Note: the first article in this brief series, After the Celebration, may be found here.
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Although, again, I fully realize not all celebrated this past election, there are results that should evoke rejoicing. Here I am not thinking about vote totals and political victories. I am thinking about how this election and the results leading up to it brought together people who had previously been adversaries.
Donald Trump has a reputation for divisiveness and has certainly earned it at times. Yet he has been a remarkable uniter bringing together any number of different people in a coalition almost unthinkable a few years ago. Edison exit polling gives a big picture of this realignment. On a smaller scale, there are feminists who had voted for Obama, Hillary, and Biden who vociferously supported Trump. Star County Texas, over 90% Hispanic, went for Trump. The last time a Republican carried that county was 1898 — 1898. Miami-Dade County Florida of all places went for Trump, the first time it had gone Republican in a presidential election in 36 years.
You get the picture. And you have to admit Trump, with the unwitting assistance of his opponents, has brought quite a variety of people together. Even if one dislikes Trump, that is a happy development for our country. For ten years at least we were becoming balkanized along identity lines with the woke and the Democrat Party very much encouraging that. This election has partly undone that to a remarkable extent.
The election along with the woke predations of the past years has also brought together traditional common sense Christians of different churchmanships. I was very glad to wake up this past Thursday morning to see that Calvin Robinson and Doug Wilson were causing trouble together in Moscow, Idaho.
One is more catholic than the pope; the other is more Reformed than Calvin. I suspect neither would be on each other’s radar screen had they not discovered each other fighting on the same side. Their getting together is a model for us. Here is one discussion that has come out of that.
Another happy development for Christians is we find that many outside the church who once were political and cultural adversaries are now allies. For years, I tuned out Russell Brand as he was not good for my blood pressure. But one day, he said something sensible that made me ask, “Russell Brand said what??” I thought that was probably a one off until he said something else sensible. Before long, it was clear he had become red-pilled. And earlier this year, he famously became baptized. (Yes, he still has issues as do many of us. Pray for him.) Another I tuned out was Naomi Wolf. She, too, has gotten red-pilled. She has not come to the Christian faith but has certainly given it a hearing, even becoming a fan of the Geneva Bible, on which she has done an insightful podcast series.
I can think of others, both online and in personal life, where there is now much more common ground than before. Even my hippie dad and I can now have interesting political discussions that do not end in raised voices. The years since 2018 have been awful but have also opened eyes and brought together people who once seemed to have little in common. We should not drop these new alliances and connections now that the election is past — it would be downright unloving to do so. And as Paul wisely used the common ground he gained in pagan Athens to have conversations about The Faith (Acts 17:16ff), so should we.
Traditional churches now particularly have a window of opportunity among young men, Gen Z men if you prefer. A dozen or so years ago, before Gen Z came of age, the attitudes of men in or nearing their twenties were generally not encouraging, either politically or religiously. They voted for Obama twice and showed little interest in traditional churches. I can think of one favorite Anglo-Catholic parish that a few years ago had not one man under 30 regularly attending.
But the years since have changed that for that parish and across the country. The awfulness since 2018 — the woke vilification of masculinity and of men, the outrage of feminized biological men invading women’s sports and locker rooms, establishment disregard for working men and their systemic replacement by the Invasion, COVID madness, the systemic injustice of rampant and unpunished crime accompanied by the prosecution of manly self-defense and defense of others (See Daniel Penny.), attacks on free speech, the virtual outlawing of common sense and more — have turned young men and provoked them to a healthy rebellion against “Trash World” and the Globalist establishment that enables and encourages it. (Many Gen Z women have joined them, but the rebellion is statistically more pronounced among Gen Z men.)
The outworkings of this healthy Gen Z rebellion are not only political. Many see the current culture — anti-culture really — and find the old paths more attractive. They are particularly considering and joining traditional Christianity. I see this first hand. I work with three traditional Anglican groups, two parish churches and one lay led prayer and study group. All three have an increased number of men in their twenties attending.
This Gen Z openness to The Faith provides a great opportunity to the church — or at least to those churches that avoid feminized worship, wokescolding “social justice,” modern and post-modern apostasies, and instead embrace and live out the Tradition. We owe it to Gen Z men and to church and society to be inviting and welcoming to these men. Their future and ours is at stake.
And we need to do that about now. Trends among youth and young adults can shift quickly. As the awfulness since 2018 drove young men into rebellion against Trash World, should the Trump years go bad, that healthy rebellion could fizzle out or become a toxic rebellion in the opposite direction.
I hope and pray not, but times of greater openness to The Faith can be fleeting. “A door for the word” is wide open. (Col. 4:3 NASB) But we have no guarantees how long it will stay open. Gen Z now rightly wants and needs better things than what the anti-culture has been giving them. The church should make it an urgent priority of meeting that need with the rich and joyous tradition of The Faith.
