The Eric Metaxas Show - Megan Basham (Encore)

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Megan Basham shares her new book: Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. https://www.amazon.com/Shepherds-Sale-Evangelical-Leaders-Leftist/dp/0063413442

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Metaxus show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Do you ever hear the expression, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, when Eric Metaxus was little, he had his own lemonade stand, and he sold so much lemonade, he became rich beyond his wildest dreams. Now he's able to do whatever he wants. And he's now the host of a big time radio show. Welcome the guy who's oh so lemony sweet, Eric Ma, Texas.

Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. Chris Hyams. Welcome. Thank you. As well. We have two important guests today. Well, we have two great guests.

We have one important guest. The important guest is, is Megan Basham because her book, Shepherds for Sale, we talked about it yesterday. Unfortunately, it's very, very important. So we're going to be talking to her in hour one today, continuing my conversation with her from yesterday. There's a tremendous division in the evangelical church. It is horrifying to watch many in the evangelical church go left in the way that the mainline Protestant churches went left the way everybody is going left. And she has the details in her book. I was reading it this morning, and I got to tell you,

we need to be aware of who is holding firm, who is standing firm, and who is not. Rick Warren is not. That's upsetting to me. Tim Keller was not. Now, this doesn't mean on every issue, but on these real hot button issues, like, what do you do if you're a same sex-attracted person? Tim Keller, much more folks like Saddleback at Rick Warren's Church, and obviously Andy Stanley, they're leading thousands of pastors in the wrong direction. It's very disturbing. I understand to some extent where they're coming from. I don't think these are evil people, but they're doing tremendous harm. And if you go to one of these churches, you better get out.

It's bad. It's bad. In any event, I wrote a book, Letter to the American Church, and a sequel, Religinalist Christianity. As I'm reading Megan Basham's book, I'm thinking, I want everybody who listens to this program to read my book, religionless Christianity. I haven't talked about it as much as I usually talk about my books when they're launched because it's kind of a complicated time in my life. But I want to say that I write in religionless Christianity about a lot of the things that we're seeing, a lot of the things that Megan Basham writes about in her journalistic way. I'm kind of doing analysis on it in my book,

religionless Christianity, that there is a false world religion that is being pushed right now. And of course, it's the spirit of the age. So it's pro gay, pro trans, pro queer, pro anything that's not biblical. And so who are the enemies of this false world religion that has crept into evangelical churches? Who are the enemies? The enemy is Bible-believing Christians, people who affirm the traditional faith, the historic faith that's been handed down by the saints for which people have died. So I want to recommend that you read my book, Religionless Christianity. Again, it's the sequel to Letter to the American Church. I also want to say, if you have not yet seen the film Letter to the American Church, just go to the website, letter to the American Church. come and you can see how to see the film right there. You can watch it yourself or you can get your

church to do a screening. You can get a Bible study to do a screening. Unfortunately, this stuff is very important because the secular left has infiltrated the church, which is just horrifying. It's crazy. But we need to see what's going on and serve God in the midst of it. So I want to be real clear. In hour one today, I'm talking to Megan Basham, continuing our very, very important conversation. And it really is. I ask you to take this stuff seriously, to share these videos. If you're on my email list, Eric Mataxis.com, if you go to the website, and most of you have, I assume, but go to the website, sign up for the newsletter. And you'll see that we send out these videos because a lot of people have no idea what is going on. A lot of people in churches have no

idea what's going on. And that's how evil is winning because a lot of people just don't know. Don't want to forget that we have been, it's just a couple of days that we've been into it, but we've launched our summer campaign with food for the poor. These folks are heroes. They are helping children and families that are literally star. starving that do not have access to clean drinking water. These are the poorest of the poor. So thanks to folks like you out there who are always generous when we ask, food for the poor is able to help them, get them nutritious food, access to clean drinking water. So we're asking you to go to metaxis talk.com. And I know these action points, you know, maybe you're driving, you're

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noblegoldinvestments.com. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I get to talk in this hour with Megan Basham, who has a brand new book out called Shepherds for Sale, how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. And Megan, I just want to say, you know, this is heartbreaking stuff, really. When you find out that public Christians like Francis Collins or Russell Moore or any of the other names that you mentioned here, that they've really shifted so dramatically that you have to say, wait a minute, this is not, these aren't small differences.

