Can you feel it? From the Oxford Academic Niall Ferguson to the NYT columnist Ezra Klein, many are noting the vibe-shift taking place in American culture.
If you have a healthier relationship to the news than I do or just less discretionary time to spend, you may not have heard about the “vibe shift” taking place in America today.
But I’ll fill you in: birthing children is in; DEI is out. Publicly professing your belief in the gender binary is “cool”; attending pride-themed trivia nights is not – even in the Bay Area! Men are cool again: Mark Zuckerberg thinks the world needs more “masculine energy.”
Lest you think I’ve been radicalized by an obscure and adolescent corner of the internet, Oxford academics like Niall Ferguson, New York Times journalists like Ezra Klein and Thomas Edsall, quantitative poll wonks like Nate Silver – all of them have written about how the vibes are a ‘shiftin.
2022: The Negative World
In an article published in First Things magazine 3 years ago this month, Aaron Renn argued that American evangelicals exist in a Negative World. The article was so well-received that Renn turned it into a book. According to Renn, Christians exist in a world where:
“Society has an overall negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the higher status domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and now seen as a threat to the public good and new public moral order. Holding Christian moral views, publicly affirming the teachings of the Bible, or violating the new secular moral order can lead to negative consequences.” (7)
Renn identifies 2014 as the dawn of the negative age. In that year, so his story goes, American society became increasingly fixated upon “specific prejudice types related to ethnicity, gender, sexual and religious orientation.” There was a dramatic rise in mainstream journalists’ use of terms such as social justice, systemic racism and white privilege between 2010 and 2019. Similarly, views on same-sex marriage shifted so swiftly that Obama went from resolutely proclaiming his rejection of it in 2008 to celebrating its legalization 7 years later. Public attitudes toward marijuana use and abortion, likewise, lurched leftward throughout the Obama administration.
You could make a strong case that the Millennial generations’ signature contribution to our society – beyond watching The Office and requesting a promotion 3 months into the job – was dealing a death blow to social conservatism in this country. (For more on this, read scholar Jean Twenge’s excellent book Generations).
The rise of progressive social views coincided with an increase in attention toward sexuality, race, and gender identity among young people. Redressing power inequalities between groups became, for some, more valuable than preserving the freedom of expression on a college campus. Many voices – some of them Christians – were heckled out of speaking engagements. A cancel culture was born.
The center-left writer Matt Yglesias dubbed this cocktail of social changes ‘The Great Awokening’; after 2020, Renn called those same changes a negative world.
Viewed through the lens of those attitude shifts, it’s no surprise that Renn’s article resonated in 2022 – the year after statues were toppled, vaccines were mandated and an Australian executive was forced to resign from running his soccer club because of his Christian views. Renn saw the erosion of social conservatism combined with the ascendance of militant social progressivism and, like a boxing referee who witnessed too many beatdowns, called the fight.
2025: The Podcasting World
However we wish to narrate those years, they are not the years we are living in right now. DEI, ESG, CRT – the beloved acronyms for political progressives – are all in decline. And perhaps more tellingly, The New Yorker writer Jay Caspian Kang said “we won’t miss much from DEI.” Amazon, Google, McDonalds, and Meta agree with him.
Beyond the downfall of the acronyms, MSNBC and CNN’s ratings are in free fall while FOX continues its reign at the top of cable news. Joe Rogan has a larger audience than all 3 of those cable audiences put together and, in the last year, he interviewed more Christian apologists (1) than Democratic presidential candidates (O). The podcast space appears to be a conservative’s natural habitat. As Luke Winkie wrote in a November article published by Slate,“Scroll through Spotify’s top podcasts chart these days, and at any given moment, at least half of the most popular shows are hosted by figures friendly to the MAGA cause.”
These MAGA-friendly podcasts dish on current events in language and jokes that wouldn’t be heard anywhere near a gender studies classroom.
Let’s name the elephant in this room – the 2024 election. Ezra Klein’s analysis is spot on: Trump’s victory “by any historical measure…was a squeaker.” He won the popular vote by fewer percentage points than any other president since 2000. But quoting Klein once more, “his cultural victory has lapped his political victory. The election was close, but the vibes have been a rout.”
Trump’s cultural victory comes into sharp focus when looking at Silicon Valley. Legendary venture capitalists Marc Andressen and Peter Thiel are among Trump’s biggest supporters. And even if we set aside Elon Musk for a minute (which appears nearly impossible for the media, the country and even the man himself to do), the CEO’s of Google, Meta, and Amazon all gave a million to the Trump campaign. After each company’s CEO visited Mar-A-Lago, Trump reflected in a December interview with MSNBC reporter Kristen Walker “It’s different than the first — you know, when I won the first time, I wasn’t nearly as popular as this.” Then came Trump’s inauguration where the biggest story was the seating chart – with top tech executives receiving better views than his own cabinet members.
Niall Ferguson, that Oxford academic I referenced earlier, described the extent of Silicon Valley’s impact on the broader vibe shift:
“The vibe shift has gone from the world of the fashionistas to the world of four-star admirals by way of the tech bros and the Trump–Musk campaign. It began as a revulsion against pronouns and piercings; it is culminating in a global repudiation of the liberal international order that inspired two generations of Democrats.”
With respect to Christianity, the vibe shift coincides with a spate of high-profile Christian conversions: scholars Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Paul Kingsnorth, Niall Ferguson himself alongside American Philosopher Matthew Crawford, world-renowned historian Tom Holland (not Spiderman) and, just last week, Wikipedia’s founder Larry Sanger.
Joe Rogan said in an episode last February “As time rolls on, people are going to understand the need to have some sort of divine structure.” Elon Musk summarized 150 years of research into secularization and its effects when he quipped on X “Atheism left an empty space, secular religion took its place. Maybe religion’s not so bad, to keep you from being sad.”
These quotes do not amount to conversions, but they are indicators of a changing atmosphere, a different tune being played in the highest levels of cultural influence.
Elites expressing public support for Christianity are not, contra Renn, incurring “social negatives.” They’re not getting cancelled; they’re not beset by “negative consequences” for “publicly affirming the teachings of the Bible.” None of the aforementioned figures have lost their jobs, their audiences or their reputations for signalling sympathy toward Christianity.
The negative world has given way to the podcasting world. The vibe is different. Secularism continues to under-deliver in its promise of a more just, reasonable and compassionate world. John Lennon’s imaginative hypothesis that a less religious society would become a better one is, if not dead, then certainly on life support.
People are looking in all kinds of different places for meaning, hope, community and fulfillment – and good news – Christianity is one of them.
Addendum:
In the coming weeks, I will offer some ideas as to how Christians can operate effectively in the new environment. Stay tuned for part 2.
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