Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1044 | Andy Stanley, Francis Collins & the Plot to End Evangelicalism | Guest: Megan Basham

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Today, we’re joined by Megan Basham to discuss the leftist agenda behind “Big Evangelical” and what’s really going on behind the scenes of many well-known evangelical leaders. In her new book, “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda,” Megan breaks down how these leaders have sold out to agendas like the LGBTQ lobby and BLM and how some are even bought by George Soros. We discuss organizations like Be the Bridge and Revoice and why they’re so dangerous. She shares how this is impacting people in the church. We also discuss Francis Collins and how the COVID policies he pushed hurt the church overall and how so-called climate change and open borders have seeped into the church. Then, we discuss the boxing match that has sparked controversy at the Olympics featuring someone who appears to be a biological male competing against a woman. Order Megan Basham’s book “Shepherds For Sale”: https://a.co/d/7pMNUJY Get your tickets for Share the Arrows: https://www.sharethearrows.com/ Pre-order Allie's new book: https://a.co/d/4COtBxy --- Timecodes: (02:00) Olympic Boxing Outrage (10:40) Andy Stanley (22:52) Holy Sexuality (29:11) Social Justice in Churches (34:15) Francis Collins & Covid (42:55) Russell Moore & Immigration (51:52) Climate change in evangelicalism / Gavin Ortlund (58:52) Discernment --- Today's Sponsors: Sherwood Kids – visit https://www.SherwoodKids.com/Allie today to get 50% off a lifetime membership and give your kids access to thousands of wholesome audiobooks, eBooks, and read-along videos that foster a love for reading without screen addiction. Focus On The Family - and subscribe to "Focus on the Family" with Jim Daly today on your favorite podcast platform or visit focusonthefamilywithjimdaly.com Pre-Born — will you help rescue babies' lives? Donate by calling #250 & say keyword 'BABY' or go to Preborn.com/ALLIE. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 868 | A Biologist Explains Sex | Guest: Dr. Colin Wright (Part One) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-868-a-biologist-explains-sex-guest-dr-colin/id1359249098?i=1000626998391 Ep 945 | Churches: Beware of the 'After Party' Trojan Horse | Guest: Megan Basham https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-945-churches-beware-of-the-after-party-trojan/id1359249098?i=1000644262393 Ep 560 | How Tim Keller & Russell Moore Became Mouthpieces for Masks & Vaccines | Guest: Megan Basham https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-560-how-tim-keller-russell-moore-became-mouthpieces/id1359249098?i=1000550480363 Ep 868 | A Biologist Explains Sex | Guest: Dr. Colin Wright (Part One) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-868-a-biologist-explains-sex-guest-dr-colin/id1359249098?i=1000626998391  --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Shepherds for sale is a new book by Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham. It is a deep dive into the leftward drift of evangelicalism. And man, she has got some bombshells for us today. You guys are going to love this conversation on today's episode of Relatable. Megan, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. It's so exciting to be here actually in the studio, which is really cute. For people who don't know, you have this great art of like C.S. Lewis on the walls.

and I love it. Thank you. I know we can't show everything in my camera shot, unfortunately, but it's just there mostly for me to enjoy and to know it's there. C.S. Lewis, looking down on us. Okay, you've been on twice before, but for those who may not know, they're meeting you for the first time. Tell us who you are and what you do. I'm the cultural reporter for The Daily Wire. I'm regularly on our top 10 news podcast, Morning Wire. And it's a little different for Daily Wire. Our other shows are more opinion-based, as you probably know, and I'm sure you're audience knows. But the show that I am on Morning Wire is very newsy. It's straight news. It's like NPR, New York Times podcasts. Yes. And it's doing amazing because people understand that they can rely on it for

unbiased information. Yes, to really sort of offer balance to the conversation that is on these news podcasts. Yeah. And how long have you been writing, reporting, journalisming? Oh, gosh, over 15 years, maybe 18 years now. So, yeah, I mean, as you know, it's a great career for a mom because it's very flexible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got the deadlines, but you can kind of choose how you spend your time and how you meet those deadlines. Totally understand that. We're going to get to your book and kind of how you got into this lane of talking specifically about church happenings, SBC happenings, what's going on in evangelicalism. But I want to zoom out and look at the culture because really culture and what's going on in the church, they can't be separated, as you know, and as you write about a lot. And one thing that's

going on this week is the conversation about an Olympic boxer who is fighting against a female boxer, fighting as a female. And there's a lot of outrage understandably and a lot of confusion about this person whose name is Amin Khalif, an Algerian boxer. And this person was actually deemed to have male chromosomes. And then won a fight in the women's division at the Paris Olympics. Today, people are, as I said, understandably very upset about this. Here is the video of that fight. Taking the win has Corini abandoned the bout. Respond to her knees is very upset. Okay, so let me explain what's going on for people and then I'll get your reaction, Megan. So they have already fought before. The woman who is boxing here, she represents Italy. Her name

Angela Karini, they had already fought after they first fought when you see this main person punching Angela in the face, Angela just kind of falls back. And then after the fight, she says, this is the hardest I've ever been hit. So she was injured there. So there, when you saw the second fight, they start the fight, but then Angela just kind of walks off. She's basically saying, I'm not going to fight this person. This is too hard. I was already injured by this person. And there's been a big debate and a lot of confusion online about whether this person is actually biologically male. Riley Gaines, others, I said, yeah, this is a man. He has X, Y chromosomes, and he should not be competing. Others were saying, no, he has some kind of she, he has

some kind of disorder. This is a biological female. And so I asked for clarity from Colin Wright on this, because I didn't want to say that a woman who just happens to look kind of manly is a man. I don't think that's the right thing to do. And so I wanted to know what is true. Is this person actually so-called transgender or what's going on? Colin Wright is a biologist. I've had him on the show. He's talked a lot about this before. And so I said, hey, trying to parse out this information about this boxer, I read your tweets, can you share, can you share more information? Because Colin says, no, this person was born with testicles. And that's why he has so much testosterone. That's why he looks like a man. Colin said, the boxer failed.

