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What happens when Groypers start attending your church?
I've seen (in real life even!) blue-tribe immersed evangelical leaders bemoan the lack of religious interest in the side of America they see. Our churches have largely pandered to the "wider culture" (typically center-left leaning) without realizing that there is a burgeoning counter-culture that signals great interest in traditional religion. When they do realize there is such a counter-culture, they condemn it.
The most recent example is the the much-ballyhooed Fuentes-Carlson interview. The David Frenchs of the world signaled their great distaste. The very-online dissident right was mostly pleased. As I have never heard Fuentes speak before, I decided to listen to the entire interview. What surprised me most was how much both Carlson and Fuentes talked about Christianity. I had not known Fuentes claimed to be religious. (As an aside, the interview did nothing to convince me that Fuentes holds any deep convictions, much less genuine Christian faith). (As another aside, it turns out I am more "extreme" in my religious views than Fuentes: conditioned on him being religious I would have expected him to be to my right [insert "that awkward moment" meme]). If Fuentes continues to treat Christianity as a key part of his identity, his followers will start showing interest in the Church.
I'm not the only one who has noticed. There are other (near-dissident) leaders in the evangelical world who are looking to engage with the wayward, but seeking, young right. The pastor Michael Clary has written several posts either arguing for reaching the right or directly appealing to the dissident right. While less than eloquent (and with some boomer-like mannerisms), Mark Marshall explicitly recommends engaging with Groypers. Even conservative stalwart Kevin DeYoung has started to use language that appeals to the dissident right without outright condemning it (though he has engaged with dissident right ideas in the past).
But, by and large, our churches have been conditioned to be "salt and light" to a left-leaning world. We know how to deal with a blue-haired lesbian. Even conservative/orthodox churches can show the love of Christ to the wayward left. Be winsome, win them for Christ, and let sanctification come later (if it happens at all!). But our churches are not at all prepared for a young, irreverent to cultural norms, Christian Nationalist man who is interested in tradition and yearning for something more meaningful than a Ted-talk and a rock-concert on a Sunday.
And come they will, especially if the church is little-o orthodox, especially if it is traditional, and especially if proscribes female leadership. We shall soon see how tolerant our churches actually are. We are told we must show love to the sinners to our left. Let us see whether we show the same love to sinners on our right.
As a general retort, directed against no one in particular concerning the gatekeeping rhetoric I usually see around this topic:
There's a historically consistent delusion of Christians believing they are always at the center of Christianity, which always happens to be right here, right now, exactly where they are, leaning towards exactly what they happen to think. Which lends them the power to feel justified to gatekeep many matters of moral and philosophical significance, including Christianity and the church, from outgroup outsiders.
In reality the modal church of 100-200 years ago is so far removed from the modern modal church that there is no real reason to comparatively consider anyone Christian today. Which speaks to the fact that the church is not Christianity, it's the people. Insofar as there will be an influx of church going young men, they will change the church. Insofar as there are groups of people claiming to represent Christianity in the defense of their church and the inevitable change that is coming, they have no firm ground in proclaiming they are doing so as a Christian.
To that extent I'd wish for church leaders and gatekeepers to recognize that this has nothing to do with Christianity. Church politics are people politics. And the people are in a proxy ethnic culture war. There's nothing a pastor can say to a young man that will faze or enlighten him. They've been hooked up to technology far superior to an echo-y sermon. The church is a platform for organization. The church is at war for its life because of a culture war. Take these people and facilitate them and their beliefs towards something useful. It's a conflict the church needs to fight, and it's a fight these people want to join.
On a sidenote, how far removed are the groypers in opinion from Father Coughlin? Will anyone claim to be more Christian than him? Well, you have a few like those coming in. Less intelligent and erudite, but their heart seems to find the same place. To that extent it's hard to gatekeep those who are more similar in spirit to those who came before you than you are. Lamenting that they are not like the Christian church goers of today is hypocritical to say the least.
It seems to me the mainline Protestant churches are currently dying out exactly because what is taught there bears little resemblance to what churches taught a century or two ago, whereas the churches that stuck with traditional Christian theology seem to be doing a lot better. I am fully expecting churches that will now start pandering to the dissident right or whatever will achieve similar results as to those who pandered to progressive sensibilities. The way forward for the Church always has been to stick to its own message rather than to pander to cultural fads.
