Making Your Own Inner Ring
In C. S. Lewis’s essay, The Inner Ring, he describes a circle of people who possess a powerful mystique that outsiders both resent and envy. It’s the result of some well-placed tinsel. We all know that, but we all wish we were on the inside anyway. “Oh, if I could only get in, then I’d have what they’ve got!” Sometimes, this is rationalized in Christian circles with fantasies of making a difference. “If I were in with that group, think of what I could do (for the Lord)!” It’s not put quite that baldly—in fact, it’s hardly put into words at all. It’s just a haze that dulls the ugliness of our envy.
But when change comes it does so from the periphery, always. And the harbingers of change are almost always written off as troublemakers, or nuts, which is another way of saying, “A prophet has no honor in his hometown.”
Then a black swan arrives (sometimes a flock of them), and things get shaken up, and formerly hidden and untoward truths rise to the surface, and we get to see that the cool kids were wrong all along. With the “vibe shift,” formerly self-satisfied people look around for answers, and prophets, once dismissed as cranks, are invited to speak at swank dinner parties. Something like this has happened to our own Aaron Renn. Like many outsiders, I was pleased to see the feature in the New York Times that leapfrogged him right over the inner ring of the Evangelical Industrial Complex (from this point forward, referred to as EIC).
What made this especially delicious is the Times is the sort of institution that the EIC deeply cares about. They long for (and work tirelessly for) the validation Aaron received without looking for it.
Speaking of New York, that’s where I met Aaron years ago when he was still in the employ of the Manhattan Institute. We had lunch across the street from Grand Central Station and talked for nearly three hours. I’ve done my best to support his work ever since. We don’t agree on everything—but there’s not a man alive that I agree with all the time. But I think he’s right more often than I think he’s wrong.
Aaron wouldn’t consider himself a prophet (although he does resemble Elisha). But he’s done the job of one—and he did that merely by announcing the dawn of a new era—something he named Negative World.
That name has made his name. He wasn’t throwing rocks at anyone, or trying to make enemies or even score points. Still, he was studiously ignored by the beautiful people. In case you don’t know, Aaron’s background is in business consulting, and I think it’s fair to say he was just making an observation about a change in market conditions: things have changed (Christians now live in a “negative world”), and the old way of doing things isn’t working anymore (like it did in the “neutral world” that preceded it), and if the neutral world people don’t change how they do things they’re going out of business.
Seems mild enough, but he might as well have been Jeremiah foretelling the fall of Jerusalem. One of the things I’ve noticed about the EIC is it projects world-winning confidence, but it suffers from a soul-crushing inferiority complex. The Apostles actually were confident and courageous, when you get close to the EIC, instead, you smell fear. I can’t help but think of it as a wallflower at the prom, living for the moment when something like the NY Times notices them and asks them to dance. Secular elites always take the lead when that happens, naturally. The EIC would never think to demand anything in return. It isn’t in them.
But something changed, and the wallflower isn’t even a wallflower anymore. And someone once consigned to the outer darkness has been ushered into the center of things, at least for a moment.
I’m happy for Aaron, and very pleased with this turn in how his work is being regarded by the wider world. I don’t think it will be taken to heart by the EIC though. I suspect that those folks will now look at him as a rival rather than the advisor I think he’d like to be for them.
There’s a lesson in this for anyone looking on, and it has to do with what you should expect from the status quo. Established institutions are conservative by nature, and I don’t mean conservative theologically or politically. I just mean they don’t like change. And some of the most intransigent institutions are actually ones that identify as politically and theologically (if they are willing to think of themselves that way) liberal and progressive. In other words, even progressives tend to live in the past.
Positioning yourself so as to be acceptable to the gatekeepers of those institutions tends to make you yesterday’s news.
While you shouldn’t chase fads (which is something—ironically—the status quo is prone to do, that’s why they thoughtlessly parroted the Black Lives Matter mantras and weakened their own churches by shutting them down in the name of “loving your neighbor” when they bent the knee to the covid-cargo-cult) instead, call it like you see it.
There’s no guarantee that will take you from zero to hero—but that isn’t the point. Go ahead and embrace pariah status—but be a cheerful one if you can be. And if you’re lonely, make your own inner ring.
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