eligibility requirements for the International Boxing Association based on a genetic test, which indicated he has X, Y, chromosomes. The limit, this limits the type of DSD condition, so that is differently sex disorder, to only a handful, all of which include the presence of testes, likely 5ARD, that's a condition like Castor Semenia, but could also perhaps be partial antigen and sensitivity syndrome. These are male disorders. The two boxers that everyone is talking about are biologically male. And so he has looked through all the documents, all their requirements, eligibility, and everything like that. And he has determined, yes, this person is a man, even though people are defending him saying, no, this is a woman. All right, Megan, I know that

was long-winded and people are here to hear you talk. It's just such a complicated summary, and I wanted to make sure that we had the, you know, the full context. But I just wanted to set this up as an example of how disordered we are as a society, how crazy things have gotten that now domestic violence, basically, a man beating up a woman, is now sport that everyone is applauding for. What in the world? How did we get here? Well, I feel like this story in so many ways illustrates all of the conversations we've been having about biological realities.

Yeah. Because, you know, even if there is some sort of intersex issue here, that would still create a problem if you have someone on a lot of testosterone. And that just tells you what testosterone does to your body to make you bigger, to make you stronger. And you have what seems to be a biological man beating up a woman. And it's not the first time we've seen this. And that's the other thing that I think is the issue. And just to see what this movement does to women is so abhorrent. And you don't know how to put it any other way other than we have gotten to this point.

We have a culture that is so unprotective of women. And instead protecting this ideology that it is leaving women crying on the floor. Yeah. Though there is a part of me, you know, maybe to open a can of worms a little bit that goes, I don't know how I feel about women boxing in the first place for that reason. Yeah, I, you know what? That's like a whole other issue is that it's, I think there's a reason why it is reflexively uncomfortable to watch two women fighting each other.

Like, I don't mind watching a UFC fight. But when the women come out, I mean, and they're strong, tough women. Some of them are moms. Like, I'm sure they are awesome. But seeing them bloody each other up is really uncomfortable the way it's not. If I see, you know, Connor McGregor getting beat up, it seems like one is supposed to be one is not. But it is, it's multiplied when you see a man beating up a woman and people cheering for it and lionizing him for it. It's that C.S. Lewis line that it's a terrible thing when women fight and even more terrible when you see a man beating down a woman and just watching her on her knees crying like that.

I mean, that creates a visceral reaction and it should. I think that goes to something that we just know in the core of our being that this is not right what we're seeing. Absolutely. And you wrote this morning. have written many times before about the infiltration of LGBTQ. That includes this tea that we're talking about into the church, which has been for thousands of years, at least supposed to be a refuge for women and for children, the most vulnerable. What's happening? Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up because a big part of the soft capitulation of the church has ignored what this does to women. So when we heard terms like pronoun hospitality, a part of that conversation was not what that does to your sisters in Christ to be willing to accept biological lies in that way in the name of winsomeness or in the name of being seeker sensitive. And so I think that was part of the problem.

But then in my book, I also go into how a lot of this is organic and just sensitivity to the culture, but a lot of it's also being deliberately orchestrated. So you have, I hate to use the term ministry for some of these organizations, but you have organizations that claim to be ministries that are taking funding from secular left-wing gay lobbying groups. Like what? So the Arcus Foundation was founded in 2000. It is the country's largest LGBTQ grant maker. It's secular.

Its founder was a surgical supply air of $100 billion. company. And for up until 2015, they continued to lose at the ballot box. And they realized that the problem was the church, that they could not get this legislation to recognize gay marriage over the finish line because of the church. So even though we had Obergefell, in the meantime, what that foundation started to do, the Arcus Foundation, was look at, okay, how can we reform church doctrine in conservative ministries and in conservative denominations? And that's what they did. And so it has funneled money into every denomination, particularly the United Methodist Church. And we've seen the result of that. They just went through a schism on gay marriage and gay ordination. And they have been pouring money

into groups that are associated with churches that you know, like Andy Stanley's Church. One of them is a program called Embracing the Journey that is supported financially and also in advice and counseling kind of role by Andy Stanley staff. And they're involved in this. And that group is involved with some of these Arcus funded organizations. So they're bringing this curriculum in. And I think a lot of churches don't realize that activists are being trained to come change your doctrine on this. Yeah. And you know what we've discussed embracing the journey before when we were analyzing that recent sermon by Andy Stanley in which he basically said that homosexuality is different than any other sin because saying that homosexuality is a sin is saying that who someone is

a sin, which is a completely unbiblical way to look at sexuality and identity. And what an awful burden to put on someone like, sorry, this is the one sin that Jesus's blood just like could not cover, can't empower you to repent from. But embracing the journey, you're not reaching at all. That's what the organization believes, the people who help run the organization, I believe, if I'm understanding correctly, the family, they are affirming of their son's decision to be in a union with a man. They have also, in their conferences, hoisted up people who are outright affirming of LGBTQ unions. Andy Stanley, from my understanding, also really just believes that for some people, they cannot help it, they cannot repent, and the best thing for, say, two men in that

situation to do is to get married. That's wild. Yeah. And, you know, when you bring up this embracing the journey curriculum, everything you just said is absolutely accurate. And part of what they do is they're involved with this other organization that is openly LGBTQ affirming. Now, embracing the journey is too, if you ask them, they try to fudge it a little bit. But if you go look at other organizations they're involved with, they're very transparent when they're on their websites. And if you read the curriculum, they hold up. of transgender pastors or Bible study leaders as being solid sound Christians that we can learn from. They talk about their son who is in an open gay relationship and an ongoing practicing,

