The Daily Signal - Far-Left Donors Seek to Buy Christian the Evangelical Vote, Author Megan Basham Says

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Left-wing groups donate to organizations considered Christian in order to control the Evangelical vote, according to Megan Basham, culture reporter for the Daily Wire and author of “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda,” which released Tuesday. Basham discussed her new book, which delves into the plans of far-left donor groups to infiltrate Evangelical denominations, publications, organizations, and churches. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at gotransit.com slash tickets. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell, and this is the Daily Signal interview edition for Wednesday, July 31st. I'm sitting down with Megan Basham about her new book, Shepherds for Sale, how evangelical

leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. But before we get to my interview with Megan Basham, let me tell you about another great Daily Signal podcast called Problematic Women, where every Thursday morning, Kristen Eichimer, Lauren Evans, and Virginia Allen, join other conservative women to break down big issues and news. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what's going on with Congress, problematic women has you covered. They sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are particularly interest to conservative leaning, that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. Now here's my interview with Megan Basham.

I'm sitting down with Megan Basham, cultural reporter for the Daily Wire, an author of Shepherds for Sale, how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. You have a new book called Shepherds for Sale.

Could you tell us a little bit about the thesis of your book and what inspired you to write it? Yeah, you know, the thesis is pretty well contained in that subtitle. It's about how left-wing billionaires and influencers, who are themselves not Christian, are using their money and power to influence Christian ministers, leaders, institutions in order to try to move rank and file evangelicals to support progressive policies. In Galatians 110, the Apostle Paul says, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God,

or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. So your book tracks evangelical leaders from the past, of individual churches to the heads of major denominations, becoming more concerned with pleasing man than God. So besides human nature, what has moved evangelical leaders away from valuing scripture to seemingly valuing human approval? Yeah, that fearing man is a big thing. But it also helps when you have some of these left-wing billionaires funding foundations that are in turn funding what you might call evangelical front groups. So they have names like the evangelical

Immigration Table or the Evangelical Environmental Network. And in fact, they take a ton of their funding from these non-Christian groups and they then turn around and try to get Christians to support things like cap and trade legislation to limit the use of fossil fuels or they try to get evangelicals to sign on to lax border policies. Like, for example, the evangelical immigration table, which is funded by a number of left-wing actors and its money is being funneled through a secular group that is funded by George Soros, well, they in turn then have tried to get evangelicals to support things like the end of the Remain in Mexico policy, which they successfully lobbied Biden to end. And we can see what that

has done to the chaos at the border, the kind of crime that we're seeing. So, you know, it's not just that natural influence of liberal drift, it also comes from some very deliberately orchestrated acts. Why have Christians become soft on the sanctity of life of the unborn, homosexuality, and gender to our issues which the Bible is extremely clear on? Well, I think it's pretty obvious that those are culturally unpopular issues. It puts us out of the, out of step with so much of our popular culture, whether it's Hollywood or academia or corporate culture. And so people don't like to stand against that kind of power. And it makes them feel embarrassed. It makes them feel like they're going to perhaps lose out on opportunities if they speak boldly on that. And I think we

will. But the reality is that that is what Christianity calls us to do. It calls us to pick up across and to sometimes bear some consequences for doing what's right. What do these left-wing groups infiltrating Christian organizations have to gain? And what does evangelicalism have to lose? Well, you know, what they have to gain is the ability to control the 30% of the population that identifies as evangelicals. So we have to look at the fact that this is rightly called America's most powerful voting block. And they overwhelmingly vote for those issues that you just brought up, things like protecting the unborn, the sanctity of marriage, the biblical definitions of gender, man and woman, he created them. And so for very obvious reasons, if you are

secular progressive, you want to find a way to muddy the waters for evangelicals on those issues. And that's very much what they're trying to do. So I expect that we can see that kind of thing to continue because even if they can't co-opt that evangelical vote and support, if these left-wing foundations and influencers are able to just suppress that vote, they will no longer have really any serious opposition to their agenda. You talk in your book about media outlets that are considered Christian using scripture to persuade readers to embrace left-wing ideas on illegal immigration, homosexuality, race, and even abortion. What caused news outlets with words like Christian and gospel in their names to exchange the truths of scripture for cultural trends?

