Speaker 1: Welcome to the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: I'm Joy Pullman. The executive editor here at The Federalist.
Joining me today is Megan Basham. She is a culture
reporter for The Daily Wire and the author of the
new book out this week, Shepherd's For Sale.
Speaker 1: Meghan, welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It's great to be here.
Speaker 2: Could you start by explaining for our listeners why all
Americans should care about the state of evangelical churches, even
if they're not a member of such a church.
Speaker 4: Yes, so, you know, there's a very big reason to
care about evangelicals because there are a lot of them.
They're about thirty percent of the US electorate. They have
rightly been called America's most powerful voting block, and in
a lot of ways, if you're a political conservative, they
serve as the firewall or a lot of the policies
that the left has been interested in advancing, whether that
is on things like climate change initiatives, or on immigration policy,
or on DEI initiatives, things of that nature. You will
again and again kind of see those evangelicals act not
only as the most conservative voters, but as the voters who,
by their very nature of being so big, are the
ones that create this last fortress, as I call it
in the book Hell Our.
Speaker 2: Listeners a little bit about George Soros and others similarly
anti Christian, big money going to manipulate churches into functioning.
It sounded like to me basically like community organizers for
leftist politics rather than a worship and religious organization.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, it's so fascinating, isn't it. Because George
Soros himself an atheist. I also talk a lot in
the book about Pierre Omitiar, who is a left wing Buddhist.
So neither of these men in any sense of the
word Christians, and yet they have both become very interested
in funding Christian initiatives. Typically I would call them front groups.
So around twenty thirteen, just to give you an example,
one of the program directors at George Soros's foundation, Open
Society started to talk about, well, we keep running into
this problem of Christians, in particular when it comes to
getting particular policies across the finish line, and what we
need to do is harness the power of religious life
because this is not going to go away. So at
that point they talked about how they could do things
like distribute more grants to faith leaders how they could
engage in communication campaigns. So what I would call astroturfing
is what we're seeing. And at that point you began
to see organizations like the Secular Left and Geo National
Immigration Forum help create the Evangelical Front Group Evangelical Immigration Table.
And I use this example because it's very emblematic of
what you see on a number of subjects. But so
Sourus helped launch the National Immigration Forum. Some of his
money went to a program that the Evangelical Immigration Table
was involved with. And while it has this faith based name,
its work is in no way which you would typically
view as ministry, So it doesn't go to spreading the
gospel or telling illegal immigrants about Jesus or feeding and
clothing them. It's specifically political in nature, and it is
a lobbying organization and what it does is connect pastors
to lawmakers and do on the ground mobilization.
Speaker 3: So I think saying community organizer is a very opt term.
Speaker 2: And what ways do is Shepherd's for Sale a kind
of counterpoint to Atlantic reporter Tim Alberta's The Kingdom, the
Power and the Glory, which, in good faith I did
try to read that book, and I just couldn't make
my way through more than about a third of it.
So I found it very interesting though, to kind of
think about them side by side. And I'm sure you're
probably getting a couple of questions about that as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'll be honest, I did read it. While
I was working on the book. I read that one
and a number of other books that were just like it,
because there has been a cottage industry of books saying
that evangelicals sold their soul to grasp for power by
supporting Donald Trump, and this.
Speaker 3: Is one of those books.
Speaker 4: And largely what I would say about Tim Alberta's book
is I find him to be a strong narrative writer.
So to that end, it is full of a lot
of stories, and he will attend sort of fringey organizations
and follow fringe pastors and then use those to pretend
that that is the mainstream of evangelicalism, which I would
disagree with.
Speaker 3: And in fact, I also know the background on.
Speaker 4: Some of those stories and know that he got them.
But what I do in my book is a little different,
So I didn't want it to just be stories, So
I do have some stories in it that are meant
to exemplify how these influences coming into the church are
impacting the people in the pews. So I have a
lot of stories of ordinary churchgoers. But what I more
was interested in was tracing that money trail and showing, Okay,
here are the actors. Here is the documentation showing how
they have gotten involved with a lot of these evangelical groups,
how they have propped up and even created these evangelical groups.
And here's sakers who are involved with them are then
turning around and talking about policy in the public sphere,
and how they interact with large, well known secular media outlets.
So one of the figures I talk about a lot
in this book is Russell Moore, is now the editor
in chief at Christianity Today and has become a prime
internal critic of evangelicals who supported Donald Trump, to the
point that you even saw the New York Times dubbing
him a dissenter trying to save evangelicals from themselves. So
he's been lionized in the secular press, and that was
part of what I wanted to trace, was how the
press has used some of these figures to also try
to influence the evangelicals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so I actually have worked a little
bit in my reporting history with Marvel ALASKI attended some
of his you know, journalism training, so I think I
saw a little bit of the hallmarks of his sort
of training. And you for listeners, you know, Megan worked
at World Magazine before she went over to the Daily Wire,
and so one of those hallmarks I think is the
what you're talking about here, the follow the money, just
doing basic reporting, but you're talking about you know, people
who follow the politics game are really aware by now
of the fact that all these large leftist you know,
billionaires and their funders they create kind of these shell
corporations or shell nonprofits, and that makes it harder to
follow where the money is coming from because a lot
of the figures such as Soros are controversialized for good reasons.