you know, same-sex sexual activity. Yeah, that he's, you know, that he's going to go to heaven despite what we know from certain passages of scripture that they call clobber passages. So when they're involved with these groups, I think the thing that so many churches unwittingly don't know is that they want to talk about these things in a soft way. And they don't realize that our reticence to talk about it is being exploited by actors like this. This Reformation project that Andy Stanley's staff pastors and some church members who are behind this embracing the journey curriculum are involved with, it has a pastors in process program. And it is described as a confidential program to help secretly affirming pastors

slowly move their congregations to affirm LGBTQ doctrine and to say it is not sin. Wow. Okay. And how does a congregate find out if their church is involved in this? Will there be obvious signs? How did they dig into this? Well, I mean, first, we kind of brought up some of the things with Andy Stanley. sort of fuzzy language. I think that is one of the red flags. Like this curriculum, when you read it,

the language is at first a little fuzzy. When you go deeper, it becomes more explicit and it is clear that they're very affirming. If you see their speeches and their activities with some of these openly affirming groups, then it's crystal clear. There's no question about it. But, you know, part of what I would say is to be really aware and ask questions because some of what I cover in this book is how a counseling pastor at Saddleback Church was involved with this Embracing the Journey Group, involved with this Arcus-funded Reformation Project. The last I heard, he is still a counseling pastor at Saddleback, even when I asked them about it. So when I asked them about it, they just took all of the embracing the journey materials off the website. And in fact, even the counseling pastors,

LinkedIn, was taken down. But, yeah, I've talked to people at the church and they say he's still there. And so that's the first thing is I would I would ask for transparency. And when you see the fuzzy language, just know that that can be part of this process. Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is really a gospel issue because like when we read the passage that a lot of these pastors will say is a clobber passage, 1st Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? It includes in there the sexually immoral men who practice. homosexuality, but the good news that I think Andy Stanley misses, which is so central to the

gospel, it says, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they really get sexuality and identity wrong, which is really fundamental to tell someone this is who you are. It cannot be repented of. It cannot change. This defines you. And someone telling you to repent of it is actually hateful and wrong, that makes me question if they even understand what Jesus did. That's why this is a big deal. We're not trying to find little technicalities. Like we're talking about people's souls here. Right. And, you know, one of the things you can also look at is the minimization of that by pretending that it's a political issue. You saw Andy Stanley do that. In my book, I talked to some pastors who

were aware of where Stanley was and disagreed with it. But when I asked them to go on the record about it. They didn't want to because they said they didn't want to get into a political issue, which was just astonishing to me to take something that is so clearly a biblical issue. Genesis is one. False teaching going out into the church. And let's be clear that Andy Stanley is incredibly influential among other pastors. He does a lot of pastoral training. So the fact that he was taking this stance and they knew it and that he was privately admitting that he had changed his theology on these issues to not be willing to go public.

about that once they had addressed it with him and to try to get him to repent. That to me is the most biblical of issues. It's not political. And, you know, as we were just talking about, Andy Stanley is one of the greatest and most effective communicators, I think, in the world, in history. I mean, he has some, like, isms that he says that are just true and they're good. And I say that because I think that he could probably find a really effective way to share the truth about what God says about sexuality and identity in a way that is really compelling, that communicates both truth and love, because he is good at that. Right. But it's not truth and love if it is compromise.

Yeah. And I don't want to just single out Andy Stanley because I think he's gone the furthest down the road. And he's the biggest. And he's the biggest. But we have seen other pastors who I don't necessarily think have become affirming or anything like that, but they become very soft about how they address it, whether it was this interview. that I detail with Rick Warren, where this British journalist had to really, really press him is homosexuality a sin? And he kept trying to turn the conversation to pedophilia. And I credit this reporter because she refused to sort of let him wriggle out. And she's like, no, no, no,

we're talking about homosexuality to consenting adults. And he finally did admit, well, it's not God's best. But he wasn't willing to say sin. And as much as there was a lot to admire about Tim Keller, There were also some interviews. And you typically see it when they're talking to secular media where it was the same thing. There was just this unwillingness to be very clear about homosexuality or transgenderism or any of the other letters that go in that acronym. Just being sin that yes, will condemn you to hell if you don't seek repentance. And that is the good news of the gospel. And it's why we're depriving people of that good news if we lack that clarity.

Yeah. And it's telling people that a testimony like Christopher, you all, or Rosaria Butterfields or Beckett Cooks, that those are actually impossible. They're out of your reach and you cannot have that liberation. You and only you have to be burdened by your sin forever. You don't get the fullness of the grace of the gospel. And that's really sad. Yeah, because I mean, given my sinful past, I constantly reflect back, even though it's been a lot of years since I came to Christ. And I think I am so glad that I am not what I was. Right. And if someone would have told you at the time, sorry, this is just who you are, your choices are who you are,

then that would have been devastating. Okay, quick pause from that conversation to tell you about my first sponsor for the day. This is a new sponsor that I got to tell you about for the first time yesterday. And that is Sherwood Kids. This is a kids entertainment platform, but it's different than your typical kids entertainment platform because it is low stimulation. So it's very entertaining and challenging for your children, but it's not addictive. It's not trying to get your kids to be attached to a screen nonstop. It wants your kids to be entertained for short periods of time, maybe while you're trying to get dinner done, or maybe you have kind of segmented times of the day when you allow your child to be on a screen. But it's not going to cause those same

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They're about to launch this new platform. So go ahead, get an early, surewoodkids.com slash alley. And when you do, you get 50% off your lifetime membership. Sherwoodkids.com slash alley. Can you tell me what role revoiced plays in all of this? Yeah, so I go into Revoiced quite a bit. To me, Revoice was not one of those Arcus-funded groups, though, you know, some of the people involved in Revoice are connected to those groups. But essentially what Revoiced was was a way of one, and actually I'm glad you asked, because I would say it is a way of leveraging toxic empathy. I don't know where I got that phrase. I heard it somewhere. But it's a way of saying we as, and they will use this term, so I'm going to use their terminology, we as gay Christians or we as transgender Christians have been abused by the church.