I mean, they seem to have gone full on secular left. but they've persuaded themselves that they're somehow still Christian. And it really, it doesn't really make any sense, but at least we have to kind of call them on it. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, in some of these cases, it isn't even so much the policies that they're arguing for, which I would say Christians can in good faith debate.

If you want to take an issue like climate change, I am married to a meteorologist, so I have reasons to have my doubts about the side, scientific evidence that humanity is having a significant impact on the weather and the temperatures. But if that's a debate we want to have, certainly that's fair. And you can be a Christian and have a disagreement with me on that. The issue is when they're tying it to obedience to Christ. So you have actually seen, for example, these climate change activists coming into very conservative seminaries like southeastern Baptist theological seminary, one of the largest in the country,

arguing that you must back these climate change initiatives, which they smuggle in under the rubric of creation care. So it always gets these kind of churchy names. And they say that you must back this climate change activism in order to be faithful to the gospel. Well, of course, biblically, there is a name for that, and it's called legalism. And we know how strongly the Apostle Paul opposed legalism so much that when the Apostle Peter was indulging in it, he said, I opposed him to his face. And so, you know, that's really what I wanted to do in this book is say that it's not only the things that are directly unbiblical, for example, the LGBTQ infiltration into the church that is also funded by secular left billionaires, but also those things that are debatable, but are

being brought in legalistically. Well, in the book, Shepard's for Sale, you mention prominently Russell Moore and Francis Collins. We talked about that the last time. You just said that Francis Collins has advocated very strongly for using aborted baby parts for research. Correct. I don't know how you can be a Christian and advocate for that, but he has done that, and he has tremendous power. As the head of the NIH, he had tremendous power. You say that he advocated for LGBT policies for.

trans, pro trans policies. Again, how do you suppose he squares this stuff? I just, my mind reels. I just don't, I don't really know. Yeah, you know, I don't know either. And I can tell you, I have tried to interview Francis Collins. Once, we had an interview scheduled. And about 10 minutes past our interview time via Zoom, he suddenly pulled out.

and I got an email from the promotional team that was behind setting up this email, the PR people. They told me that he felt I lacked gracious dialogue because I had been critical of his COVID policies in an article. And so he refused to be a part of that interview. So that's another thing, by the way, when you see some of the criticism of this book, they say, well, you're not presenting their point of view like Russell Moore or Francis Collins. Well, I've tried to interview both of those men multiple times, and they do not, want to take critical interviews. Well, I guess I'm still trying to process how, you know, some of the stuff you say here

and some of the stuff that Seth Gruber wrote about in the Clear Truth Media article, it's just astonishing. It's astonishing. And I'm trying to figure out how this could be happening. How could be? I mean, you mentioned Tim Keller. Tim Keller was a friend. I respected him tremendously.

I differed with him maybe on some stuff. but it seems to in 2020, it just things seem to have gone crazy, where very, very dramatically different lines are being drawn than they had been previously. Yeah, and you know, when you bring up Tim Keller, I think part of what you have to look at is where he ministered. When I did some research into all of the employees for Redeemer churches and his city-to-city network, I found that a number of them had made extensive political donations, and all of them went to Democrats. And I think part of the problem that we see is that you have pastors who are being led by the sheep rather than the other way around.

So in order to avoid being unpopular, you frequently heard Tim Keller talk about the political excesses on the right, and yet did not address those of the evangelicals who were directly under his authority. Yeah. I mean, I remember that. He had this. I mentioned this a little bit, I think, in my book, Letter to the American Church. He had this model, which I think worked for a while. And it was this idea that, well, the left says this and the right says this, but the gospel says this. And it was, it was a nice idea. But really what he was criticizing was, you know, you can be legalistic on the one hand, or you can be all about grace. On the other hand. and you can go wrong in this direction or this direction, but the gospel is in the middle. So it was a really beautiful way that he had of saying this is really the Christian point of view. But at some point the world changes and you stick to this rubric and it just doesn't work anymore. I mean, it's not like you have, you know, somebody on the one hand thundering against sin. And another person is saying, I think sin is no big deal. And, I mean, things changed.

We're dealing with Marxists on the left. And he kept going with that. And I don't know, in the book, I know that you say, you talk a little bit about what he was advocating in recent years. Of course, he passed away last year. But I don't know if there's anything there that pops to mind. Well, yeah, you know, one of the things I would point out that I think is really indicative of the issue of where Keller ended up, as you point out, as the culture changed and became increasingly more. more left wing, increasingly, I think we can just boldly say wicked on a lot of these policies, is that you couldn't really chart this middle way anymore.