Speaker 1: But it also kind.
Speaker 2: Of confuses people, right because if they're just able to
change the names, then they're able to use the same
people to shed the bad image that they may have
from the past and make following that harder. So I
found it very curious. I wonder, are you do you
think that you're feeling kind of have been feeling kind
of a niche role here and doing that traditional sort
of follow the money journalism, but applying it to the
religious fere I do you know.
Speaker 1: I know World Magazine does some of.
Speaker 2: That, but there's not a lot of that being done,
as you point out, in media even overall, they've largely
abandoned a lot of that old fashioned journalism, but especially
I think you know in the religious fhere, you know
that even lacks lacks that maybe to a degree more
than the traditional media that isn't religious.
Speaker 4: Yes, And you know, one of the things I would
say is that where you saw that niche where it
used to be filled somewhere like Christianity today, that institution
has so changed in character that no, it no longer
does that work. And in fact, some of the religious
outlets that are doing this work are themselves beholden to
these left wing foundations. For example, the Religious News Service,
which is a wire service that is frequently used by
the Washington Post and Christianity today. It purports to cover
these things, but is itself, I would say, very left wing.
And part of why it's very left wing is because
it takes funding from groups like the Artists Foundation, which
have pledged to change Christian doctrine on matters of the
LGBTQ movement and what they would call LGBTQ rights, and
I think you see that very clearly reflected in their reporting.
Now that said, I do see a lot more understanding
of the importance of covering evangelicals and what's happening in
evangelical churches and ministry when it comes to these larger
cultural issues and policy questions. Because having just spoken about
Tim Alberta at The Politico and Atlantic and many many
other reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post,
it has been no end of frustrating to me how
much coverage I have seen from those outlets and from CNN,
and yet for whatever reason, conservative media was a lot
slower to get to covering these issues. And I think
part of it, understandably was that conservative media tends to
be more Catholic, so there wasn't maybe the background of
understanding about who are these people, what's driving them? And
then the other part of it was I think there
was just a feeling like these are our people.
Speaker 3: They're safe.
Speaker 4: We don't really think about how they may be being
impacted by false narratives that are being pedled in the
secular media.
Speaker 2: So I add something real quick there. You have something
that you mentioned in the book. I think within the
Christian I mean, I would call myself an evangelical, but
I'm an LCMS member Lutheran Church Missourisan and so anyway,
so it's not like broadly evangelical, like you know, go
into worship church with a lot of praise songs typically,
although that does happen, but the point being within, you know,
within that sphere, people also have a hesitancy.
Speaker 1: To critique their religious leaders.
Speaker 2: It's seen as being unkind, it's seeing as breaking the
Eighth Commandment, you know, in Lutheran.
Speaker 1: Circles and so the so you talk a lot about
that as well.
Speaker 2: Why don't you kind of respond to that, as you
do in the book with what's the kind of Christian
apologetic for really airing the dirty laundry of your own people? Right?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I kind of jokingly have Ephesians five
eleven in my Twitter bio, which is exposed the deeds
of darkness, don't cover them up. And that's part of
what I think I'm doing here because what we see
in I'm a Southern Baptist and we have a joke
among the Southern Baptists about the unspoken eleventh commandment is
thou shalt not criticize evangelical leaders.
Speaker 3: And I think that held very.
Speaker 4: Strong for a long time, and really it was the
pandemic I think that took it down.
Speaker 3: But as far as an apologetic.
Speaker 4: I just don't see a biblical justification for saying, let's
let these unbiblical legalistic influences flourish, because it seems somehow
unloving or unkind to acknowledge that it's happening. In fact,
I would say in scripture we would see the exact opposite.
You have Paul saying. I confronted Peter to his face
when he started bringing in legalistic doctrine that was requiring
the gentile believers to follow Jewish law and follow the
dominant culture around them. He said, that's not biblical. I'm
going to confront you to your face. We also see
him doing that with some lesser characters in the Bible.
When he has a problem with something Alexander the Coppersmith
is doing, he directly calls out Alexander the copper Smith.
So to this day we know who Paul was talking
about right there, And so I think that is the
model that we need to be following, which doesn't mean.
Speaker 3: That you are divisive.
Speaker 4: You're not calling anyone's salvation into question. And you do
occasionally see people go too far and you go, okay, well,
let's not be screaming you're not a Christian at each other.
