Skills the Christian Right Needs

The Need for Skill in Opinion-Shaping Work

Like an instrument, you've got to learn how to play it first, right? It's not just about having the heart and knowing three chords. The more skilled you are, the more likely people are to listen, the more you're able to advance even the cause of music itself.

Time for a strategy session here as I walk along the beautiful Hudson River this morning. So, I've been thinking about what I'm going to talk about today for a long time, and a recent situation, actually a series of them, has made it more important for me to talk about.

And that situation concerns Megan Basham. So, what I want to talk about is the importance of getting involved in academic pursuits, academic excellence, academic skills, potentially, if you can swing it, maybe even an academic job that has the potential to move the ball, to create opinion-shaping material, and is actually generally more useful than just someone's opinion.

And we're very thin in the ranks on people that have these skills and are able to use them. And the reason I brought Megan Basham's name up is because I have been tagged every so often over the years in posts from people who will say, you know, Megan's getting all this traction over here, but I really think that she isn't saying anything that John Harris hasn't said, or I prefer John Harris, why couldn't people just have listened to him?

And I appreciate the pro-John Harris and complimentary things that people say when they tag me in that kind of thing. But I think there's somewhat of a misnomer, and I want to talk about that a little bit.

You know, Megan is a journalist, and journalists have certain skills and disciplines and standards that they must abide by. For example, Megan knows news cycles. She knows what sells. Her book, Shepherds for Sale, for example, it tracks money.

It tracks influence, outside influence in the evangelical organization. That really sells with a political conservative audience, way more so than my books, which I talk about things I consider more important, but they're not as salient to that kind of an audience.

I talk about history of ideas in Christianity and social justice, and I talk about biography and history in social justice goes to church. And for me, as a historian, I look back and I'm looking at, you know, things that have happened in the past, things that are fixed in time.

And I'm looking at them and I'm saying, this is what happened. Here is how I understand it based upon these primary sources. Here's how we can interpret. And I'm more or less a fly on the wall telling you what happened.

Megan is doing what journalists do. And journalists generally are shaping the story as they're telling the story, right? Journalists are calling both sides of it or all sides of a situation. And they are asking them, a lazy journalist takes those quotes and just makes that her story and doesn't go into the primary sources.

But they're putting people in the hot seat. A historian generally doesn't want to influence the story too much. And that's a major difference between, I would say, Megan and I on these kinds of topics.

We're going to have different emphases, and we're going to have a different approach based upon the disciplines that we have. And I'm also an independent historian, for lack of a better term. And she is connected to the Daily Wire.

That makes a big difference. And she got there over time. It wasn't just that they saw her and said, you know, she's doing stories we like. And oh, she's a woman, and we need a woman to fill this slot.

Let's put her in. That's not what happened. It took her a while to get to the point of being able to put those kinds of stories out there and have conservative organizations take them seriously and look at them.

And so what would it be like? I just want you to imagine a world real quick. What would it be like if we had 10 Megan Bashams, or you pick whatever number you want that's beyond one, and they were all focused on this kind of information?

Well, you would probably have a lot more stories, and there would be a lot more competition to do these kinds of stories. And I think that would be a good thing, obviously. But we don't have that. We're really down to one kind of person.

And the people who are critical of her, who are journalists, tend to be on the other side of the issue, right? So there are no professionals who are talking about these things and critiquing her on the right.

The journalists who are, well, you might say, I'm thinking of one in particular who used to be a journalist, who you might put into that category. But aside from her, which I don't think she should really count, but aside from her, every journalist who critiques Megan Basham is on the left.

And every critique Megan gets on the right tends to be from people who usually don't have a lot of influence, at least not institutionally. And they don't tend to have academic credentials or they don't really have necessarily academic skills generally.

Now, there's exceptions. I'm sure someone's going to probably point out. But of any of the exceptions that people point out, how many of them are in a position to do the kinds of things Megan does? And that's my point.

How many of them are able to put a story out there about evangelical corruption at a certain institution and have the major conservative media figures interested in reading it? There's, I don't know of any.

And I realized, you know, this is just obviously one thread in all of this, but I realized that we really don't seem to have people that we are fielding in these kinds of roles. We don't have people in history very often, even at a conservative university, like the one I went to.

You know, many people that even attend there and get credentialed are not going to be right-leaning by the five years after, right? They're going to end up going to trying to get a job at an institution that will probably influence them or even force them to be more left-wing.

And so I think that there's no easy solution to all of this. But it would be really good if we have people who are writers, who are journalists, historians, social science, political theorists, who even if they don't go through the proper credentialing, gain the skills.

And there are ways you can do that independently. It just takes a lot of time. And it does mean you are going to need to... Let's give you an example of a writer. You are going to need to write. If you don't write, you never gain that skill.

You know, I can't tell you how many people that I have seen manuscripts from during the social justice days. They'll send them to me and my heart just breaks because I know they have a good heart and I know they want to do the right thing and their instincts are good.

But they never learned how to craft an argument or they never learned how to write or they never learned proper, just even proper grammar, just very basic things. And so, you know, it breaks your heart a little bit.

And you realize that people are doing it because the institutions and the figures that they trusted haven't done it. And they're trying to fill that gap. I mean, that's why I said sayonara to academia and decided, you know what, I'm just going to put my thoughts out there and social justice goes to church.

