Brian Suavé Sauvé justifies his decision to speak at the 21 Convention:
The minute I heard that pastors are speaking at this event, I knew that Acts 17 would be used to justify their decision. Paul welcomed the chance to present the Gospel to Gentiles on their own turf. Shouldn’t we?
The problem with the argument is that Paul is manifestly an outsider on Mars Hill, speaking to the insiders. He emphasizes the fact (Acts 17:23). He was not one of an array of approved speakers, preaching to an assembled crowd. The philosophers were the crowd. If Pastor Suavé Sauvé really wanted to imitate Paul, he would go to a red-pill convention on the condition that he get a private session with the speakers only. Perhaps he has done this. Perhaps not.
One more thing: Christians love jumping onto runaway trains in order to “turn things around.” It never works. Didn’t we learn something when we tried this with the public schools? Let the dead bury the dead.
UPDATE: I still don’t know about Pastor Suavé Sauvé, but another pastor who will be speaking at the conference, Michael Foster, posted this, in which he says he agreed to speak at the conference on the condition he be allowed to say whatever he wants. That is similar to what I posted above. So, good for him.
Christian Leithart 
I think you have some interesting points worth fleshing out on the way Paul presents himself in Athens and how to imitate that. Also what to do with runaway trains. But I have no historical context to make me think that only leaders were present on Mars Hill. My understanding is that it was the forum for conversations on philosophy, anybody who was interested could come and listen there. I have no sense that Paul was speaking to a crowd that only included leaders and not many many assembled followers. Do you?
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Dumb question, of course you do because you said it, do you have any history to support the idea that only bona fide leaders of philosophy would attend the conversations on Mars Hill?
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Hey Horace – I think you’re right about the Mars Hill crowd being “professionals” and laypeople alike. My point has to do with the analogy to a modern conference. If you agree to join the speaker line-up at a conference, with a headshot and everything, you are implicitly affirming the conference. You are on their stage speaking to their crowd. Paul wasn’t doing that. He was on their stage speaking to *them*. The crowd, assuming there was one, just happened to be listening in.
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It was funny seeing a crec pastor in the advertising lineup with all those bros. I don’t necessarily disagree with you but I feel like the fields are ripe right now and the focus needs to be on action, on labor, rather than on ‘image’, I don’t want to say that your concern boils down to image by association, but that’s part of it. This old world masculinity stuff is a predictable reaction to the matriarchy stuff I think on some level we should be there. Especially because unlike most feminist extremists, masculinist extremists are willing to listen to us. Is one a runaway train we’re trying to save? Or are they more like two Gentile cities, Athens and Ephesus, and one requests that we come back and speak further to them and the other riots and shouts us out? As I’m thinking about it more I’m thinking it’s mostly a good thing, maybe he just don’t show up for the photo op next time
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I suppose it depends on how bad one thinks the 21 Con is. My only exposure to it has been through their website and Instagram, and what I see there is disgusting.
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I’m not trying to blow up your blog comments, but this is interesting. I’m not at all familiar with 21 Con besides the promo video I saw. But I wonder how disgusting does something have to be before you’d refuse to preach to them? Or more to your point, how disgusting does something have to be before the danger of appearing supportive of it outweighs preaching the gospel to it?
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