But it is a question, I think, a fitness of leadership,
and it matters how fit our leaders are. And so
it's reasonable to be having these discussions respectfully and graciously,
but to be having them weird.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to that in a little bit but I
wanted to you first. I'd like to be.
Speaker 2: Before we get kind of into some of the analysis
of what you've written, to kind of just further explicate,
you know, kind of some of the things that are
in the book for listeners who haven't.
Speaker 1: Yet bought it.
Speaker 2: So if you would, let's start with something you mentioned earlier.
Let's give our listeners a short synopsis, if you would,
on the decline and fall of Christianity today and the
extent to which you think that Russell Moore, as you
mentioned and now It's executive editor, is he a symptom
or a cause of that collapse or maybe both.
Speaker 4: I would say primarily a symptom, because certainly Christianity today
was already following that trajectory before Russell Moore moved over
there a couple of years ago. I would say they
were just very much like minded travelers. And when you
look at what happened with Christianity today, it's sort of
a multi pronged issue. One, it did start relying more
on money from secular foundations and was perhaps less responsive
than to the subscribers that it should be catering to.
At that point, it was taking large donations from the
Lily Endowment, and those donations have been specifically to things
like crafting preaching content, So how will pastors approach something
in terms of ideological preaching or how do they craft
their messages?
Speaker 3: So that's when I get a little.
Speaker 4: Concerned when secular foundations are going, here's how we're helping
to craft the content of these organizations. And then on
top of that, I think you did have newer left
wing staff coming in. And I did a story and
I talked about this in the book where I looked
at the political donations of Christianity Today's staff, and there
were about seventy four donations between twenty fifteen and twenty
twenty two, including editorial staff and the board and CEO
to Dallarymple, and all of them went exclusively to Democrats,
including some pretty hard left candidates like Elizabeth Warren, who
has wanted to shut down all crisis pregnancy centers. So
it's a little astonishing to see Christianity Today editorial staff.
So that was the news editor who was donating to
Elizabeth Warren as he was writing stories covering the twenty
twenty campaign. So that's just surprising when you look at that,
you go journalistically, there's some ethical problems there, but also
as a Christian it's a little shocking. And then the
third thing was something that former Christianity Today editor in
chief Mark Galli brought up, and he wrote about how
Christianity today became so sensitive to mainstream media respectability.
Speaker 3: And he talked about how when.
Speaker 4: The New York Times would positively notice them, how just
a thrill would go through the newsroom. And so because
of that, they began to issues, particularly questions of doctrine
in really one sided ways, and example of complementarianism, or
the belief that God has reserved different roles for men
and women, and the pastorate is reserved for men. And
he said, because the idea that the pastorate was reserved
for men was an anathema to our culture, it became
an anathema to us. So we may not have written
an essay where, you know, we came out very strongly
against women in the pastorate, but we would subtly feature
essays from women pastors and we would only interview those
women pastors. And in this way it became very clear
that we were staking a position that was in line
a culture would have taken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sounds very similar to another story I was
going to ask you to kind of talk about. I
consider it a bombshell revelation, the one about pastor and Andy
Stanley up as a kid listening to Charles Stanley, you know,
on the radio all the time.
Speaker 1: So but you know this, so his son Andy was.
Speaker 2: Telling privately your book shows you know, other megachurch and
large church pastors to be basically secretly pushing their congregations
into supporting homosexual and transsexual behavior, which I mean, as
probably all of our listeners know, they ought to. You know,
the Bible explicitly condemns that sort of thing as sin.
Can't really be a pastor and be supporting that. So
can you kind of give some more background in detail
to that story which I found just really shocking him
using that influence that his father and he amassed over
their lifetimes to basically push, you know, something that is
explicitly anti Christian.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, And you know, for those who may not
know Charles Stanley, his father was a well known figure
in the moral majority, a revered pastor, he was kind
of a pioneer in Christian media, and so Andy Stanley
had a pretty big leg up when he came into
pastoring himself, and he's incredibly influential. He has a wide ministry,
not just to your average Christian, but he's very well
known for influencing other pastors.
Speaker 3: He puts out a lot of books of training for
other pastors.
Speaker 4: He does large conferences to teach other pastors how to
do what he does. So he really brings a lot
of young guys along to follow in his footsteps.
Speaker 3: So when he does.
Speaker 4: Something like this, that's not a great thing for the Kingdom,
at least in the US. So what he had been
doing is one just being very cagy and fuzzy about
what his position on homosexuality was. There were some odd
statements that he first started making around twenty twelve, you know,
that made some of that Christian media that we just
discussed go excuse me. I think World wrote a story
on it at the time, going, well, hold up, did.
Speaker 3: He just.
Speaker 4: Say this man who left his wife in his church
was in sin not just because he was because he
was getting divorced, But he didn't bring up the fact
that he was cheating with another man.
