Sane new world?

With the second coming of Donald Trump, the phrase “vibe shift” has become a staple of­ current cultural commentary. The expression captures not so much the shift in the kind of policies that the Trump administration will implement as a shift in the ethos of America. The hectoring scolds of the progressive left have dominated public rhetoric for years. Now suddenly conservatives once despised as either stupid, evil, or both are starting to feel that this age might belong to them.

As a cultural conservative, I find much to welcome here. And as somebody who has spent much time speaking about, and talking to, the victims of transgender ideology, I rejoice that the political tide might finally be turning. Perhaps gender sanity is not the last vestige of a bygone era but the vanguard of a world about to be born. If the vibe shift carries society toward laws that protect innocent children from the hormonal and genital mutilation demanded by the political tastes of their parents’ generation, that is surely a matter for rejoicing.

And yet vibe shifts bring their own problems. First, they are frequently ephemeral. I remember the U.K. election of 1997 that swept the tired Tory government of John Major out of office and brought Tony Blair and his “new” Labour Party into power. And so began the era of “Cool Britannia,” a vibe shift that seemed to offer hope and a new start to the nation. Yet Blair’s time in office was ultimately marked by wars on the international stage and discontent at home. “Cool Britannia” was a catchy phrase of more relevance to the pop music of the time—think groups like Oasis and Blur—than to politics.

The second problem with vibe shifts is of more moral significance. Such moments in society can grip the imagination in such a way that otherwise sane, moderate, and thoughtful people can end up saying and doing thoughtless, damaging, and even vicious things. For example, one could say 2020 involved a vibe shift. Suddenly everything was about racism. The terminology of critical race theory burst out of the law school seminar room and onto the Twitter accounts of countless people who had never read a word of CRT’s foundational texts. All at once, anyone who failed to post the appropriate symbol on their social media accounts or who (perish the thought) dared to question the omnipresence of racism could find themselves accused of it. Those not committed to anti-racist orthodoxy and its online liturgies risked public excoriation.

As with all things driven more by taste than by truth, vibes shift all the time. We can be thankful to find ourselves at a cultural moment when it’s possible to pass laws curtailing progressive insanity on, for example, the trans issue. And we should capitalize on the openness to discussing religion that has emerged among leading intellectual and cultural figures. But we must ensure that our thinking is not beholden to vibes and that our rhetoric and our actions are not shaped by the same. That would make us no more than the puppets of popular taste. Worse still, it could turn us from responsible agents into a mindless mob.

An obvious Biblical example of a vibe shift should be a warning to us. Between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, Jerusalem experienced a dramatic transformation in the popular attitude to Christ. The crowd heralded Him as the coming King when He entered the city on a donkey. Days later the mob called for His crucifixion even when offered a chance to have Him released by the Roman governor. My suspicion is that a significant number of the adoring crowd became the murderous mob. Today we call that a vibe shift. And divorced from, and unregulated by, any objective criteria, it carried all before it.

This is why Christians need to be very careful at this time. Our morality is not the function of a vibe. Our truths are not the expression of cultural taste. We must heed Paul’s call to meditate upon things that are above. Those heavenly realities are as true today as they were when President Biden was in charge or, indeed, when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Only then can we act with discernment and with Christian fortitude, wisdom, and love in the context God has placed us.

—Carl R. Trueman is a professor at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center