Megan Basham’s Civil War

Megan Basham’s bestselling new book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda has created a massive furor. Those of us who live (and especially those of us who work) in the evangelical community in the U.S. are doing a great deal of reading, talking, reviewing, and yes, battling, over Basham’s claims.  She argues with great force (and to a contested degree with “the receipts”) that various evangelical elites have sold out the church in order to obtain left-wing money and status. Significant individuals such as Eric Metaxas (famed Christian author and broadcaster) and Kelly Kullberg (editor of Finding God at Harvard) have supported and promoted Basham’s book, while several others such as the apologist Neil Shenvi and the president of Ministry Watch, Warren Smith, have offered strong critiques. Given that Basham has built part of her case by pointing at popular figures such as J. D. Greear (megachurch pastor and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention) and Gavin Ortlund (the well-known Christian author and apologist), the conflict has been intense as allies of her targets seek to defend them (and others) from charges of unfaithfulness and compromise in the pursuit of worldly acclaim.  

Is Basham right? Has she uncovered a scandal that must be revealed to the flock in the pews? The answer is that it is complicated. And it is more complicated than one might understand simply by reading the book. 

My interest is not in striking a blow either for or against Basham and the like-minded folks who feel empowered and justified by her claims. Rather, I want to talk about why I think the book is important and how a more expansive framework might help us understand the strife and atmosphere of suspicion more accurately. 

One of the organizations Basham discusses is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention. While I have never been an employee of the organization, I have been a fellow of the ERLC for many years now, and I have written for their publications and participated in their programs. I had an acquaintance with Russell Moore, who is a target of the book. My experience of the ERLC is that it advocates public policy that Baptists consider important, such as religious liberty and the sanctity of life.

Several years ago, I participated in a meeting at the ERLC in Nashville aimed at generating a group statement on the ethics of artificial intelligence. We had a barbecue dinner at a restaurant the night before our meeting, stayed in a nearby hotel (probably a Hampton), and then convened for a productive discussion of artificial intelligence followed by drafting of a document. We had also had some virtual meetings prior to the event. 

There was a feature of the meeting that is noteworthy in light of the controversy caused by Basham’s book: she has documented significant contributions by left-wing groups to major evangelical organizations as a way of demonstrating that these groups are buying influence on issues such as same-sex marriage, climate, race relations, and immigration. In attendance at our meeting, and understood to be a financial sponsor of it, was a representative of the Koch Foundation. For those not familiar with Koch, the group pushes for a more libertarian/small government philosophy. They would generally be classified on the Right side of American politics. The young man from Koch did not exert a strong force on our meeting or our discussion. He merely mentioned once or twice that the Koch Foundation’s position is that “a light regulatory touch” is preferable. He certainly made no effort to guide the course of our conversation or to affect the written document. 

The reason I tell the story of that ERLC gathering, sponsored at least in part by the Koch Foundation, is that I am sure a reporter of a different ideological persuasion would be able to write an account claiming that the ERLC was completely in thrall to the rich and powerful (funded by billionaires) Koch Foundation, thus demonstrating the dangers of exposing churches to corporate influence. The difference from Basham’s account would be that the danger comes from the Right rather than the Left. 

If it were my purpose to do so, I would be able to show evidence of what we might call free-market foundations that have worked to exert an influence on churches and pastors. I am very proud of my association with the Acton Institute, which argues, in a thoroughly wholesome vein, that freedom and virtue travel together to establish communities of human flourishing. They make the case theologically and prudentially. It is possible to draw a different conclusion from scripture. For example, there are certainly those who think the biblical teachings push more in the direction of a more redistributive economy. Therefore, the purveyors of economic liberty might be accused, as Basham accuses those who push leftward perspectives, of interfering with the work of the church. If I were writing from the Left (and wanted to see right-wing influences defeated), I would probably argue that there was some kind of cynical, ungodly, materialistic way of thinking being pushed on the church. We would be able to go beyond the Koch Foundation to demonstrate that various conservatives (whether recognizably Christian or not) work to win the battle for hearts and minds in the church. It is the mirror image of the work Basham is doing, but focused on a different group of influencers. 

Where am I going? What’s underneath these points about right-wing influence operating in ways Basham sees happening on the Left? We need to achieve a higher vantage point from which to see what is happening. The politically aware reader of Megan Basham’s book cannot help but feel that a reasonable portion of the sense of betrayal comes from her own stance as a politically conservative Christian. She sees leftists attempting to influence the church to improve their political fortunes. It was clear to me that one of the really smart parts of Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 was to peel off young evangelicals. Russell Moore, never really comfortable as a political conservative, writes from the opposite direction. While he is not a leftist, he clearly resents what he considers to be right-wing politics influencing the church. So what we can see if we gain a view from above is that there are forces operating on the church from the Left and the Right. The degree to which such efforts comport with orthodoxy or anything organic to the church varies. Basham, for example, can certainly make a strong case that efforts to move the church to a pro-gay marriage or transgender position are alien and unsustainable according to Christianity’s self-understanding. 

The problem in all of this is that the church is being influenced rather than doing the influencing. In order to get back in the driver’s seat, the church and its vast number of adherents must develop a greater awareness of themselves as a target of persuasion. How could the situation be otherwise in a media and influence-driven society in which the tools of marketing are developed to ever finer degrees of effectiveness and control? Imagine how effective a Joseph Goebbels figure could have been with today’s technology driving mass propaganda. We live in a society in which it is increasingly difficult to gather people for almost any purpose when the coziness of a home with large screens beckons at the end of the day and on the weekends. Churches are one of the few remaining places that really draw people together. 

Basham is, of course, correct to point out the fact that evangelicals are a special target of political influence. It is true that evangelicals constitute a major voting bloc in the Republican party. We don’t talk about it often, but the reality is that the Democratic party has simultaneously become a party where atheists and agnostics are more likely to congregate. What Basham wants to draw attention to is the simple reality that if the Left wants to advance its social and economic agenda, it will often have to do so by defeating the party filled with and supported by evangelicals. The degree to which she is successful in producing “the receipts” on any particular figure is less important than whether she’s right about the broader dynamic. She almost certainly is correct in the wider sense of her analysis. The thing she wants to prove is surely what any smart operative would actually do. 

So, the reality is that intelligent (and shrewd) political, cultural, and corporate actors will virtually always be interested in trying to gain an advantage by convincing people in the church of various things ranging from the desirability of movements to the purchasing of goods and services. The answer to that ceaseless action of forces upon the church is to recall one of the most insightful and powerful proclamations from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s outstanding Letter from Birmingham Jail. It was there that King, arguing against the moderates who tried to convince him to take the broader political climate into account, forcefully stated that the church is not a thermometer, but is instead a thermostat. In other words, the church does not give you a reading of the environment; it changes the environment. It moves the world instead of the world moving it. This is a description of the church as Christians understand it.

Basham’s Shepherds for Sale is a book that addresses the political and market captivity of the church from a particular angle. It does so with greater or lesser effectiveness with regard to the charges she makes. But her ultimate point is that the church is often subject to influences that may be hostile to its actual mission. And that is the takeaway that should persist long after the specific controversies are exhausted.

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