Speaker 3: Which should also be a sin.
Speaker 4: So these kind of things just set off alarm bells
for people and then a few years ago he started
disclosing privately to some pastors. Well, I've really shifted positions.
I maybe shouldn't let my heart determine my theology, but
I have begun to do that. He said that, you know,
I haven't performed a gay marriage, but maybe if you know,
my granddaughter asked me, which I don't think. I don't
know anything about his granddaughter, by the way, it was
just the example he gave.
Speaker 3: Maybe if a family member my granddaughter.
Speaker 4: Asked me, I might And so this was when you
talk about that eleventh commandment. This was known by a
lot of pastors. He was saying this quietly and they
weren't talking about it. And at the same time he
started funding his church, started financially supporting and just in
counseling support too, giving advice to this new program that
is explicitly LGBTQ affirming, called Embracing the Journey, that is
for the parents of Christian parents of LGBTQ identifying children.
And this curriculum has been unrolling to churches across the country,
including some really well known churches like Saddleback. So Andy
Stanley's church has been financially supporting it and He just
held a conference last September that featured openly same sex
married couples, and all of this was done in this
very positive way of saying, well, we just want you
to understand their perspective. So that's kind of how he
hedges his bets. But in these private conversations it's pretty
clear what's been going on. And then on top of that,
this embracing the Journey curriculum and ministry they would call it.
I hate using that term for them, but this embracing
the Journey ministry. Has also been very involved with a
left wing funded organization called the Reformation Project, who has
openly said that its purpose is to reform Christian doctrine
in every denomination, no matter how conservative, to become affirming
of LGBTQ sin. So they don't say sin, of course,
but behavior and identities. So his church members, his staff
pastors have been involved with that group. That group has
a confidential Pastors in Process program that teaches affirming pastors
how to secretly and quietly move their Bible believing congregations
in affirming directions.
Speaker 3: So it's really just a start.
Speaker 2: Of as in Sheep's clothing, right, I know, I mean
I think it was a little family comes in thinking
that their Bible, believing they trust these people, you know,
this pastor, they go to this church, and at the
end of however, for many years, they find out, you know,
he's been pushing them in this direction, want a betrayal
of the people and the sheep that they ought to
be protecting.
Speaker 4: Yes, you said it very well, and I'm glad you
stepped in because that was where I was going exactly.
Speaker 3: I just wasn't quite getting there.
Speaker 4: But that was the point, is that it's astonishing and
it should be a bombshell, and yet somehow it wasn't.
Because when I spoke to a couple of pastors about it,
they confirmed that, yes, I have had these conversations with
Andy Stanley, but they didn't want to go on the
record because they said they didn't want to get political.
Speaker 2: I've had that happen multiple times when you know, reporting
on my own church for the same reasons you outlined
where you know, I mean, the situation has been on
the federal list right for example, the most recent one is,
you know, we have a professor drummed out of a
you know, Lutheran college for opposing Marxism while you know,
the colleges have unrepented you know, for example, racially segregated
student unions available on their campuses, right, And so that's
actually that sort of asked the behavior you write about
a lot. And I'm very just curious about the dynamic
theory because there's that kind of culture of secrecy, that niceness,
that afraid you know, where they know that someone who
in a position of major leadership is leading the flock
off a cliff, you know, leading them into the lions den,
and they won't even put their name on that public
here for the sake of the sheep. That's really to
me as a parishioner, that's that's shocking.
Speaker 1: It's disqualifying.
Speaker 2: Frankly, Yeah, I mean, I mean, and I mean the
shocking thing to media going through your book, and you know,
as not being a Southern Baptist, you know, I learned
a lot more about the inner workings of a lot
of those churches. But you name all of these names,
and that's some of the most gutsy hist reporting I've
seen ever on the church, and that's it's really impressive.
I'm curious about some of the reactions that you have
gotten to your your choice to be that aggressive and
name names and put details and facts behind stories of
you know, basically doing work that other church leaders should
be doing as well.
Speaker 3: You know, it's been a mixed bag, as you might expect.
Speaker 4: I've gotten a ton of encouragement from the ordinary Christian
in the pew like me and who felt these things
starting to.
Speaker 3: Happen around twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, and then.
Speaker 4: Really saw it going to overdrive during the pandemic. So
there's been a lot of atta girls there of people
who see exactly what I have seen and have emailed
me and DMed me and texted me saying this is
what I experienced, this was my story. So I had
just so many more that I could ever possibly use
in this book, and I had it was really painful
to just pick and choose some of them, because, man,
you want to tell everyone's story. But on top of that,
the institutional response is not surprising, and yet somehow when
the ferocity of it comes at you, it can still
somehow surprise you even though you.