Because if everything keeps moving more toward wickedness, then you're just kind of in the middle of a, you know, a range of wickedness. And you don't want that. And when I saw the essay that CNN contributor Kirsten Powers wrote after Keller's death, I think it brought up some of the issues with that approach. to culturally applying the Bible in ways that allow you to avoid the sticky issues. So she wrote that she attended Redeemer Church for many years, was directly under the discipleship of Kathy Keller,

and that it took her a long time to realize that they were pro-life and that they did actually have biblical convictions on sexuality and gender and marriage, but she didn't know it for a long time because they didn't speak clearly about it. And she seems kind of bitter in this remembrance of Keller because she says, I wouldn't have bought in. I wouldn't have kept going if I had known from the outset that that was going to be their position. And in a way, what you see is someone describing that she was not presented the full information, so she didn't count the cost. And when she came to understand what the cost of following Christ would be, she left. And you see her kind of indicting Keller for saying, you should have told me up front what you believe.

believed the biblical stance was on these issues. And I think we have to ask, why didn't he? Why didn't Kirsten Powers know all those years that she was sitting in that church that these were the biblical principles when it comes to the sanctity of life and marriage and gender? Well, I think she basically was pro-life. I think she's being a little disingenuous on some of that. But part of it has to do with what in my book, Letter of the American Church, I call the idol of evangelism. That was kind of the classic, you know, Redeemer Tim Keller model, and you saw it adopted all over the country, and there's still many people that have this idea that, like, the only thing that matters is evangelism. And you think, well, that's preposterous. Evangelism is

not God. Evangelism didn't die on the cross. So there's times when worshiping Jesus means that I might say something that, you know, it's not directly evangelistic. It may have to do with discipleship, or it may have to do with speaking truth and letting the Lord deal with how people hear that. But if you have this idea that the only thing that matters is winning souls to Christ, I mean, the problem is that didn't matter to Jesus, the only thing. So they've created this model, which is only about evangelism. So you don't share this or this or this or this. And I think that's what Kirsten Powers is complaining about in that article effectively.

And it gets, what you just pointed out is the fact that sheep need to be fed. and that is the role of the shepherd. And so when you are only focusing your church and your church body gathering on a weekly basis on appealing to goats who are not yet converted, you're letting your sheep starve. And that was what I heard in a lot of those essays and a lot of these surrounding commentary

is that if you're always focused on being winsome to those who are not saved yet and evangelizing, as you say, then you are leaving your people unequipped to deal with the culture as it is. And I think that's what I was seeing, particularly, you know, some of Keller's commentary on life issues where he kind of started to throw everything into the pro-life basket and redefine what it meant. Actually, hang on one second. We're going to go to a break. We're talking to Megan Basham, brand new book, Shepherds for Sale.

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how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. And Megan, we were just talking about this idea that I have spoken against, where you create this idol of evangelism. And when you do that, and this is kind of why Keller was so appealing and so popular, is that, first of all, there's a lot of truth to what he's saying. It's not like he's preaching lies, but you create this model where you say, well, if the only thing that matters is leading souls to Christ,

then I don't need to talk about this uncomfortable stuff, which is very convenient if you live in a place like New York City or whatever. You say, oh, I don't need to talk about that because that's not, quote, unquote, gospel related. What you're really doing is you're reinventing the faith. You're creating this kind of, it's like a cliff notes version of the faith that isn't the real thing. The cliff notes of Moby Dick is not Moby Dick. And in a way, they said, well, no, you can do this and do this and do this. And it's very, very appealing because it gets you out of that having to be identified with those deplorables who are so strongly pro-life or who believe marriage is just between a man and a woman. Oh, everything's more complicated and we can talk about it.

Let's just focus on this one thing. I just don't know what the one thing really is. You know, when you're talking about bringing people to faith, what faith are we talking about? So anyway, that's the only way I can kind of make sense of what we are talking about. I want to get back into some more specifics in the book, Shepard. for sale how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. Talk more about some of the examples that are in the book, if you would. Yeah, you know, one of the chapters since you just brought up sexuality and believing that

marriage is between one man and one woman, one of the very large foundations that you have seen working overtime to place activists in the church to transform doctrine and theology on these issues of whether homosexuality is a sin and whether man can become a woman is the Arcus Foundation. So it was started in the year 2000 by the heir to a $100 billion surgical supply company, not a Christian, a guy named John Stryker. And he is a gay, multi, multi-billionaire who realized that they were having trouble getting this legislation to approve gay marriage across the finish line. even in Deep Blue California because of Christians primarily, evangelical Christians to be specific. And so he realized that they really had to set about reforming churches. And all of this was before Obergefell.