We have been so hurt by the people in the church that you need to treat our sin in an especially soft way. And in order to do that, you have to be willing to adopt a particular terminology. You have to adopt. So instead, so you need to use gay Christian or queer treasure. We've heard terminology like that. but also that you need to see how we need to form relationships in a way that's different than heterosexual relationships so that the standards are different. So they will say things like, we're going to have a

spiritual friendship, which is some sort of commitment between two people of the same sex. It's romantic in nature, but they, and they may even cuddle, they say, in some of this material. Not explicitly sexual. Or live together. Yes, but they just don't have sex. And this is side B, right? This is the side B. Yes. And so to me, this is a way of real, in a strange way, it's a little like what you hear from teenagers or how much can I get away with.

Yeah. And we would not counsel our teenagers that this is a good way to go about holy sexuality. Ironically, it's kind of like purity culture that just says, okay, as long as you don't have actual intercourse, everything is fine, which of course purity culture is something that they say is very damaging, but it's not all that different. It's very legalistic. You're towing the line, which is, of course, not the holiness that Jesus calls us to. And that is really where that toxic empathy comes in because it's saying that you have to treat us in a much more soft way because the church has been very damaging to us, which I would dispute. Very frequently, if you push and say, okay, what are the specifics on how the church has been so damaging?

Because when I look back, I don't think, you know, that on any issue has the church handled everything perfectly. But I have never seen willful cruelty. I think those would be really isolated cases if it happened. I've really seen a desire on the church's part to try to figure out, okay, how do we help people who are struggling with this particular sin? So I've never seen just a malicious motivation there. But that's one of the things they used to bring in revoice. And once it came in and there was this, okay, we need to make amends for how badly we, treated the LGBTQ community, it was then to bring in these new definitions and then these,

you know, odd relationships that we're supposed to condone that are clearly unbiblical. And then that has expanded into, okay, now what we're going to do is start to slowly redefine our terms and we're going to bring in these conferences. And when there was pushback, it was surprising to see how many of the pastors were very wary to confront it early on when it wouldn't have gotten so far. And I think that's part of what I trace in the book is that it isn't necessarily that everyone is compromised on this issue in the sense of where they stand doctrinally, but they became compromised on their clarity on the issue. Your book is called Shepherds for Sale, and you are going into evangelicalism, and you

We're basically affirming a lot of our suspicions that there has been a leftward drift. Now, you and I were kind of like in the know, at least, were on acts. And so we've seen statements that people like Andy Stanley or like Russell Moore or David French have said over the years. And so we know, yeah, it's going that direction. But for others, you know, that's not their job, but they're just sitting in their congregations. And maybe especially after Trump became president in 2016. And then again in 2020, they just felt like, hmm, things seem to be shifting. And I'm not sure if it's biblical.

But for some of them, they're like, okay, but these are my most trusted Bible study leaders. This is my trusted pastor. I know he knows the gospel. I know he knows scripture. Who am I to question? And yet, that little alarm keeps on sounding off in their brain. This is basically a book saying, yeah, that alarm is telling you something true. Yeah.

And that was really the purpose of it was to say, okay, yes, I think this has been going on. And for the people who were not very online, but would just hear a little bit of the controversies, you would sometimes see some of these well-known pastors. People like J.D. Greer sort of use their platform to suggest that the critics or the people who were sounding the alarm were malicious or that they had nasty motivations or things like that. And then you look at what was actually said and you go, no, this is concerning. You know, it was concerning when affirming the term Black Lives Matter in a specific way, which was giving a certain amount of support to the Black Lives Matter movement, was called a gospel issue. That was something that was going on. And it was a way of binding consciences to say, you must view this issue this way to be acting faithfully as a Christian. And I think we saw that on so many issues, whether it's been climate change, or how we approach immigration policy or gun control or all of these things that should have been

debatable Christian issues where we could say, okay, let's, we can all look at various scriptures and that might inform our consciences differently. It became an issue of biblical fidelity was you have to agree with how we approach this particular piece of legislation or policy. And at that point, it becomes legalism. Yeah. So that was a lot of what I explore. Yeah. Oh, my. my goodness. And there's so many issues that that's true on. Like for me, there's a couple that first come to mind. 2020 was such a crazy year. But it was such an enlightening year. And like Vody Bakum's fault lines, I think was very illuminating for a lot of people. Another book that kind of confirmed people's suspicions. Like, oh, this person seems squishy. Are they? And then he named

names, like gave us quotes, gave us examples, which I think was really helpful. But I think the whole social racial justice issue, in my mind is almost even more slippery. than the LGBTQ issue. Because I know a lot of pastors, they probably call them, and female Bible study leaders, who probably call themselves conservative Christians, and who would say publicly or not, yeah, a man can't become a woman. Or no, two men or two women getting together is not a biblical marriage. And yet, they will pay homage to Black Lives Matter.

They will say, I even heard riots or the voice of the unheard in 2020, or we're not going to criticize the violence because we have to, at least. least understand why it's happening, talking about white privilege, systemic racism. We need to listen and learn a lot of how to be an anti-racist, white fragility. You just need to be empathetic. This is where the whole inspiration from, you know, for my book came from is the conversations that I was having with these prominent Christian leaders at the time. And I'm asking, like, where's the biblical support for it? And there really wasn't. They're pushing partial justice, social justice that is not biblical justice. In your research, when you're looking at, you know,

some of these shepherds for sale and others who were just like compromising it in some ways, did you find that that subject was kind of like the impetus for a lot of compromise? Yes, very much. I mean, in what was so interesting to see was how all of these issues have sort of mirrored whatever the cultural flashpoint is. So when in 2020, and 2019, that DEI was a really important issue to corporate America. Suddenly it was coming into the church. We had the president of the Southern Baptist Convention saying, all of my committee appointments now are going to be 30% women or minorities.