Speaker 3: Knew it would come. So, you know, some of the
things I have seen in.
Speaker 4: Just the last few days as the book was coming
out has been exaggerating my position to suggest that I'm
saying someone's not a Christian if I critique them in
the book, or to I frankly, I just saw this
with a Wall Street Journal editorial board member just tweeted, well,
if you are saying that Tim Keller is a shepherd
for sale, there cannot be anything serious about this book.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, Okay, well on, and you have.
Speaker 4: No idea, You've got to read it what my critique
of Tim Keller is.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, a title can.
Speaker 4: Have various news. So yes, there are some who are
directly taking funding from left wing foundations to push particular
policies in churches. But there can also be a metaphorical
sense of for sale in that maybe you have shifted
positions or you've softened your stance publicly for cultural adulation.
That can also be a sort of selling. And anyway,
so that kind of thing has surprised me, just a
literalness and the outright rejection if you touch one of
these anointed pastors. And then you know, some of it
also has been a little sneaky in that you I've
seen statements being put out saying we did not take
money from George Soros, as if to suggest that I
was being untruthful when I will go, I did not
say that your organization took money from George Soros. I
said you are involved with this other group that took
money from George Soros. So it's like they're denying something
I did not write. And that sort of thing has
not been surprising, but it, I guess, just the duplicity
of it has shocked me a little bit coming from
some of these organizations where I still thought we could
have an open debate about what's been going on.
Speaker 1: Well, does it make you feel a little bit like
we might?
Speaker 2: I mean, especially with like the cultural Marxism being another
period similar to the early nineteen hundreds and.
Speaker 1: On kind of battle for the Bible right.
Speaker 2: Over when the you know, seminaries were basically making a
choice between do we believe that the Bible is actually
God's sacred inspired word, that every word of it is
reliable and true, and the mainline denominations among others you
know who basically said no, it's a metaphor. You know,
we can cut in paste, like Thomas Jefferson basically you
know their membership, you know they're dinosaurs and they're dwindling
now and.
Speaker 1: This seems I mean, what do you you know?
Speaker 2: It seems like, you know, the cultural Marxism struggle sessions
that churches are having all over the place that you're
documenting seems a very similar inflection point most of your
sense of that.
Speaker 4: No, And I think that's a really astute observation, because
what it feels like is that the points of contention
have moved on from some of those first order doctrinal issues,
Like you will hear extremely liberal pastors who are who
would put a rainbow flag on their church and all
of the rest of the kind of crazy clips you
sometimes see on Twitter. They will say, well, I affirm
the virgin birth, I affirm the risen Christ. So they
will actually unlike and say Jay Gresham Machen's time. I
agree with these basic doctrinal issues. It's all the other
parts of the culture, the cultural parts of the Bible
that they don't agree with anymore. In terms of gender, sexuality, marriage,
there being no jeue or gentile and it's really a
new kind of false gospel. And you don't have to
just totally refute the gospel to have something false. If
you add to it or take away from it, then
you're also creating something false. And you brought up the
cultural Marxism, and I think when you look at how
so many of these institutions did bring in this idea
that Christians who with white skin, and you saw pastors
saying this be forever guilty of racism, that it would
not there was an actual the provost of one of
the largest seminaries in the country said, I will always
be a racist because of his whiteness.
Speaker 1: Because Jesus can't save that soon.
Speaker 4: Right, And that is just an astonishing thing to say.
Speaker 3: Doctrinally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a batteaming Christ and what he's done.
Speaker 4: I think it's the same thing that we saw in
the twenties. It's just on slightly different ground now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that brings me to another thing that I
think is a parent in your book. And there's a
tension now, is in that battle for the Bible days
between the fact that the Christian Church we do need
a leadership class. We need pastors, we need theologians, we
need professors and teachers, people with more legitimate credentials, more
years of training and education than the average lay person
needs to have for their vocations.
Speaker 1: But you know, our leadership.
Speaker 2: Classes often trained credentialed and and culturated by institutions that
flat out hate Christians and what we believe. So how
do you think that Christians should deal with that tension
and the fact that it can, you know, as a
reporting shows, it can lead our church leaders to sell
out their flocks to theologies of Satan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, that is a really complicated question, and
I'm hearing a lot of discussion among some of these
young theologians who are asking should we just have our
own churches training the pastorate? And you know, I don't
really weigh in on that, and I'm not sure myself.
It's something I'm thinking through, but I do think it's
a significant problem, and we have to ask, Okay, how
do we put these guardrails up? And is it even
possible to solve this problem? Because what you seem to
see is the pattern in the Church of really sound
institutions are built, and because of their soundness, they flourish,
and because they are flourishing, wolves come in and then
over time they overrun the institution, and then the sound
doctrinal believers leave and build a new institution, And it's
just this ongoing cycle.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if there is a way out
of that cycle.
