of a response that would be sure to last a lifetime.) What I mean to say is, Aaron’s latest book really got me thinking.

He’s also got a Substack worth subscribing to.

What follows is not a proper review of his book (hint: you should definitely read it.) Instead I wanted to know how a nuanced Christian of thinker, who’s connected to different kinds of Christian communities—and also a fellow Midwesterner—addresses the questions lots of American Muslims are simultaneously struggling with. More importantly, that our kids are literally living. It’s called growing up right now.

I’m grateful to Aaron for taking the time to answer these questions, especially because I know he doesn’t concur with all of my opinions. Of course I don’t concur with all of his. That’s not a bad thing. Especially at a time when a lot of Muslims are rethinking our civic and political affiliations, shouldn’t we be paying attention to what’s happening all around us? That relates to where I met Aaron the first time.

Through Aaron, I learned about a Christian conference not so far from my house, but which felt a world away. (Pretty sure many folks there were vexed by my presence.) Shouldn’t we know what’s happening around us? Why aren’t more of us comfortable in spaces where people might strongly disagree with us? Do we think that kind of diversity is something far away and irrelevant?

In a recent post, I talked about how the high school boys in my halaqa range from disillusioned Democrats to enthusiastic Republicans. These are kids who hang out together, who are growing up together, who pray together. If we want to talk to them about what they’re thinking through, we should be comfortable with ideas and perspectives beyond our own.

In fact, that’s one more reason I think Aaron’s writing is worth reading. Aaron is one of the most interesting writers on religion and masculinity today, where—let’s be honest—we’re facing crisis. If our mosques and Islamic schools don’t see that, who will our kids turn to? To be clear, Aaron isn’t taken by the world’s Andrew Tates. But he’s keen for us to understand why men like Tate have the influence and reach they do.

That’s something we all need to reckon with. What do our young men believe Muslim masculinity to be? Who are they learning from—and what are they learning? And if we’re not comfortable, are we comfortable explaining why? Can we provide alternative models and ideals? And where do we draw those from? So I hope you read carefully. I hope you consider his perspective.

And I hope we can enrich the ways in which we talk to, and talk with, and talk through life with those who will succeed us.

LIFE IN THE NEGATIVE WORLD

Haroon: You argue America’s elite have become hostile to Christianity. A lot of folks would look at Republicans, for example, and say Christianity is alive, well, and empowered. Others, myself included, would contend that "a negative world" might instead be an America more faithful to what the Constitution enables, a diverse public space and a more plural society. 

Do you believe there’s merit to that? 

For the first 300 years of its settlement, America was unquestionably an Anglo-Protestant nation. It was non-sectarian in that there was no official state church as in Europe. But the country was 98% Protestant in 1790. Political scientist Eric Kaufmann notes that there was a duality to the universal liberalist rhetoric that accompanied the development of American identity. On the one hand, it did talk about universal values and such. On the other, that liberal universalism was particular to the United States - something that distinguished it from Europe, part of what made Americans a distinct people.

It was really not until the 1960s that a fully “creedal” idea of America took hold, and the idea of a “Judeo-Christian” tradition replaced Anglo-Protestantism. This was the result of demographic changes introduced by Ellis Island-era immigration. But it took several decades for that to happen, and World War II was an important catalyst. In that war, immigrant populations demonstrated their loyalty to America alongside the historic Anglo population, sometimes helping invade their historic homelands like Italy. The war also added an impetus to ensuring Jews were no longer viewed as an alien population.

Undoubtedly, demographic changes throughout Western nations will require some type of reconceptualizing of the nation. Kaufmann’s provocative book White Shift explores some possible scenarios, though there are certainly plenty of others. 

Haroon: You write that while America’s elite culture has recently become skeptical of Christianity, the process began decades back, when many people would have said Christianity was flourishing. Do you think there was something Christian institutions and leaders could have done to prevent this decline? 

I see the changes I outline in my book as a small part of a larger narrative of secularization in the West going back hundreds of years. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor wrote an excellent if exceptionally long and dense book on the topic called A Secular Age that starts the timeline in the middle ages.

I view this as a contingent outworking of historic forces. It’s contingent in that what happened was not inevitable as in the Marxist sense. But it’s not obvious what the leverage points would be to have changed it.

Taylor’s ideas of secularization would probably be of interest to your readers. To him, the key shift is that we went from a world 500 years ago in which it was impossible not to believe in God to one in which belief is simply one choice among many. That idea of belief as a conscious choice rather than a basic reality of our condition is something that affects everyone in the West today.

Haroon: A lot of Muslims have long felt America’s elite culture has, at best, held us at a remove. In that sense, we share some similar sentiments. What approaches would you recommend for parents and educators that believe they’re raising kids in a negative world? 

There seems to be a strange relationship between elite culture and Islam that I don’t profess to fully understand. On the one hand, elite culture is positive towards Islam in that “Islamophobia” is one of their secular sins along with other such identity politics matters. On the other Islam is still viewed as a social threat, either of terrorism or disrupting the social consensus on Israel or other matters. There do not seem to be many Muslims in the truly elite levels of American culture or institutions, so in that sense you are right that there seems to be something of a remove there.

Again, not knowing the American Muslim world that well, I would probably again draw the parallel to early 20th century Catholicism. American institutions certainly do not teach Islam or its system, hence any Muslims who want to perpetuate Islamic identity in this country have to create their own institutions for doing so. Education would certainly fall into that. 

For Christians in America, Christian schooling or home schooling are becoming the default choices. I also know that there’s a nascent classical schooling movement in the Jewish world. Perhaps Muslims will do something similar.