I feel like the story of progressivism emptying the pews is a little bit too convenient and self serving to be true. Not saying it is entirely incorrect. But I'd also wager that the churches that were first to fall to 'progress' were also in a weak state to begin with, and therefor felt the need to do something. Couple that with the idea that more devout believers are more likely to congregate around a more traditional message, I'm more inclined to think traditional churches are herding devout believers rather than recruiting new ones. And that they persist by dint of the temperament of the radical that seeks them out. But there are only so many of those to go around.
I could be sympathetic to this point of view but from my experience observing Christian theology politics, 'every denomination that is not mine is a fad' seems like a common viewpoint when discussing the topic of what the church's message actually is or should be.
I can only plead ignorance and ask if there is some average form or consensus on what the general message of a Church is and whether or not it has changed over time. In my local Protestant Scandinavian church it is generally vague humanist platitudes. Or maybe the humanists just got to me first... In either case I saw no relevant distinction between the two. What is the churches correct message in America?
In terms of what I think the correct message ought to be (although I am also not American, so I am not speaking for that context specifically), I think people elsewhere in this thread have pointed out there are plenty of historical creeds that Christians of various denomination have adhered to for more than a thousand years. Even on some issues that are currently contentious in the culture war, like a lot of issues pertaining to medical ethical stuff or sexual ethics there are clear Christian positions adhered to by official Roman-Catholic, Eastern Orthodox teachings and also by conservative Protestants. I don't want to overstate the case here, of course there are also plenty of meaningful differences and all of these groups have changed in various ways throughout the centuries and have in some ways been influenced by the surrounding culture, but things like the Nicean creed, or general pro-life medical ethical positions, or the idea that sex should be within marriage, are believed by the vast majority of Christians always and everywhere. I really am convinced that there is a consistent core of historical Christian teachings which a lot of Christians around the world have preserved.
Now the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia which I presume you are referring to have indeed in the past 150 years or so abandoned a lot of these beliefs. But that is my point, if Christian churches want to have anything relevant to say, they should retain core Christian beliefs. Otherwise, what is the point? What reason to exist do Christian churches have, if they don't even believe in stuff that pretty much all Christians have believed historically? What even is Christianity then?
I come from a Protestant background in the Netherlands myself. In the past years I've lived in a few different towns and been a member of the local mainline Protestant Church of the Netherlands. The majority of this denomination is pretty liberal theologically and ethically, just like the mainline churches in the USA or other European countries. It does however have a pretty significant conservative wing. In all of those towns I can see the same pattern reoccurring; the various congregations in the different boroughs of the towns which have become liberal are dwindling in numbers, they have to merge with each other to keep going and are mostly visited by elderly people. But all of those towns have one or two congregations of the conservative wing of this denomination, which explicitly affirm historical creeds and have conservative views of things like abortion and sexual ethics, and every time those congregations don't have issues with dwindling attendance and you can find plenty people of all ages on Sunday mornings. In all those conservative churches I've even come across a few converts who were brought up without any religious background whatsoever and anecdotally the number of converts have been going up in recent years (although we're still talking about small numbers to be sure, I'm not claiming some sort of revival is going on the Netherlands just yet).
So from my perspective, churches that stick with historical Christian teachings, seem to be doing relatively fine and I'm always put off a little bit by the "ohh we have to change x, otherwise the kids will never go to church" rhetoric, because in the past 150 years or so, the churches that have tried very hard to stay in touch with currently societal trends are exactly the ones that have become irrelevant are closing their doors or are only being visited by a handful of elderly people.
Wait, you live in the Dutch bible belt?
Nope. I have never lived in the bible belt myself. The church I go to is of a type that's pretty common in the bible belt, although in a proper bible belt village it might be one of the less conservative ones. There is a bunch of stereotypical stuff associated with the Dutch bible belt that you won't really find in the type of church I go to, like avoiding vaccinations and insurance, experiencing a lot of existential dread over whether you are part of the elect or not, not being allowed to drive a car on Sunday, etc. But we do adhere to historical creeds, only men can be ordained, conservative views on medical ethical issues, etc. so definitely still on the conservative side of the spectrum.
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So, the usual main example is the Episcopal church, which has always been the least devout denomination- although ACNA and the Catholic ordinariates indicate that progressivism is an explanatory factor for it doing unusually poorly. Likewise the ELCA's decline mostly tracks declining religiosity among German-Americans. But Methodists were actually a very healthy denomination before they went progressive, and the ELCA contrasts with America's other two Lutheran denominations(which are both healthy confessional churches). The Presbyterians are another example that isn't just explained by 'yeah, this church was always full of people that didn't really believe'.
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