In “negative world,” with the safeguards of “Christian moral norms” out the window, it was too late for liberals to make any coherent critique of Mr. Trump’s open licentiousness.

Mr. Renn argues that being a Christian, especially in high-status domains, is now seen as a social negative.

Mr. Renn’s description of the contours of “negative world” range widely, and include the spread of sports gambling, legalized drug use and even tattoos. But the framework might not have electrified evangelical America if not for the perception on the right of a new secular orthodoxy around sex, gender and race. When you ask someone who embraces the term to discuss their own experiences in “negative world,” the answer is almost always connected with this cluster of issues.

About a decade ago, around the time that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, Mr. Renn says the United States became “negative world."

Mr. Renn’s best-known idea: his warning to Christians that America is in an era of distinct hostility to believers like them, and that they must gird themselves to adapt to, as the title of his recent book put it, “Life in the Negative World.”