Speaker 4: Or if it's just what we're seeing right now. I mean,
certainly some of these seminaries. To me, while I've been appalled,
it's some of what they've been doing that.
Speaker 3: I detail in the book.
Speaker 4: I also know that there is a lot of really
trustworthy and sound professors and faculty that are worth learning from.
Speaker 2: So maybe somewhere to employ them, pay their side, make
it possible for them to teach people.
Speaker 1: So where is that place, right?
Speaker 4: And so maybe my word to them is, you know,
I'm not sure what to tell you guys, other than
you need to fight for your institutions a little bit
harder and maybe have to make some people uncomfortable. And
you know, again, part of what I did see as
I was doing this reporting was that there would be
a lot of people on these faculties that knew what
was going on and were discomfited by it, but they
just didn't really want to address it. And so we
also need to, I think, have a little bit more
of a theology.
Speaker 3: Of confrontation, and that we don't have that that.
Speaker 2: Would have helped a lot in COVID, for example. You know,
and I think maybe like you're mentioning some some There's
been some development in that direction since COVID, like you're mentioning,
but people are still feeling it out and trying to
figure me because if you're a faithful Christian, you do
want to be respectful of the truth and of your
brother and maybe you know, and dealing with sin in
a gracious way, etc.
Speaker 1: I do think there's.
Speaker 2: Absolute legitimacy there. It is fully backed by scripture. So
it's difficult to figure out how to do that because
we don't have a lot of practice of confrontation in
a biblical way. Yeah, gooidance habit is very strong, and I.
Speaker 4: Think we're going to have to start talking about that
a little bit more as we move into I don't
know if you know Aaron Wren, but I do like
his taxonomy a lot of neutral world and negative world,
and we have moved into a much more negative world
that is much more a hostile not just to Christian
beliefs but to Christians. They're looked at much more negatively
I think by the dominant culture than they were in
the past. And all of that is going to come
with a set of costs that we haven't really had
to weigh much in this country in the past, and
so you know, part of this, I think is just
trying to figure out, all right, how do we now
navigate the new cultural realities that we're facing.
Speaker 2: Let's go to your chapter on abortion because it has
many shocking anecdotes about well known Christians. I'm gonna name
check here a different person, the author and professor Karen
Swallow prior so I see her on Tons of the
Mom and the Homeschooling and EDGIT classchool education podcast that
I follow.
Speaker 1: So her presence in your book was really not to
her credit, you know, but she was.
Speaker 2: It's not you know, it's her public record, you know,
but she was among those downplaying the end of Roe
versus Wad because it happened thanks to Donald Trump being president.
And now that, however, Trump and his running mate Jadie
Vance have backed down on their pro life positions. I mean,
I'm sure you know you probably know this, but I'll
mention for our listeners. They've you know, supported the abortion
drugs that kill the majority of unborn babies aborted. They
backed the mass creation of frozen humans and storing them
cryogenically and definitely and they've dramatically downgraded the GOP platform
on life and marriage. So what do you think would
you have any additions or revisions to your chapter there,
you know, talking through what a Christian voter's calculus.
Speaker 1: Should be on abortion.
Speaker 2: You mentioned, you know, it is important to have it
as often a litmus test for those who are faithful
believers when they're looking at candidates. So it's gotten a
little bit more complicated. I wonder with what's happened with
Trump and JD. Vance in the you know time since
your book has been.
Speaker 4: Published, right, and you know, I have been thinking through
it a lot, and like so many Christians and pro lifers,
I'm incredibly grieved by the GOP dropping the clear pro
life plank. I could not be more in disagreement with
Trump and Vance's comments on Mifa press Stone. But I
don't know that I would write anything different about this
chapter because it and I'm glad you gave me an
opportunity to say this. It's not a defense of Trump.
It's more a defense of those voters who voted for
Trump because of the pro life issue. I think they
made the right calculation at the time. I think when
you look at the political result that they got, which
was that they did get.
Speaker 3: The overturning of Roe v. Wade. It was so surprising
even to them.
Speaker 4: I think people sort of on a wing in of
prayer pulled that lever for Trump, didn't really expect it
to happen, and it happened, and I think we weren't
quite ready for Wow, what do we do next? You know?
So in terms of that, I don't think I would
write anything different because we still want to be in
this place. We are still now in a place where
on a state by state level, we can have this
fight now. I want a national abortion van, but at
least we are able now to battle it out in
the states, and this gives us a mechanism that we
did not have before. So I wouldn't suggest anything different
about the moral calculus that those voters made in terms
of you know what Karen Swallow prior and a lot
of the other people that I name check in the
chapter said after that, I don't think that my criticism
of it would be any different because what a lot
of them said in order to sort of take that
credit away from Donald Trump as well, the issue is
that Evangelicals and Christians need to do a better job
of taking care of mom and baby, and we need
to put in place the social entitlements that make it
so that women won't want abortion. Well, there's a number
of problems with that one. Christians have been doing an
incredible job providing care for moms and babies, So it's
just a false narrative. And I go into a lot
of the details into just how much we've been caring
for moms and babies, and also that when we look
at the history of welfare expansion, it does not show
a lowering of abortion. If you look, for example, in
the black community where a lot of those initial nineteen
sixties entitlements rolled out, what it has done is decimate marriage,
and that has led to an increase in abortion.
