Trying to situate Aaron Renn on the landscape of twenty-first century American Protestantism is a tall order. The Indiana native, who consults on urban planning and opines about churches, describes himself as a writer who covers “the human, cultural, and institutional foundations of American flourishing during an era of transition.” (Full disclosure: as someone who considers himself an urbanist, I regularly read and benefit from Renn’s social media links and commentary on urban planning, politics, and economies.)

Renn came to the attention of many with his First Things article (Feb. 2022) on the three worlds of evangelicalism, a scheme that identified 2014 as the beginning of an era when being Christian in America was no longer an asset but a defect. This was around the same time that he helped to found “American Reformer” as an outlet for aggressively Protestant reflection about politics and society. Over time, “American Reformer” became a platform for pronouncements on Christian nationalism, though Renn never seemed to embrace the label. His outlook about the importance of Christians establishing culture-shaping institutions is clearly compatible with Christian nationalism but Renn himself has not waded into those turbulent and sometimes dirty waters.

One other part of Renn’s body of work so far to attract attention is his lament about the absence of evangelical elites. Again at First Things (where the editor, Rusty Reno, features an odd selection of Protestant writers), Renn wrote the provocative article, “The Problem with the Evangelical Elite” (December 2025). The problem comes at readers fast and hard in Renn’s opening paragraph:

The problem with the evangelical elite is that there isn’t one. All too few evangelical Christians hold senior positions in the ―culture-shap―ing domains of American ―society. Evangelicals don’t run movie studios or serve as editors in chief of major newspapers or as presidents of elite universities. There are no evangelicals on the Supreme Court. There are hardly any leading evangelical academics or artists. There are few evangelicals at commanding heights of finance. The prominent evangelicals in Silicon Valley can be counted on one hand. There are not even many evangelicals leading influential conservative think tanks and publications, despite the fact that evangelicals are one of the largest and most critical voting blocs in the Republican coalition.

Renn goes on to offer an explanation for the problem. Evangelicals stress soul-winning over vocation and lack institutions that incubate leaders in business, law, technology, and higher education. But his analysis comes with a reason to be concerned about the lack of evangelical elites. Renn views the United States as a society coded Protestant. Consequently, for the country to go forward in a healthy way, it needs people who come from America’s historic religious heritage. “America needs Protestants to take on the leadership burdens of society,” he writes, “and in view of the dramatic decline of mainline Protestantism, they must come from evangelical ranks.”

Renn does concede the presence of evangelicals in certain elite positions but deems this inadequate for providing real leadership. The one place where evangelicals produce “elites” is in Christian ministry. Renn writes, “evangelicals overwhelmingly fund and support people who focus on Christian ministry” and create “pathways to sponsorship for missionaries, church planters, and campus ministers.” They do not do the same for “people engaged in secular domains and activities.” Renn used Grok to supply the receipts. When asked about the top evangelical leaders, AI supplied the names of “fifteen evangelical elites” that was “100 percent pastors and other professional Christians.” A similar query for Roman Catholics produced a list where only 20 percent were clergy.

Renn’s nonchalance about evangelical pastors and theologians may explain why he pays so little attention to the communions that belong to NAPARC. He does not say this explicitly, but it comes through in the people he does interview on his podcast. He has hosted leaders of the Reconquista in mainline Protestantism, both Jake Dell (another contributor to First Things), a Congregationalist in Woodbury, Connecticut, and Richard Ackerman of Redeemed Zoomer fame, as an apologist for the PCUSA. In fact, when Rusty Reno interviewed Renn as a follow up to his article on evangelical elites for the First Things podcast, the Hoosier consultant praised the Social Gospel, political Progressives, and the mainline churches that spread those movements a century ago. This is not meant to score point by brushing Renn with the guilt of Progressivism and the Social Gospel. It is, though, an observation that suggests Renn has a soft spot for Protestants whose theology and practice did not measure up even as they transformed (for a time) American society.

NAPARC does register occasionally on Renn’s radar. At “American Reformer,” Renn wrote positively about two PCA pastors who have articulated a “positive vision for America.” One is C. R. Wiley’s First Presbyterian Church of Battle Ground, Washington. Renn observes that this church is “creating well-paying jobs and paying taxes, turning vacant downtown buildings into a farmers’ market and bakery, and building an architecturally significant new church that provides needed community and conference-center space.” More than a church, First Presbyterian is also building community.

The other NAPARC exception is the exceptional Tim Keller. Renn argues that Keller’s book Every Good Endeavor explains the doctrine of vocation in a way that “comprehends the exercise of power—that validates and valorizes people who reform public policy, invent new technologies, become presidents of elite universities, acquire major media properties or foundations, organize research teams, or serve as Supreme Court justices.”

Renn also credits Keller’s last white paper, “The Decline and Renewal of the American Church,” with calling for the “creation of a think tank, the endowment of chairs at top universities, the creation of grants for young Christian scholars, and the establishment of a Christian equivalent to the Federalist Society.” This is the sort of infrastructure necessary to cultivate evangelical elites. In his “American Reformer” article, Renn added “people today could learn from figures like Keller, who built an influential institution grounded in an expansive vision of the future.” The New York City PCA pastor was doing what Protestant leaders “have done throughout our national history,” namely, created “the institutions and norms that are absent today.”

What is especially odd about Renn’s reflections on Protestant churches and American society is that the institution-building conservative Protestants performed after liberalism and the Social Gospel captured the mainline denominations – creating seminaries, denominations, colleges, magazines, publishing companies – don’t register on Renn’s elite Protestant meter. Of course, they should not because these conservative Protestant institutions are not producing the leaders of Silicon Valley or qualifying for nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court. But for a man who pays attention to institutions, it is surprising that Renn pays so little to the institutions that comprise NAPARC — the very institutions that shaped Renn’s beloved Keller. Instead, he himself starts new institutions like “American Reformer.”

The other odd part of Renn’s institutional analysis is a failure to see where churches becoming leaders in the community leads. This is a lesson that ChristNats should also consider. The mainline churches a century ago abandoned the teaching of orthodox pastors and theologians who were not obvious leaders in their communities but leaders in the church, charged with trying to remain true to the teachings of Scripture and the practices of their communions. What led to the failure of Protestantism in the United States at elite levels was the loss of Protestant faith at elite levels. Mainline Protestants remained moral and culturally Protestant (especially in opposition to Roman Catholicism and in support of American exceptionalism). But in the words of H. L. Mencken, they tried “to get rid of all the logical difficulties of religion” and were left with “ a row of hollow platitudes, as empty as of psychological force. . . as so many nursery rhymes.”

Aaron Renn is a smart fellow and well worth reading about urban planning, economic development, rents, architecture, traffic rotaries, and mass transit, but he has apparently yet to consider the paradox that haunts Christianity. Christ taught in Matthew 16:25: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” That verse need not relegate Christians to a perpetual underclass of underachievers. But Christ’s words suggest a paradoxical relationship between Christian devotion and cultural success that moved John Newton to write in his famous hymn, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”:

Fading is the worldling’s pleasures,
all his boasted pomp and show;
solid joys and lasting treasures
none but Zion’s children know.

Every honest student of church history has seen near term success turn into fool’s gold of apostasy. Surely, Renn could offer a few warnings about the dangers of elite Christianity.