Kerby Anderson
Two years ago, Aaron Renn wrote about “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism” in the journal, First Things. I did an interview with him about the article. He has now expanded that concept in his new book, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture.
When he was on my radio program recently, he described the three worlds. The first world was the “positive world” that existed from 1964 to 1994. Society at large still had a mostly positive view of Christianity. He says that to be known as a good, churchgoing person was a positive attribute. Being a Christian enhanced your social status.
The second world was a “neutral world” that ran from 1994 to 2014. During this period, society took mostly a neutral stance towards Christianity. No longer did Christianity have a privileged status but neither was it disfavored. Christianity was merely one valid option among many within a pluralistic, multicultural public square.
The third world is the “negative world” we live in today. Society has an overall negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian can be a social negative, especially he says, in the higher status domains of society. Christian morality is repudiated. Expressing biblical ideas in public can have negative consequences.
Christians need to adapt to this negative world. Some of the actions and strategies that might have been successful in the other worlds, may not be effective in this negative world. Most of his book provides guidance in how to live personally and institutionally. We need wisdom in how to live effectively as Christians in this negative world.

Kerby Anderson
Will artificial intelligence take your job? That is a question that John Stossel asks in a recent video. He says the media warns, “Artificial intelligence will replace millions of jobs.” He shows you Teamsters protesting the use of self-driving cars because they will replace taxi drivers.
In previous commentaries, I have talked about how technology can be disruptive to society. But the long-term impact isn’t as bad as fearmongers would suggest. Jay Richards is the author of the book The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. He writes about the impact of robots and acknowledges that the coming disruption could be as abrupt as the Industrial Revolution.
But he and John Stossel point to history to dismiss many of the concerns. For example, if it is true that technology leads to permanent unemployment of the masses, the history of the last few centuries would be a history of joblessness. That is not true.
Both point to the fact that more than 90 percent of America’s workers once worked on farms. Better farm equipment replaced many of those jobs and now one percent work on farms. John Stossel reminds us that “There were once half a million typists in America. Nearly all those jobs are gone.” Also, there were “thousands of phone and elevator operator jobs.”
Many “bank tellers were replaced by ATM machines and online banking. Video rental stores were killed by streaming services.” In nearly every industry, you can find examples of how technology resulted in lost jobs. But there was no major surge in unemployment decades later. People found other jobs in such fields as education, hospitality, and health care.
Technological change can be disruptive, but we need only look to history to see how society usually benefits from new technologies.