Speaker 3: So it seems very.
Speaker 4: Bad policy to say, let's do more of that that
has created an abortion epidemic in this particular community.
Speaker 3: So I think all of my criticisms will probably remain
the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that a lot of you know, fellow
Christians are really wrestling with that issue, and well, it
will continue to be live until we get to that election.
Speaker 1: The booth what yet again.
Speaker 2: Another overarching theme that I also noticed throughout the book.
Some Yeah, it's kind of an underlying theme of just
the variety of chapters, you know, because you focus on
the efforts to corral the Christians on climate change, on
abortion and pro life issues, on marriage and LGBT issues.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure on the whole COVID.
Speaker 2: You know that all of that huge levels of manipulation
and money slashing around. But one of the things that
I think is common to all of those is you
are citing major church leader leaders publicly claiming that God
said something like drive a prius for climate change, support socialism,
to be pro life. But that's something he didn't actually say, right,
That's not in the Bible that you need to drive
a prius in order to help the earth. And I
do believe that traditional Christian doctrine calls putting words into
God's mouth blasphemy. Did it surprise you, I mean, and
is it?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: For me, it's a little almost shocking to see that
people who ought to, you know, who know more about
theology than I do, really being less afraid maybe than
they should be, to ascribe words to God that he
did not say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I wonder.
Speaker 4: Sometimes if that that's knowledge puffing up and it makes
it easier to manipulate scripture, because when I watch some
of these presentations on all of these issues you just
brought up, they would kind of sound good and you're like, well, yeah,
we do want to care for the earth, and then
you would they would get to the part where because
we want to care for the earth, we need to
support this cap and trade policy and that's being faithful
to the Gospel. And you go, wait, record scratch, no, no, no, no,
it's fine that we can talk about. Okay, well, what
are these various passages in scripture do to inform how
we look at some of these issues.
Speaker 3: I think that's perfectly fine.
Speaker 4: And I did try to take pains to say on
something that is not crystal clear scripturally, like marriage, sexuality,
and gender, say something like what should our border policy be?
Speaker 3: Or what should our gun control policy be?
Speaker 4: These could be things that Christians in very good faith
can have different views. The problem was that it wasn't
being argued in good faith. It's being argued through spiritual
manipulation of saying, if you don't follow this particular policy
this way, you are not only not only do I
think you're wrong, I think you're not being obedient to
Christ and if you're saying that as an institutional leader
with authority, that's an even bigger problem. So yeah, I
guess to a certain degree though, that I had seen
going on for so long that it didn't really surprise me.
I mean, one of the things I kind of stress,
I think in the introduction and then again in the
conclusion is needs you to know these are just a
few representative examples.
Speaker 3: This is by no means exhaustive.
Speaker 4: As you said, I did talk a lot about Southern Baptists,
because they're the biggest, But I mean I was flooded
with letters from Anglicans, from Methodists, from Lutherans. I mean,
I don't think there was any denomination where I have
not heard from people going yep, it's going on.
Speaker 3: With our church too.
Speaker 4: So these were just little slices to give you a
picture of what's happening. By no means was it the
entire Enchilada?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you had a huge amount of reporting and
here though, so as a fellow writer that reported, that's
very it was impressive to me.
Speaker 1: Would you say, based on the amount.
Speaker 2: Of work that you were able to do and all
the things that you were able to uncover and package neatly.
Speaker 1: Into this book for people? Do you think it will
be prudent going forward? For Christians?
Speaker 2: You know, like people who are political you know now
as a report of looking at political news, you know,
when I see something pop up, I ask who paid
for that to be in front of my face?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: So, you know, so it sounds like, do you think
it'd be prudent for Christians to start suspecting maybe there's
big leftist money behind any you know, time they see
an instance of some religious branded organization pushing far left
policies in religious terms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you have to ask that question. And
I've told people. I've told a lot of pastors who
I've talked to. I hate to tell you this, but
we are just in an era where you have to
do a lot of homework. So if you're going to
bring some curriculum into your church, you need to know
who's funding it. You need to ask some questions. And
that goes for goodness sake signing your name to some
general statement of principles, because I would read some of
these general statement of principles and I would look at
it and go, yes, I agree.
Speaker 3: With that every immigrant has the imago day.