So that is DEI. And it exactly mirrored what you were seeing from Nike or Hewlett-Packard. And that was so bizarre to see the exact same sort of statements coming out of the church that could come out of any Fortune 500. company. And a lot of what I go into also is how it is impacting people in the churches. Some of the stories that I tell were so heartbreaking of Bible study groups that use that be the bridge curriculum. And they were told you had church members who were told if you were a white church member for the first six months of this Bible study, you are not to talk. You're just to sit and listen.

I chronicle one woman who's a good friend now and she was telling me sweet woman. You know, not somebody who would have questioned her pastors. She's not like us. She's not online. She's not paying attention. So, you know, when her pastors told her, we're going to have segregated Bible studies because our minority church members need their own place to lament, she went, okay, I'll go along with that. And she really did try to do the work of dealing with her white privilege and making amends for that. And it was so divisive in damaging in her church. And those are the kind of stories that, you know, we see the little funny viral clips of, you know, Matt Chandler or someone doing his white privilege video. But we don't see the stories of how this is impacting ordinary people in the pews. Yeah. Yeah.

So. Yes. Yes. It really did damage relationships. I remember everyone was pushing B the bridge. And, you know, I thought at the time, like, okay, we obviously do need a way to talk about what's going on in 2020. Like, there's a lot of things. misunderstanding misrepresentation. And I thought maybe be the bridge is the solution to that.

Maybe it is a way for me to come together with someone like Jackie Hill Perry and like really try to understand and parse things out. And then I looked at the Facebook group and the rules of the Facebook group. They're out there, or they're probably not anymore, but very explicit about, okay, white women and white people in this group, here's what you can do. And here's what you cannot do. Do not correct person of color. Do not try to rebut them. Don't try to say that they're wrong. Don't compare your lived experience with their lived experience. If you are frustrated, you need to give the POC space to cuss or wail, yell at you. If you need to take a break, step away and come back. So you, white person, you have to exercise the fruit of the spirit of self-control. But

these black women do not. And that, again, was my whole big problem with this, is that over and over again, whether they meant to or not, these pastors are preaching two different gospels. Yeah. A gospel of chastisement to white people and a gospel of unconditional understanding of partiality and resentment and anger toward black people, really burdening both sides with a burden that Jesus doesn't give us, rather than saying, hey, like, here's impartial justice. And, oh, by the way, the statistics in history don't bear out the narratives that you're hearing about systemic racism and policing. I saw very few pastors willing to stand up and do that.

Yeah. And the big issue to me, again, was just the tying that to being biblically faithful. I mean, some of these issues of, okay, what is the policing statistics show that you were not allowed to bring those things up because that was not for. following the way of Jesus. Yeah. I mean, more than racist. It was, you're now not a faithful Christian.

You're an unloving, unchristian Christian. Yeah. So, you know, those were the issues. And it's not the only issue that you have seen it on, though that one is really glaring. And it has been since 2020. But those same sorts of leverage points were used, obviously, during the pandemic, to say you must get this vaccine to show that you love your neighbor. and it's been done on issues where you do see the left-wing funding coming in, and it's a little more explicit buying of shepherds on issues like climate change and how Christians have to think about immigration policy.

Yes. Let's talk about COVID for a little bit. Let's talk about Francis Collins. Yes. And who really over the years has been seen as our representative, our evangelical representative in science. Yay. We have a creationist. We have a. We have a. solid Christian who was in the secular world, the light and the darkness. How has his representation of Christianity worked out for us since COVID? And really before that. Right. And I think that was so much of it. That for me was the light, bold moment. That was kind of the story that put me on the map. I didn't really set out to write about these evangelical issues. I had worked for an evangelical magazine for many, many years, one for which you are an opinion contributor, World Magazine. And just experience some of this going on in the church, in my workplace, with some co-workers who viewed these issues in some of the ways that you and I just discussed on the other side. And then when COVID

happened, it was sort of like all of the pretences that we were kind of all on the same page just broke down. And part of that was the elevation of Francis Collins. And I, knowing what I did as a journalist about his record was so shocked to see how so many of these church leaders who really up to that point, I thought, I may disagree, but I have a lot of respect. I trust them. I would certainly not question the motivations of what they're saying to me until the Francis Colin issue. And that was so glaring. So for those who don't know, he was the National Institutes of Health Director. I think he is still one on Biden's top science advisors. He was Anthony Fauci's boss.

And he was presented as someone who is a really strong, faithful Christian brother. And then he looked at his record. And he was very much a proponent of funding research on aborted baby tissue, on aborted fetal remains. He fought for that when the Trump administration was actually trying to shut a lot of that down. He went on record saying, we argued for it. He also did things like fund awful chimeric experiments at the University of Pittsburgh, things like grafting infant scalps onto lab rats. And we have to keep in mind that that kind of demand. Those images, I remember those images are stuck in my heart and mind. And I didn't know at the time that Francis Collins professing Christian was helping push those experiments. I mean, you literally saw just to give people a picture because they're experimenting on these abhorans. Able. Bordid babies taking the scalps, putting them on rats to do whatever experiment they need. And you literally saw these rats with like human baby hair on them from a human who should

have been alive. And who knows what incentive structure is there with the local plan parenthood? What profit incentive is there to make sure that those aborted babies are used for experimentation? We don't know. I don't think. We saw a little bit of it from David Delidon's leaked videos that have been suppressed, but we saw Planned Parenthood

staffers and doctors saying that, well, we want to try to grab here and get, you know, this organ because this organ fetches a lot of money and we want to try to get this organ because there's a high demand for it. So we try not to damage that when we're performing the abortion. So yes, we do know that there is