Haroon: One of the things that most intrigued me about the book was your perspective. 

A lot of your insights are drawn from your experience in elite spaces, including urban policy and management consulting. Someone trained in theology alone wouldn’t see what you see—which is a roundabout way of asking, what does elite culture do well, that you wish people of faith learned from?

I’m actually skeptical of our elites. A big interest of mine has been what was lost in American elite culture with the decline of the old “WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) Establishment” and the old American consensus. Perhaps I’m fascinated by this because I’m from German and Sicilian Catholic peasant stock myself and thus something of an outsider looking in.

A proper elite does a number of things:

- It lives by a set of standards that are aspirational in society, such as the old Anglo-American “gentlemen’s code.” 

- It sets and enforces the norms of society - the unwritten rules of the game. 

- It rewards those who accomplish worthy things in various domains with social recognition

- It shapes and reshapes our institutions to address new eras and challenges. 

These are all things where we are deficient in my view. 

Haroon: I’ve been really taken by how you've addressed the so-called manosphere; you talk about the influence of men from Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson, contrasting their hold on young men with the failures of religious institutions. 

Why do you think young men are struggling? And why do you think religious institutions aren’t able to meet them where they are?

I only know the Christian world here, but the American church has long had a female skew and has been skeptical of men dating back to the industrial revolution. When people left farms and went to the cities to work in factories, classically male vices like drunkenness and gambling caused major problems for their wives and children. The temperance movement (anti-alcohol) was a response to this. I think this sort of seeing men as the locus of problems in society has been retained, both in religion but also in secular official culture. 

Haroon: A smart, ambitious young man comes to you, a person of faith, struggling. The “negative world” might be negative to faith, but it offers many benefits too. What does faith offer him that the negative world cannot? Why, in other shoulds, should anyone pick faith?

To me, the only genuine reason to have faith is because you honestly believe it to be true. That’s why I am a Christian. At the same time, an orientation towards “transcendent goods,” values that go beyond just health and wealth in the present age, has great value. If this world is all there is, then suffering is difficult to endure because it seems devoid of purpose or possibility of redemption. Our lives also seem small and insignificant. We become Nietzsche’s “last men.” 

Haroon: You're an Indianan and so a fellow Midwesterner (I am too, by way of marriage and a move). This is a region that’s seen some remarkable growth and investment in recent years. Do you think this is a region that’s more hospitable to people of faith than other parts of America? 

The South is the area that they call the Bible Belt. But I think much of the Midwest, particularly the suburbs of major cities, is a basically friendly environment for faith. Having said that, there’s great variability around the country in terms of faith-friendliness. I think that New York City is a very faith-friendly city, for example.

Haroon: A lot of parents I know struggle helping their kids think about big life decisions, like who to marry, or where to live, the stuff that makes life meaningful, much more so than, say, what college you went to (not knocking college, but my wife makes me much happier than where I went to school.) 

How can we get better at this?

It’s difficult because all the messages of our society push against priorities like finding a spouse in favor of other things like finding yourself. Also, the economy is much more competitive than it used to be. 

It’s hard for people under the age of 35 to relate to the future story arc of their life. For example, when I was in my 20s, I knew I would one day grow old and die. But I had no emotional connection to that. In my late 30s, when visiting my ailing grandmother in the hospital, I connected for the first time to the fact that I was going to be in her position one day. Was anyone going to come visit me in the hospital? I started to see that the track I was on was leading me towards an unhappy ending.

The problem is that young adults make decisions with far’reaching consequences in their lives without fully understanding them or being able to relate to them. Historically, societies had guardrails or grooves to channel people into making generally productive decisions. Sometimes these were restrictive or even cruel at times. But we see today the consequences of eliminating them.

I don’t claim to have the answers, but it’s something I think about a lot for my own young son.

Thank you, Aaron.

TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE QALB

Coming soon, I’ll be interviewing Mohammed Faris about his new book, The Barakah Effect (Faris is the author of an earlier book you might have heard of, The Productive Muslim). If I’m a little slow, though, it’s not just Ramadan. I’ve also been working on three essays; two of them consider how American Muslims are affected by, and are affecting, the war on Gaza. The third is on Islam and masculinity.

But I’m not done until I share a great idea.

I mean, Toronto? Montreal? Detroit? Dallas alone has more Muslims than some OIC member-states. They’ve also captured many of our a’immah.

If you’re part of a masjid anywhere in this band, or near to it, you should very strongly consider connecting your community to a beautiful but rare sunnah, creating a memory that’ll literally last a lifetime, drawing everyone to the masjid for an experience all the more beautiful because it’ll take place in the last days of Ramadan.

I’m talking of course about the solar eclipse. For us Ohioans, we won’t get another one until 2099. In other words, almost nobody reading this will be alive by then. And so wouldn’t it be so special for the community to come together and pray salat al-kusūf together, which is one of the more uncommon sunnahs.

I’m specifically inspired by the pretty phenomenal taraweeh experience at our masjid. Yes, there’s way too many people for the space to handle. Yes, it’s almost impossible to make it work on a weekday, especially with kids who have early bedtimes. But there’s no way it doesn’t leave an imprint on your heart.

Maybe so that you want to stay close to this masjid. Maybe so when you’re older you remember: I need to raise my kids near a good masjid. Maybe so you think: What can I do to keep my masjid vibrant? Ramadan Mubarak, dear readers. If you like what you read, consider subscribing to Sunday Schooled—it’s free.