Dr. Anthony Bradley joins me to talk about why the evangelical church struggles to attract men. We will discuss the state of men in America, the matrilineal nature of evangelicalism, and what needs to change to make the church more relevant. Bradley is the author of the book Heroic Fraternities: How College Men Can Save Universities and America.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Fraternities-College-Universities-America/dp/1666715530/

Evangelicalism is Matrilineal: https://mereorthodoxy.com/evangelicals-matrilineal

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Dr. Ewan Goligher is a scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. He's the author of the book How Should We then Die?: A Christian Response to Physician-Assisted Death. He joins me to discuss physician-assisted suicide from a Christian point of view.

Buy his book: https://www.amazon.ca/How-Should-then-Die-Physician-Assisted/dp/1683597478

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Your identity is the foundation and the heart of everything. Because if you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what to do. In this month's newsletter I discuss the importance of identity, and why many people in power in our society want to sever you from yours.

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Paul Carrese is the founding director of the School for Civic and Economic Though Leadership (SCETL) at Arizona State University. SCETL was established by an act of the state legislature to reinvigorate the idea of civics education as a core function of the public university. It is also a model for many other similar centers that have been established at other public universities around the country. Dr. Carrese joins me to discuss SCETL, and why it and centers like it are critical to the future of the university and society.

Visit SCETL's web site: https://scetl.asu.edu/

Leon Podles joins me today to discuss the deep roots of why men don't go to church, focusing on the male quest for honor. He is the author of The Church Impotent and Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity.

Read The Church Impotent for free: https://podles.org/church-impotent.htm
Buy Losing the Good Portion: https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Good-Portion-Aliendated-Christianity/dp/158731505X/

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Luke Robson is on a mission to revitalize the downtown of Hillsdale, Michigan, the small town where Hillsdale College is located. He joins us to discuss his efforts and why he believes this is important.

Subscribe to Luke's Hillsdale Renaissance Newsletter: https://hillsdalerenaissance.substack.com/

Peter Ostapko joins us to discuss his project Kinsmen Journal, a high quality print magazine for Christian men and broader project to curate conversations around faith, fatherhood, and work. Kinsmen Journal featured original commissioned photography and writing, and the highest quality printing and packaging available.

Paleoconservative military writer William Lind developed a concept he calls "4th Generation War," which is an insurgency conflict similar to Afghanistan or Iraq. 4GW is rooted in a decline of the legitimacy of the state, a fundamentally asymmetric conflict, and the criticality of winning at "the moral level of war." There are interesting parallels to cultural conflict which I explore in this newsletter.

Sociologist Brad Wilcox joins to discuss his new book "Get Married." He explains why, despite its decline in our society, marriage remains the best path to success in flourishing in life.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Married-Americans-Families-Civilization/dp/0063210851/

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Georgetown University professor Joseph Hartman joins me to discuss the 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and why he still matters today.

Josh Abbotoy joins me to discuss his projects to built intentional communities of likeminded people in Kentucky and Tennessee.

One of the key events in the Christianization of the Roman Empire was when the children of the existing Roman elites turned aside from the status system of the Roman imperium in favor of new ways of pursuing and achieving elite status within the church.

Today, in the Negative World, the church operates as a shadow status system that takes its cues from secular elite culture. It will always be dominated by that culture unless and until it creates its own status system again. The Thiel Fellowship is an example of what an attempt at creating an alternative form of status would look like in our society.

Lexi Hudson joins me to discuss her recent book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Civility-Timeless-Principles-Ourselves-ebook/dp/B0B9KTF7BP/

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John Burtka, president of ISI, joins me to discuss his new book Gateway to Statesmanship: Selections from Xenophon to Churchill. It's a collection of some of the best writing in history about the nature of the statesman.

Too many people today have negative identities - they are defined by what they oppose not by what they are for or hope to create. Negative identities create asymmetries in which you are vulnerable to people with morally expansionist visions. They also make your identity dependent on the very thing you claim to oppose. While there are plenty of bad positive identities, it's much better to base your identity on a positive than negative vision of life.

Pragmatism is about what we can do with our own two hands with the material we see in front of us. It's an important perspective on the world - but very limiting as well. Too much devotion to pragmatism can blind us to the possibilities in the world and life.

Notre Dame professor Darren Dochuk joins me to discuss his book Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America. Every aspect of modern political, economic, and cultural development of the 20th century was bound up with various strains of the oil industry and Christianity. Dochuk explains this oft-overlooked history.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Anointed-Oil-Christianity-Modern-America/dp/0465060862/

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo join me to discuss their book Why Do Protestants Convert?, which examines the psychological, theological, and sociological reasons that evangelical intellectuals often convert to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Protestants-Convert-Brad-Littlejohn/dp/1949716201/

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Ben Merkle, president of New St. Andrews College, joins me to discuss the broken financial model of higher education in America.

Nancy Pearcey, a professor at Houston Christian University, joins me to discuss her book The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes.

Pearcey was named one of the top five women apologists by Christianity Today and hailed in The Economist as America's preeminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.

Buy The Toxic War on Masculinity: https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-War-Masculinity-Christianity-Reconciles-ebook/dp/B0B6Q3BCG8/

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

For this month's newsletter, John Seel shares an essay on masculinity and the quest to become a "holy man." He examines who a holy man is, the tools he uses, and the product he produces.

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Dr. John Seel argues that evangelicals love Trump because he embodies most of the characteristics of their own leaders, and follows most of their myths.

Watch the full interview with John Seel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ErWEAy27P8

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Long time missionary Andrew Brunson joins me to talk about his two year nightmare in a Turkish jail after being falsely imprisoned by the government for spying.

John Seel joins me to discuss his thoughts on cultural engagement in today's negative world. Dr. Seel holds a Ph.D from the University of Maryland, and is a cultural renewal entrepreneur.

Download Dr. Seel's white paper on The Challenge of Cultural Engagement: https://www.exploradelphia.com/publications

Why do men turn to online influencers instead of the church? One reason is that evangelicals promote a vision of masculinity that is so bleak and unappealing it turns men off. They sum this up under the heading “servant leadership”

Properly definitely, I believe servant leadership is important and something we should all aspire to. But evangelicals use it as a term of art that ends up defining a man’s mission is life as catering to the needs and desires of his wife and kids.

They use a highly curated set of Bible passages and example like Jesus washing the disciples feet, while avoiding the many other examples that show other aspects of what it means to be a man or a leader.

Evangelical servant leadership is a form of radical kenosis in which a man much empty himself of all of his own desires, ambitions, mission goals, etc. in order to serve his wife. One high profile pastor all but says men are never allowed to do anything for themselves.

The evangelical view of the husband echoes the view of God in "moralist therapeutic deism" in which he is a sort of "Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist."

In evangelical teaching, a man has no legitimate claims of his own he can assert, no legitimate desires or aspirations he can hold, no mission in the world to undertake.

Suffice it to say, the people promoting this approach to manhood don’t give off much evidence of living this way themselves.

We definitely need servant leadership. But the way they define it isn’t right. Correcting these faulty teachings on gender is one of the church’s major to-do’s in the today’s negative world.

Newsletter version of his podcast: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/servant-leadership