But even since then, what Arcus has started doing is funding organizations that train activists to go into churches and move their doctrine on sex and gender. You wanted to name names. and I can tell you a couple of major churches in the U.S. who have gotten either involved in this in a supporting level or have themselves become targets and welcomed some of this in, are North Point Church in Atlanta and Saddleback in California. So, you know, Andy Stanley's Church has become actively involved in supporting curriculum that is LGBTQ affirming.

It's called Embracing the Journey. And the creators of this curriculum, partner with Arcus funded. That's the Left Wing Billioners Foundation. They partner with these left-wing funded groups that are intended, intending to transform Christian doctrine. They partner with this program called Pastors in Process. And what it does is it teaches secretly affirming pastors, and this is to use their

language of affirming, how to quietly and confidentially move their congregations, their Bible-believing congregations toward progressive theology on the questions of sexuality, gender, and marriage. And so these are the kind of things that you see going on. And then you find a church like Saddleback has brought in this curriculum, had at one point multiple small groups going on using this LGBTQ affirming curriculum. Its counseling pastor has been speaking at these left-wing-backed foundations. And when I asked Saddleback about it, all the material,

disappeared off the website and they never responded. Okay, look, Saddleback, Rick Warren, this is, you know, that says down the middle evangelical. I mean, you know, suddenly you think this is where we are, that Saddleback and Rick Warren would be doing this. That's frankly shocking. It's shocking. It's equally shocking. It should be shocking. But how do folks like this square the circle?

How do they do this? In other words, I think that are they, I mean, when you say they're affirming same-sex marriage or whatever, how biblically do they try to pull that off? I'm just fascinated. Well, you know, one of the things you will see is that they will try very hard to avoid being specific so that the broad swath of evangelicals who still believe what the Bible says about homosexuality and marriage and gender, gender, they try to hedge their bets and say things like, well, we're just trying to be welcoming. Or they will say that the issue is that they're never going to be able to overcome these same-sex desire.

So it's better for them to be married at least rather than be promiscuous with a lot of people. I mean, these are the arguments. Andy Stanley has said this. And I mean, I've talked to multiple people who he has had conversations with. And I've tried to talk to Andy Stanley directly about it. And he also will not give interviews about it. But, you know, our friend Frank Turich, I know, has spoken with him about this. So that is one of the ways that they get around this.

And then the other issue is you will see them simply say, well, it's not God's best. But they don't call it sin anymore. So, for example, Rick Warren had an extensive interview. the last time he talked about it. And he used to be very clear. And I feel like I always want people to know that, that this wasn't always his position. Pre-Obergafel in 2015, Rick Warren was clear.

Post-Obergafel, he will not talk about it. And I saw an interview with him with a British journalist where she had to push him. Actually, forgive me. We're going to go to a break. We'll be right back talking to Megan Bash from the book as Shepherds for sale. Hey, folks, you asked and my pillow listened. They're finally bringing you the most requested offer.

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I'm speaking to Megan Basham, brand new book, disturbing, important. It is called Shepherds for Sale, how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. So, Megan, we're talking about Rick Warren, and we're talking about the gay issue. And I think I understand how this kind of stuff makes people uncomfortable, because it's difficult.

But it's fascinating to me how someone could really shift their personality. position on this because it's a biblical position, you know, and I think maybe the way I see it is, I understand how radical the biblical position is. The biblical position is radical with regard to sexuality, period. I mean, most people in the world think sex only in marriage, are you serious? They can't comprehend this. And if you live in that world and you say that to somebody, I mean, you have to understand this is what the scripture says. And God's, says, maybe it's not easy, but this is what I say is right and good and true and beautiful. And we have folks like Rick Warren and others who don't, they don't seem to be able to

deal with that. And so they kind of back off. But I still understand into what? It's staggering to me that Rick Warren and Andy Stanley and others like this would be willing to be quote unquote gay affirming. I just don't know what that means. It doesn't, it doesn't, I can't process it. Right.