an incentive structure for this. And Francis Collins was a part of that. Right. And again, I just want to say it's not like it was something that was just going on under his watch at the National Institutes of Health. He explicitly said, I am arguing for this, that I think that this is a moral position that we can take to utilize these parts. But it goes a lot further than that. I also knew that Francis Collins had declared himself an LGBTQ ally and initiated a program. Yes. I forgot about this. Yes. And so he initiated this. He initiated

this program that it funded transgender research on children, including giving them cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, mastectomies to girls as young as 12. And it also included a study that traced the homosexual activity of teenage boys and didn't inform their parents. Yes. And so this was not just something that happened under Francis Collins' watch. This was something that he spearheaded and highlighted as one of his great accomplishments as director of the NIH. None of this information was provided when Christianity Today and the Billy Graham Center and Tim Keller and Rick Warren and so many of these other trusted voices were bringing Francis Collins on and literally saying, this is a man you can trust. This is a Christian brother. And all of this

should have been disqualifying to use him in that kind of. capacity. Maybe if you wanted to have him as a science expert. And then one more thing is that he used these platforms to lie about what was going on during the pandemic. He claimed that the virus was definitely nature made, that it was a conspiracy theory to suggest that it might have leaked out of a lab. And of course, now we know he knew at the time that there was a very good chance that it leaked out of a lab. And we still don't know the full extent of what he was covering up. with that lie. Like we know, I guess we know what it was covering up, but we don't know everything about why, about why he was covering up the true source. I mean, we know about the gain of function

funding and the questions about were laws broken there. And so that's ongoing investigation. Exactly. But it is a terrible thing to look at our Christian platforms, some of whom I would go, okay, maybe they didn't know the extent of some of his record. Yeah. But then there are other people who I did a report and someone gave me the leaked audio from a private meeting of Francis Collins, Russell Moore and some students at the University of Chicago. And Russell Moore was very clear that he did know Francis Collins' record and that he just felt that one could have a difference of opinion on these issues and still be a faithful Christian. Okay, just to verify what you're saying, This is from Francis Collins celebrating in 2021.

This is his announcement as the director of the NIH celebrating Pride Month. And so he says, I am proud to announce that the NIH recently funded a national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine consensus study to review current measures and methodological issues related to measuring sex as a non-binary construct, gender identity, and sexual orientation. and surveys and research studies, blah, blah, blah, just a bunch of scientific jargon. And it's a long letter basically saying that we need to support research and affirmation of gender as this kind of social construct of something that is very fluid.

And there are many different instances in his tenure of him supporting this very radical idea of the non-biological real reality basically of male and female. I mean, not only is that a Genesis one issue as a Christian. I mean, that's basic biology. It's a little discrediting scientifically as well. Right. I mean, that's not just a shepherd for sale. Like, that's a scientist for sale. Right. Which is really scary when you think about all the implications of that. All right. Second sponsor for the day is Focus on the Family. Their podcast Focus on the Family with Jim Daly is just awesome. Every episode of this

Christian podcast is designed to help you, parents, confidently guide your loved ones through the unique challenges that we face today with the truths of God's Word. And I've met Jim Daly before. He is just awesome. And he is such a comforting way of articulating the gospel in a way that is relevant for our everyday challenges. You're going to be so encouraged by this podcast. I've had him on this show before too, just because I love his insight so much. So go to Focus on the Family with Jimdaily.com. You can check out all the places you can listen. That's Focus on the Family with Jimdaily.com. All right, you mentioned a couple other things. You mentioned immigration. When I think leftward immigration, which was huge

during the Trump administration with his policies, I think of the ERLC and Russell Moore. So tell us how evangelicals, at least that part of evangelicals, have kind of like moved on immigration, how, why? So, um, Part of what I trace in my book, and I use this example because everyone knows George Soros, but there are plenty of other billionaires in these books in these instances that you don't know their names and you wouldn't recognize them, but he would be one. So his foundation started funding a secular left immigration NGO called the National Immigration Forum. And around 2013, 2015, they realized that they needed to move the east.

evangelical vote on this particular issue if they wanted to get some of these immigration reform policies, what I would call very lax border policies across the finish line, because for those who are not aware, evangelicals are roughly 30% of the electorate. You have even the secular left media calling them America's most powerful voting block. They are. So they don't always win, but they are certainly incredibly influential at the ballot box. So they started to look around and say, okay, what do we do to move that constituency? And what they came up with was they partnered with the National Association of Evangelicals and some people from sojourners and other groups. And they launched this front group, I would say, sort of a shell group that is called the

Evangelical Immigration Table. And its purpose to be very clear is not to do things like spread the gospel to illegal immigrants. It's not to feed and close. people regardless of how they got there because I think that's something all Christians could agree with. It's specifically policy focused. So at that point, groups like the ERLC, as you mentioned, and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities has been heavily involved. That includes 185 Christian schools, including Azusa, Biola. So they all became involved with this group that is under the umbrella of a secular left immigration NGO that is taking funding from people like George Soros in this program that was specifically designed to target conservative voters, specifically

evangelicals. And what they did was bring in pastors that they, you know, some of the people that they hired were pastors that they called regional mobilizers. And the regional mobilizers were then to set up meetings with local legislators, your state lawmakers, your national representation. And the idea was to convince them that evangelicals want you to back at that time around 2013, it was the gang of eight bill, if you remember that. And that would have legalized 11 million illegal immigrants for a pretty low bar that the fine was going to be up to $1,000. Yeah. So then they further, more recently have, you know, released open letters. They asked Biden to end the Trump administration's remain in Mexico policy. Which is insane. That's such, that's like such a low bar. I mean,

that's the most common sense policy. That you should have to see if you can get residency in some other nation before you necessarily come to the United States. Right. Because if you're seeking asylum, you have to go to the closest safe, safe country, which is not. not America, by the way, for most of these people. So that has been the push. And then more recently, I mean, just a few months ago, they were heavily backing the Lankford bill. And all of this in the name of evangelicals.