Speaker 4: We are all made in the image of God, and
that we absolutely need to tell them about Jesus. And
it would just be just some general things that every
Christian would agree with. And I would think if someone
had presented that to me, I would sign my name
to it, not knowing that this organization is then going
to turn around and write a public letter and publish
it in the Washington Post demanding that Christians need to
back James Lankfort's border bill, or to demand that the
Biden administration and the remain in Mexico policy, which are
both things that the Evangelical Immigration Table did. So I
really want to tell some of these well known pastors too.
I understand that not all of you knew what you
were doing. I'm not saying every one of you is,
you know, on the take and that you were compromised.
I understand that some of these guys went my friend
who I trust, asked me to sign this, and I
signed it. And we're just in an era where you
can't do that anymore well.
Speaker 2: And people who are deceivers and manipulators are weaponizing your
good faith in your trust of your friends, which is
you know that's what they do, but they shouldn't get
rewarded for them, right.
Speaker 4: Right, and then you avoid headaches of people like me
coming along and writing about it.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to take a different tack with this
last question, and I'm going to follow actually the conclusion
of your book, because you really kind of shift ton
there from this, you know, idea third person reporting to
tell your personal story, very moving redemption story that actually
it was a very moving for me because you know,
I'm fellow Christian, I also have sins, and I've been
redeemed by Jesus Christ, and that is the most important
thing in my life. So I think that reminder, you know,
it was just it was surprising to read at the
end of the kind of book that you have. But
you explain actually in that chapter why you did decide
to get personal in that what is otherwise a very
fact based, you know, deeply reported book. So would you
kind of share your reasoning there with our listeners as
we close today for those who, you know, all of
those who wrote you the kind of letters about hearing
that personal story, you know, being blessed by Uh, well,
here I am using Christian language.
Speaker 1: You know, being encouraged and which I don't usually do
at the Federalist. I'm all your.
Speaker 3: Listeners should just become Christians.
Speaker 1: And that's right. We can hope and pray for that.
Speaker 2: But can you kind of just give more of that
backstory to our listeners since you said, you know they're
on that chapter that people really respond to that and
seem to really crave hearing more about that because it
really encourages them with some of their struggles.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, so was the book with my Own Testimony,
which is my story of how I came to salvation
and belief in Jesus Christ. And it's really the story
of my prodigal years. I had some very prodigal years
in college that were miserable, and how just out of
a moment of desperation, I prayed and I asked the
Lord just save me, just help, and then how I
kind of went through a little period of flirtation with
sort of Christian therapeutics, which was okay. I was still
struggling with sin, particularly alcohol abuse and drug abuse, and
I was getting, you know, some of these sort of
wazi Christian books about well, you need to look at
your trauma, and you need to look at the past
wrongs committed against you and why that has given you
this drive to do these things and all of these
sort of self excusing rationalizations. And then I came across
thanks to a pastor who gave me a book from
John MacArthur that kind of just blew all that out
of the water. It was like, you just need to
stop sinning. All God's creatures have had bad things happen
to him and have had people commit sins against them,
but you've committed a lot of great sins and the
only way to arrest this process is stop sinning. And
here's how you grab hold of sanctification. And it was
so helpful and freeing to me, so one I was so.
Speaker 3: Grateful for it. And when I started talking.
Speaker 4: About this, when I was reporting on these evangelical stories,
and I'll be honest, I would refer to it very
obliquely in some interviews, and moms and dads would like
seize on it, grandparents would seize on it.
Speaker 3: And suddenly, you know, DMS emails.
Speaker 4: Would be lit up with hey, when you mentioned that,
you know, you had a little bit of a struggle
and you came back to Christ.
Speaker 3: What was the story there?
Speaker 4: And one I told it because I could just see
there was such a hunger for stories like that, but
also because I wanted to finish the book, which had
been very tough on a lot of church leaders, by
being clear that I love the church. There is a
lot of reporting from the secular media that is all
about being as well, let's say, creating as much of
an indictment of the church as you can, creating doubt
in the church, suggesting that it's not a safe.
Speaker 3: Place or a good place to go. And I didn't.
Speaker 4: I wanted to be so clear that that's not what
I was doing, that this was all coming out of
a love for the place and the institution that allowed
me to get saved and allowed me to get sanctified
and created the life that I have. I met my
husband to church. I mean, we're very involved in our
church life here. So that was really why I wanted
to finish that off. Was just so that people understood
the motivation for this is not because I want to
damage the church.
Speaker 3: I want to build it up and make it stronger.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Federalist Radio Hour with Joy Pullman,
the Federalist executive editor, and Megan Basham. She is a
culture reporter at the Daily Wire. And the author of
the book out now that you can get everywhere, Shepherd's
for sale.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more soon.
Speaker 1: Until then, lovers of freedom and anxious for the fraid