"For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."
Since enemies of American Reformer keep rehashing a business-related attack from a few years ago, it is worth considering their own actions.
In 2023, a bitter troll, upset by the marginalization of his evangelical blog, put out a series of threads full of lies and half-truths. His pretext was a marketing partnership that a New Founding portfolio company entered into with Raw Egg Nationalist (REN), an influencer focused on health and clean foods.
We launched New Founding in 2021, amidst a frenzy of political purges, cancellations, and speech codes imposed by organizations across America. Our mission included building companies that could provide alternative infrastructure open to dissenting speech and income opportunities for people ostracized for offenses against the left.
Unfortunately, even many companies run by conservatives or Christians complied with the demands of activists, adopting similar HR policies and public messages. We thus chose to work with an array of dissidents who shared a willingness to reject the demands of leftist censors despite varying messages. REN was one such influencer: he had some different values (he came from the online masculinity space), but he publicly challenged the dogmas the left tried to impose when few others would.
Our enemies finally saw an angle to attack American Reformer—a separate organization with a distinct mission—in this move by a portfolio company of an aligned business. Our preference was to ignore and continue our focus on building, but denominational rivals and others keep rehashing this to slander us.
So I have a few words for these critics:
1) When we were all under threat, I was the one risking my time and money to challenge these ideological attacks and censorship efforts.
2) You did nothing to help this effort. You never gave a job to anyone fired for transgressing leftist taboos. You never did anything meaningful to provide alternative opportunities to Christians afraid that adherence to basic Christian orthodoxy might threaten their livelihoods and ability to support their families.
3) In contrast, many of you cowered as your employers supported non-profits pushing child gender transitions and other radical sexual agendas, hoping merely to keep your jobs. Others of you helped lead churches full of congregants at such companies—happily accepting their tithes to fund your salaries. Others helped bring CRT into the church, endorsing activists aligned with the most radical leftist ideologues. The critic who started this now works at an ostensibly conservative publication with a man who, while married with young kids, publicly transitioned into a "woman."
4) Instead of helping those who needed it, you slander and attack me and my organization for a business initiative with someone who actually was willing to challenge that ideology.
5) By repeating lies and half-truths, you show you have no concern for Christian principles (including the duties the WLC prescribes w/r/t the ninth commandment) you claim to cherish.
6) "Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?" you ask, even as you ignore the great sins promoted by your own employers and your own government.
7) You're not principled. You're not honorable. You're not faithful. You are self-righteous Pharisees, using moralistic attacks to cover for your own cowardice when it actually mattered.
Your dishonesty and indifference are repulsive. You slander us and you slander people who worked and sacrificed alongside us to offer a lifeboat during perhaps the greatest wave of anti-Christian ideology in American history.
As cultural and political hostility to Christianity rises (in public rhetoric, in HR policies, and in places like Canada and Finland even criminalizing Bible verses), many of you claim to lament the cultural turn—and even ask why it was allowed to happen.
Behavior like yours is why.
You won't stop me, but your hypocritical moralism and passivity toward real threats discouraged other Christians from entering the cultural fray—even as you did nothing for the people who actually needed help at the height of the purges and cancellations.