Well, you know, I think it's really a three-pronged thing. So one, you have that natural drift that scripture warns about and that we have seen in things like conquest law. You know, people joke that it is an ironclad law that any institution that is not self-consciously conservative, and that includes theologically and doctrinally conservative, will eventually drift left. And I think we've seen that. But what else we've seen with these Christian publications is that they will have new staffers come in, who are themselves very left-wing. And so they try to transform these institutions. To give you one example, Christianity Today, which is evangelicalism's flagship magazine, or at least it's known as that, founded in 1953 by Billy Graham, it now has a lot of Democrat staffers between 2015 and 22.

Its staff and board made 74 political donations. Every single one went to Democrats, including hard left candidates like Elizabeth Warren. And that included the editorial staff. So the people overseeing the political news and the legislative news, they also, in violation of journalistic ethics, were giving money to Democrats. Is there any hope for outlets like that going forward? You know, I think Christianity today will be really tough. They're pretty far gone. We can pray, we can hope.

And hopefully maybe public pressure of their subscribers might convince them that they need to moderate the direction that they're going. But I think it's much more likely that what we're going to see is new publications arising to replace them. your book includes a deep dive into the left-wing infiltration of the Southern Baptist Convention. And just last week, we found out that the head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Brent Leatherwood, had been removed only to find out shortly after that he was not, in fact, going anywhere. Leatherwood seems like a good example of some of the bad shepherds that you talk about in your book. Could you describe what happened last week with him and what the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission's response to it reveals about what's going on? Well, you know, so there's a lot of conflicting stories coming out of the ERLC about what exactly happened.

The story they're going with right now is that their board chair just went rogue all of a sudden after having displayed no such tendencies before and unilaterally and with no backing decided to fire Leatherwood. I had spoken to a couple of sources within the ERLC who told me different. after Leatherwood was fired, his predecessor who handpicked him when he left, Russell Moore, who is now the editor-in-chief at Christianity today, stirred up quite a ruckus. He was outraged on social media, and that outrage was then boosted by any number of secular media figures at the New York Times, at CNN, at Atlantic, Politico, and a number of other outlets. And the very next day, the ERLC said, no, no, no, no, he did that totally unilitary laterally, the board chair, Brent Leatherwood was not fired. And so he was essentially reinstated.

The board chair was removed. So they say there was no outward pressure, but we do know this. We know that the ERLC is extremely unpopular among Southern Baptist, which is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. in the ERLC is its public voice, its policy lobbying arm. And when you look at the fact that they are supporting issues like gun control, lax border policies, and some other issues that are not uniformly popular among Southern Baptists, it's not really that surprising that they've become so controversial because they're doing things in Southern Baptist's name that a consensus of Southern Baptist don't necessarily agree with. What are some of those things that they've been doing that are opposed to widespread Southern

Baptist support? Well, I just mentioned gun control. So after the Nashville shooting, Brent Leatherwood used that as an opportunity to strenuously argue for red flag laws in Tennessee. And at the same time, he has been out arguing to suppress the transgender shooters manifesto. So a lot of people feel that the public has a right to that information as we've had it in many other similar incidents. And for some reason, he's been working very hard to make sure that that information does not get out. He's also involved with one of those front groups that I just told you about the evangelical immigration table, which was founded and is still under the umbrella of a Soros-backed secular

immigration NGO. So that's also very unpopular. You know, there's been a number of issues like that. He took a stance against an abortion bill. I think it was in Alabama or Arkansas. I can't remember. It was a state that starts on an A. But it was a big.

