Oh god, the VCs have discovered Christianity
And toodles, 2024
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Oh god, the VCs have discovered Christianity
Lord above, spare me from this nonsense.
Forbes reports that Marc Andreessen and some other venture players are backing New Founding, a project working to build “a Christian enclave in Kentucky.” New Founding is building a venture arm, which is where the a16z founder steps into the picture.
In its own words, New Founding has radical goals. It envisions a United States that is firmly rooted in a single religious tradition (American conservative Christianity), and wants to use economic power to help bring that future to bear.
Per one of its two published essays (emphasis added):
We embrace a vitality, reflecting God’s design and aiming for God’s kingdom, that animates society from the family to the economy to the culture and civilization. […]
As we pursue this vision, we face not only the challenges inherent in any entrepreneurial endeavor, but a totalitarian effort by the left to capture institutions across our society and use their power against dissenters.
We are affirmatively challenging this campaign with concrete action. Through our venture efforts, we are seeking to build businesses not subject to their censorship, alternative infrastructure in key chokepoints, and tools and networks to connect aligned employers and employees and clients and vendors. We are also directly attacking the left's efforts by rejecting their taboos and doing business with people they tell us we must ostracize.
To succeed – to challenge the left’s totalitarian agenda and to realize our vision – we must build a large economic coalition.
The same essay highlights “Pro-Christendom” as one of New Founding’s core ideals.
Lord above, spare me from this nonsense.
I was raised amongst the socially conservative Christians. I was confirmed by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, a church so progressive that women were finally granted the right to vote in 1969. It remains virulently homophobic, of course.
One of my favorite recollections from the church of my youth was one member standing up and advocating ardently that the congregated flock watch an anti-evolution film. I think it was Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which came out in 2008. By that point, I was a closeted atheist with one foot into adulthood, so I found the commentary humorous. The dead-serious reception that the call-to-action received by the people in the pews was less funny.
If you were not raised amongst conservative Christians, you don’t understand how censorious, boring, and rigid their traditions are. One volume that my home church had on its shelves — you could check it out and take it home! — was a rundown of which musical groups of the time were Not To Be Trusted.
Ironically, that book helped kill off my religious belief, if by accident. I had discovered Metallica by the time I ran across it; still being Christian at the time, I looked the band’s entry up in the text. After reading the book’s overview and realizing that it was miles off-base, my then-comfortable worldview began a domino-like logical collapse. If the church endorsed the book by buying and shelving it, and it was wrong, then the church was itself suspect in its pronouncements. Once shaken, my fervent religious views began to crumble.
One book is a small example, but if you were hoping that using capital to bolster modern American Christianity would yield a less censored society, you are out of your mind. I know these people, and they have no interest in listening to anyone but themselves. They are certain that they know the truth, and are not shy about wanting you to live according to their views.
I dispute their views and cling to the progress we’ve earned as a nation in the last century.
The world we live in today is all but brand new. Women were finally afforded the right to vote nationally in the United States in 1920, just over 100 years ago. I live in the same neighborhood as a store owned by someone who is 105, to put the success of the 19th Amendment into temporal context.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which passed in 1974, banned creditor discrimination “against credit applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age” and other reasons. That means that it became illegal to deny women credit based on their sex just 50 years ago. My parents are in their 70s, to again ground ourselves in terms of human lifespans.
The list of things that we just got done — no-fault divorce, making marital rape illegal, gay marriage — is long and critical. Imagine waking up today, looking at the progress we’ve made towards a society in which people can choose their life’s path, and thinking: “We should tear that down.”
I presume that the melding of Christianity and venture will be incredibly annoying. But I was raised amongst the nitpicking Christians, so I shall constantly remind the world of what Jesus thought about wealth:
I will believe the true fervency of the venture-Christians when they sell their possessions, give the proceeds away, and work the rest of their lives for the poor. Until then, they’re simply cynical chancers looking for a new cudgel to enforce their own views on the rest of us.
Freedom. You love to see it.
Highlights from Xi’s New Year’s speech
Listen to the full speech here.
10 million “new energy vehicles” produced in a year … accomplishments in chips, AI, Lunar exploration, and science in Antarctica … more promotion of Africa-China relations than expected … very little mention of the United States … a nod to “the concerns of the people about jobs and income” … and in 2025 “greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology” …
Not a shocking list; commentary indicates that Xi’s Taiwan notes were less bombastic than in prior iterations. That means that we’re cautiously optimistic that a China-Taiwan war might not kick off in 2025.