And I want to separate Andy Stanley from Rick Warren because I don't think they're quite in the same places. Like Andy Stanley privately has said that his position has evolved and he now would perform a gay wedding for a family member, for example. Rick Warren has largely just gone quiet. So I was mentioning before we went to the break this interview with a British journalist where he simply did not want to answer the question. when she kept pressing him, and she came around to it multiple times, he kept trying to deflect to pedophilia, something that we all agree is egregious and terrible and abhorrence. But the journalist kept saying, okay, I'm not asking you about pedophilia.

I'm asking you about homosexuality. And he kept kind of using euphemisms like, well, it's just not God best. It's God's best. Eventually, he finally did say, yes, it is a sin that a church would be justified to split over. but he had to be pressed on it. And at the same time, he has allowed that issue to go on in his church while he is still advising. And before he handed over the reins to this husband and wife who are now pastoring the church. And so when people ask questions, also, he will not answer.

So there's two different parts of the spectrum. But when they say affirming, basically what they mean is that you now affirm homosexual practice and identity and transgender practice and identity. And you are saying it is not a sin. That is all it means. It's pretty dramatic. I'm just saying like this has happened over decades and here we are. And now it culminates in your book, Shepherds for Sale,

how evangelical leaders traded the truth for leftist agenda. I just think what it really boils down to is some people just want to be liked. And they make that so important. And I get that. I understand that. but I understand that. And they think that somehow I can avoid this because maybe I'll lose friends if I bring this up.

And yeah, you might lose friends, but my goodness. And so that's where we are. And there are people who listen to this program who probably go to churches like this and who just look the other way. There's so much else in the book. We don't have a ton of time. But what have we not covered that's in the book?

that we might touch on. Well, you know, one of the things I really do want to bring up, you said people who are in these churches. And I do want to talk about the solutions to this issue because it is extensive on so many public policy issues, so many moral issues. And two things you will see is these kind of churches, they will take issues that are very clearly biblical, like the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage. God created them male and female, and they will start to talk about those issues as political,

even though clearly biblical, moral issues, whereas these debatable questions that are political, like what should our immigration policy be, or what kind of gun ownership restrictions should we have, they will make those the moral issues, those, the biblical issues, even though those are not clear. And so I want to tell people, one, when you see that going on in your church, we have reached such a level of I would almost say infiltration, that we have to start addressing it. So I believe the people in your audience who are in those churches, if they're uncomfortable about it, the first thing to do is, you know, you don't have to assume that your pastor is a bought and sold man or woman or whatever.

The thing that you need to do is approach them and talk to them first. So I really want to stress that we have to stop ignoring the problem. So, you know, ask to take your ministry leader, if your children's ministry, director to coffee and say, ask her, can I ask you about this? Why are you sending out these emails? Take your pastor to lunch and say, can I ask you about this? You said this from the pulpit and ask him why he said it. And I think first that will help us know exactly where we are culturally in the church. And then the other thing it will do is let them know that we see what's happening. And hopefully some people will take correction. And they will course correct. And I think

that's important is what I'm not suggesting is that we're just cutting everybody off and you're suspecting that everyone is a wolf. We'll start from a position of charity, but, you know, the Reagan trust but verified. Let's do that in the church. Well, I mean, the way I see it is that we know that the mainline Protestant churches have all gone liberal, dramatically, dramatically, over time. And it seems to me that now that's simply happening to the evangelical churches as well, that there are many. They're just not willing to, they're not willing to be unpopular,

they want to be liked, they want to somehow be mainstream. And as the culture has moved left, they've decided that they need to move a little bit too. That's kind of what it looks like to me. Yeah, I mean, I do think that is very much the case. And look, we may get to a J. Graschen place where we have to just leave these institutions

to the wolves and infiltrators, but I just don't think we're there yet with a lot of these institutions. Some, I think, are probably gone. I don't think Christianity today is coming back from the brink. But there's a lot of good seminaries, a lot of good organizations that I think there are internal wars being fought. And I'm not willing to give up the ghost on that. For example, this network of Southern Baptist Convention seminaries that educate a plurality of Protestant pastors in all denominations.

I think that they are very likely still salvageable. And I would like to see people fight for those institutions. We're going to have to leave it there. Megan Basham, just really grateful that you wrote this book. The book is Shepherds for Sale. Folks, get a copy. Give one to your pastor. Megan, thank you.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for getting the word out. Watches the ships that go sail somewhere beyond the sea. Hey there, folks, before we let you go, uh... Shut the doors. Yeah, shut the door. No, before we let you go. you go, I want to ask you a question.

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