And what we saw pretty quickly was that, oh, actually evangelicals did not like that bill. Yeah. So which was why it failed. And in fact, Mitch McConnell didn't even bring it to a vote. So. Oh, my goodness. You know, that's so strange. the only thing that I really can think about when it comes to that.

Of course, there's people who have been manipulated into believing that that is, that that's the righteous position to take, that toxic empathy. But then, I mean, I've got to think that there are the explicitly bad progressive actors who are, you know, taking funding from people like Dorsoroos, like you said, and who really just think that open borders, that chaos and the demise of Western civilization is a good thing. I've got to think that some of those people exist in these institutions to push something as crazy as basically borderlessness. Well, and to push it in a way that is so spiritually manipulative. So what you also saw was them developing this Bible study curriculum called I Was a Stranger. So what they do is they take something that is a command for Christians to welcome people, to be loving, to be hospitable, to be charitable.

And they're saying this has to be a national policy for your nation, which at that point, You are now hurting your citizens. So how are you being loving to those neighbors? And this is an issue that I go, I do think this is something that I am perfectly willing to say we can all be believers and have this debate. But we're not having this debate based on policy and based on the impact on our legislation, on our citizenry. We're having these debates through that kind of legalistic spiritual manipulation suggesting you're not loving your neighbor. You're not welcoming strangers if you're not welcoming strangers. not supporting these policies. You know what? That's such a good point that it's really those on the

progressive side that are doing that that make something like immigration, a gospel issue or a pro-life issue. They expand the definition of pro-life so much to just mean like the death penalty policing immigration, but somehow not abortion, somehow not getting rid of abortion legally. And they really do make it a, well, you don't follow Jesus who was a refugee, a brown Palestinian. Which is not true. He wasn't a refugee. Yes. It's totally. manipulation and misconstruing of scripture. And it's interesting, too, this dynamic, because these are the very people that would say that you and I, because we allow the Bible to inform what we think about abortion or marriage or sexuality, for example, some of them might call that

Christian nationalism. They might say that that is theocracy. And yet when they use a verse from the Old Testament about welcoming the foreigner, completely decontextualizing it, ignoring that Israel had very strict regulations and high bar for, for, for, you know, for, you know, and so. foreigners coming in and they had to assimilate and follow the law, that's not Christian nationalism. So they can misconstrue scripture and say, well, this scripture should be national policy. And it means open borders. But if we say, well, you know, God tells us that murder is wrong. So I'm against abortion and legal abortion. That scary Christian nationalism. It's interesting how that works. It is funny, isn't it? And what's interesting to me is to see even how some people who

don't profess to be Christians could not be the furthest thing from Christians. Someone like Gavin Newsom who picks up on this. You saw him putting up billboards saying if you're in Texas, come to California, get an abortion because here we love our neighbors, which was an appalling abuse of scripture. And you just see that it became something that even people who have no connection to these evangelical groups or to even evangelical or Christian understanding, figure, out, oh, here's how you wield this manipulative tool. All right.

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How have we seen that? Because it's not really something that I see as much of, at least among like, center-right evangelicals. And so tell me how you've seen that kind of seep into the church. Yeah, it's kind of retreated for a little bit. It was really big in the early to mid-2000s. And then it retreated because I think it was very clear that most of the rank and file weren't really buying into that issue. And now it's, it's coming back. So part of what happened is very similar to what I just described with immigration. There was a large ecumenical group that, I'm struggling to remember the acronym, but it was an ecumenical of Jewish, Catholic, mainline,

Christians, people of other religious faiths, who were very much on the political left, who were working to get a cap and trade policy, fracking, limited, all of those kind of things. But again, they were running into that firewall of evangelicals. So the question became, how do we get around them? And what was really great for the book is one of these left-wing, second-wing. think tanks actually published a report on here's why they failed before in the early 2000s, and here's what we need to do going forward. And it was this great sort of autopsy that laid out all of this information about how they went about trying to infiltrate churches and ministries.

And it was a gold mine for me to go through this report. But essentially what you had is a lot of large organizations like the Clinton Foundation, like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, all very left wing, all very supportive of abortion as a measure of population control. And so what they did was they started this group called the Evangelical Environmental Network. And it quickly recruited people like Christianity today. Again, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities got on board. The National Association of Evangelicals also got on board. they met in kind of early 2000s when it started to come back and said,

we are making a covenant to help see this cap and trade policy passed, to make a statement and get this legislation passed. And so this group is, again, very much one of these shell groups. And what you have seen is their influence go out and start to bring this into what we trust as conservative seminaries from conservative voices. I spend a lot of time going into how Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Raleigh has brought in climate change activist speakers. The same people that you see with Leonardo DiCaprio and Obama, they are coming in to speak at that seminary, arguing that Christians need to take up the issue of climate change

activism under the moniker of creation care. And again, it's a lot of, was being peddled at that school as a gospel issue. To be faithful to the gospel, we have to take up the issue of climate care. And what's been interesting and a little bit of the controversy with my book is some people have been, I think, deliberately literal saying, well, anyone you mentioned, you're saying is for sale. And some of those early people were very much for sale. But I think you can also see the influence and the success of those groups as we have seen other lesser known pastors, but who are still influential, a younger pastor who is a theology YouTuber, Gavin Ortland. I spent some time dissecting a video where he said Christians really need to take up this issue of

climate change, that it is important for us, for our voice to be heard on this issue. And here's why I think it needs to be something that we take up. And, you know, once again, I would just say this is an issue that we can debate and disagree scientifically, and there's a lot of reason to have a lot of skepticism, the problem is when we say because of creation care, Christians need to take up this issue. Yeah, I just saw, we were just talking about a children's Bible yesterday called Peace Table Storybook Bible, and one of the pages on there was like, how do we basically reconcile with creation? And so basically casting humans as the exploiters of creation while we use less water, we don't drive our cars. This is a

like a kid's Bible. So it starts really young. But I want to talk about Gavin Orland because I want to talk about some of the critiques that you've gotten and you've dealt with over the past few days. Because he made a video that responded to what you wrote about him in your book. And I watched the video and basically he accuses you of slander. I'm not sure if he uses that exact word, but he says that you misrepresented him, worse than he's ever been misrepresented. He says that you accused him of making this a gospel issue. And he says he does not make it a gospel issue.