bill that would have started to recognize that mothers should perhaps face some legal penalty, not clear if that is a fine or something like that that we see in other countries like the UK if they get abortions after a certain point of gestation. But it's a reasonable debate to have. And many, many Southern Baptists who identify as abolitionists feel like they want to have that debate. Instead, the ERLC, rather than staying out of that debate, when a bill was put forward in Alabama, they weighed in to help stop that bill from going forward. So it was a pro-life bill, and they used their influence to stop it. If Christians listening to you today discover that their churches or their denominations might be led by bad shepherds,

should they leave those churches and find a more scripturally sound one or stay at their church and try to reform it? Well, you know, that depends on a number of factors. one, you have to confirm that you are in fact dealing with a bad shepherd and maybe not a confused or misguided or misled shepherd because I do think that happens. You know, friendship networks are strong. So I think we always start by trying to reach out and talk and express our concerns respectfully. And so always begin there. And if you think, for example, as I look at the Southern Baptist Convention, a lot of these seminaries are very important. I would counsel people don't abandon the SBC instead. Yes, we should fight for those institutions.

They're meaningful. They're important to the culture. Those seminaries educate a plurality of Protestant pastors in all denominations. So I think it's important to fight for them. But eventually, if it does look like your particular institution, whether it's a church or a ministry, is gone. And I can't say for you what would make it clear that it's at that stage. At that point, yeah, I think it's important to probably leave and found new sound institutions. What can Christians who don't see left-wing infiltration of their own churches do to push back against anti-Christian influences in evangelicalism as a whole? Well, one, I would say, you know, let's start with being bold about where scripture does speak

on those issues of life, on those issues of sexuality, gender, and marriage. And at the same time, let's start calling out those who are taking very debatable issues that I think we can have good faith Christian disagreement on things like what should our gun control policies be or what level of responsibility does humankind have for the weather. So we can debate those things. The issue is when those are legalistically being pushed as something that Christians must support in order to be obedient to Christ. And at that point, I think we have to do what the Apostle Paul did with the Apostle Peter when he was pushing legalism. We have to call it what it is and we have do oppose it to their faces. What doctrinal disagreements can be accepted as different interpretations

of scripture by different churches and what disqualifies a religious body from being called an Orthodox Christian church at all? You know, it would depend to me on what some of these specific issues are. I think, and I actually agree with some of those, I criticize in my book like Tim Keller, that this question of sexuality and gender is such an intrinsic issue to the creative order that if you are unclear on that, you are in such error that there should not be partnership with groups like that. On the other hand, if you simply want to debate, well, what should our border policy be? That's not something that's heretical. But if you are using that to say other Christians are not following Christ because they don't happen to agree with you on a debatable issue,

then I think we have something very serious. And we see that in scripture where the Judaizers were insisting that the Gentile Christians had to follow a certain way of life that scripture no longer required. It was something that each person should have been able to pursue within their own conscience. This year, we saw the Republican Party's position on marriage and abortion move further from the Christian positions. Why do you think this is happening and do you expect it to get worse or better in the future? I mean, I think it's happening because we have failed to present a holistic moral message about the cause of life. And I think that you have seen, even the pro-life movement in some degree was not prepared to fight this on a hearts and minds

basis. And it was more being fought in the court of law so that when the Dobbs decision came down and Roe was overturned, I think there was a little bit of a lack of preparation. And look, I'll hop to that too. I think we are all just sort of stunned that it happened. And so I think that's an issue that as the years go forward. We're going to see the pro-life movement regroup. We're going to see it start making a strong cultural argument. We absolutely shouldn't back down. And look, part of this has been making the argument to the GOP, too, that we are not going to go quietly and we're not going to be cut out of this constituency. And it's not the first time we've been here. The pro-life movement wasn't particularly popular before Reagan either. So we just start again and we keep fighting

to be recognized. That's politics. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been a really interesting conversation. Thanks so much, Elizabeth. Thank you for tuning in to my conversation with Megan Basham. Join us later today at 5 p.m. For Top News, where we break down the headlines of the day. And soon in tomorrow morning for our problematic women edition. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Louis and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, Mary Margaret O'Ollahan, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geine, John Pop, and Joseph von Spakovsky.

To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.