He said it's fine to disagree, but we just need to talk about climate change. So how would you respond to what Gavin said? Well, you know, when I watched that video, I was surprised to see that so many of the things I said as general summary at the end of the chapter that we're not specifically about him, that were in fact about a speaker at Southeastern Seminary who directly said that to be faithful to the

gospel, we need to take up the issue of creation care, which means taking up the issue of climate change. And it came in the very last paragraph. It was clearly not referring to him. And he was saying, well, she says, I do this. And it wasn't about him. And he said, well, she said, I'm a shepherd for sale. And I mean, I think, I think a little bit that this is a tactic to be deliberately overlooking. literal to say every single person in this she is saying is bought by George Soros. And that's not what you're saying. No, not at all. And in fact, in the very first introduction chapter, I say that is not what we're talking about. Some people may be bought in the sense that they're looking for media adulation. And I have some figures like that. And some people are simply influenced by the

cultural around them. And that was part of what I was illustrating was that these left-wing foundations have been promoting climate change in churches, in seminaries, and that has an impact on how we talk about it within the church, and it made it a priority. And you don't always know how you're being influenced sometimes by some of this dark money that's coming in. So that was an illustration of this is how some of that impact is happening, that people much, much further down who are just in these environments of these seminaries are then, they are taking up the charge just as those foundations as they wrote about in that report wanted. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So what is your message? What is your message for people who are listening to this, watching this? And they're like, oh my goodness, I want to know if the people

who are influencing me, the people in my life, in my church, if they're headed this direction. And they don't want to be in a constant state of like anxiety or paranoia about that. They just want to be discerning and they want to be peaceful about it and they want to follow what scripture says to as far as it depends on us be at peace with everyone. That doesn't mean, though, that we don't call people out when they are not telling the truth or when they have been bought and paid for. But at the same time, we have to be kind about it. We have to go about it the right way. So like, what is your message for people who want to be as discerning about this stuff as you have been? Well, I think that's a big part of it is that the anger.

about bringing it up, we have to sort of confront that. That look, a lot of these things have flourished because we didn't talk about it openly. And there was this 11th commandment where to mention it at all is somehow unloving. And that allowed a lot of things to fester for a long time so that now that we are talking about it, you get that kind of pushback that's very angry and defensive. And I think just because someone brings it up and says, hey, I think this is a problem, it doesn't mean you're not, you're saying you're not a Christian or you're not a believer. But it is saying, look, we have a problem with legalism. It didn't mean that Peter wasn't a Christian when Paul confronted him and said,

you are bringing, adding things to the gospel that are not a part of it and that this needs to be addressed. And so, you know, for those who are kind of sitting on the sidelines going, well, how do we deal with it? I think one is don't be afraid to have those uncomfortable conversations with your pastors, with your ministry leaders, with your seminary administrators when you see it happening. And I think you can do that respectfully and graciously, but we have to acknowledge when it's being done in a way that it is politicizing the gospel. And then I hate to say this, but I do think we live in an era where you have to do your homework on all of this curriculum and all of the people that you're listening to.

And when those little alarm bells go off, you know, don't be suspicious. don't have a spirit of suspicion, but you do need to sort of follow them because that is the Boreen way and check the scriptures, check your Bible and see, is there justification for what I'm feeling? Or do I need to consider what this person is bringing up regarding some issue on immigration or climate change? I think that's the answer is that we just, we go back to the Borean model. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good point, is that, you know, we're not asking Megan's not asking, hey, compare what your pastor is saying to what. Megan says or what Megan wrote or what I say or anything. I don't care at all if you read my book or

listen to my podcast. I want you to compare what your pastor is saying to the word of God. And that's really that's really important too. That's really all we're asking. And a lot of these issues, as you said, even though that word nuanced is so overused, it's used as an excuse to be confused sometimes. Some of these issues are. It's not necessarily a black and white. And that's kind of the point. Now, some of them are abortion, gender, marriage. Those are black and white because they're Genesis 1 issues, but immigration policy, even somewhat gun policy. And your point is that these cannot, from the progressive side or either side, but in this case, the progressive side, become salvation issues for these people that you're beating over your congregation's heads with. And if they're flip-flopping the issues, if suddenly, you know, something that scripture is crystal clear on like homosexuality, like transgenderism, if that's being labeled a political issue where these other things that I'm talking about, the debatable things like immigration and climate change, those are becoming the gospel issues. And I think you should know you have a problem at your church. Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to say, like, those things are debatable to a certain extent. I think it's clear, for example, that like borders were God's idea.

but when it comes to the nitty-gritty of immigration policy, I don't think any of us has all the answers. And so you're absolutely right. Well, thank you so much. And thanks for taking the hits because it's not easy calling prominent people out. And I don't like to say calling out because I know that's not what you're trying to do. You're just trying to say, hey, this is going on. And if I can say, I would say, read the book.

You know, all these little viral things and little sort of social media. Yeah, just check it out for yourself and see if you think that it is. strident in tone or unfair. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I encourage you to do that. You can get Shepherds for sale wherever books are sold and it's climbing the charts on Amazon. I know we don't love what Amazon supports, but if there is any way to kind of like fight back against the craziness of Amazon, it's to buy a Christian book like this. Shepherds for sale. Megan, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's so fun to be in your studio. Yes, thank you. And