I'm going to do the research that I don't see anyone else doing because it seems like every year, there's at least one book published against the religious right and critiquing them. And I'm like, you know, I'm going to do a book critiquing the religious left.

No one does it.

It's going to, I'm going to do actual research and all of that. And but hardly anyone knows how to do research. At least people who aren't trained that way. It's not something that's, it's not as easy as just picking up a book.

You got to know how to handle sources. For example, I'll give you like, this is just one little example. It's like, it's kind of like hermeneutics in the study of scripture. A historian takes, puts greater weight in sources that are close to a situation than sources that came later.

For example, someone talking about an event that happened 30 years ago is not going to be as trusted, at least from a historian's standpoint, as that same person talking about it the day after it happened, right?

And knowing the rules of the discipline help you to know the differences between those kinds of things and know what's actually going to sell and what people will actually take seriously. If there's basic mistakes in your work, then you won't get the traction, right?

And so what I see right now is we do have people on the Christian right who are more than willing to give their opinion on places like X, or they'll start a podcast. But oftentimes, if they're skilled, they're skilled in the ability to sound appealing.

They have the gift of gab. They can sell things. We have salesmen, essentially. But it's very rare to find someone who's actually skilled at research and quality information and showing that they've actually interacted with other sides and they've seen other perspectives.

And they're giving you a distillation of a, you know, kind of a boiling over of all of the time and effort that they put into the subject. We more have people that I think can articulate a narrative on the fly.

And you have everyone from that to guys who probably don't have even those skills, but maybe they're able to craft the tweets. Maybe they're able to give an opinion in a chat room or something like that.

And I'm not looking down my nose at anyone who, you know, maybe cement mixing is your thing, maybe painting houses, maybe even it's a different professional kind of trade. It's just not an opinion shaping one.

You're good at math or whatever. You're a professor. But those are all good things. But we need people who are really good at getting the information out there for others to use. And it's got to be usable information.

Megan Basham does that, right? American Reformer has been, I think, really good at trying to create a place for professionals to network, to be encouraged, maybe even through that networking, finding soft places to land if they rattle the boat too much so they can be more brave in the fields that they're at, at the institutions they're at.

I think that's so necessary. TruthScript, by the way, if you're looking to write, TruthScript will help you with that to an extent because it's short articles. And if you want to learn to write, I'm not advertising this as a tutorial because they probably have other things to do.

But I know there's many people that they've helped become better writers because we know we're thin in the ranks. We need good writers. It's very rare to find someone who's actually a really good writer.

So go to TruthScript. If you want to write something, start writing. And maybe they can even help you. The editors can help you know where to get better tutoring if that's what you need. Or maybe they can help you.

But I'm just saying, look at the resources that are out there and cultivate some skills. That's my encouragement. We can later on, hopefully, if we have enough people with those skills, come up with organizations to authenticate and kind of create standards that are then adhered to and create more lasting trust.

But right now, we just need people to start doing these things. And if you can't go the academic route, then your time has passed you by. You're 40 years old. You got a family. You're engaged in the career you're in.

It doesn't mean you can't start learning some of these things and using them. I think if you are younger and starting out, what I would say is come up with a good skill because you can't rely at this point on Christian organizations or even conservative organizations to fund your education.

The left has all those resources, those distribution networks, soft places to land. They have everything set up already. But the right doesn't. And so you're going to need to figure out a way to fund much of your education, probably, if you go that route.

And I think if you can go the route, you should. You should go to law school. You should go to journalistic school or become a historian, whatever. It means you probably will need to find a trade first, though.

Work in a trade for a year or two. Get whatever credentials, whatever certifications. If you want to start a family young, you're going to need that kind of income and then work towards your goals more slowly.

But don't forget about them. Keep working towards them. And it will train you to think. It will help you sort the truth from the falsehoods. It will really, I think, make a big difference in your own life.

I know that I found this in my life. I mean, I took the LSAT a few times and it just it helped me think. I took the whatever the grad school equivalent was, the GRE or whatever. It really it just helped me studying for those things and then going on and getting two grad degrees.

And, you know, I just think that this is something that it will be invaluable to you even in your study of scripture. I think I learned more about studying scripture in my history degree than I did going to seminary because it trained me to think.

It trained me to do research. And you can't you can't really buy those things. Those are things obviously you spend a lot of money getting a degree, but those are things that it takes time and discipline.

So, you know, I would just encourage that kind of thing. I'd say, you know, in addition to all that, I think when you have a large group of people who are engaged online and, you know, they feel the need to say something and, you know, it's it's stirring within them.

It may be that you need to say something. It also may mean, though, that you need to level up before saying something because you want to say it so that it's actually heard and it's heard by the right people and it actually makes a difference.

And I don't know where everyone's at in that, but I do know that I think I need to say this because I do think there are likely people out there who are spending a lot of time trying to grow a platform, but they actually haven't put in the time on the front end.

And I would just encourage you, if you feel like this is resonating and you feel like you need to put time in on the front end, go ahead and go do it. Go spend the time and it will take you some time, but you will be a better person for it.

And once you go public, it will be, I think, a much better experience and a much more helpful one. So that's my encouragement. I think that we actually have a lot of people waiting in the wings, ready to to do the right thing, ready to get out there and sound the right notes.

Learn the Instrument Before Trying to Shape Opinion

But like an instrument, you got to learn how to play it first, right? It's not just about having the heart and knowing three chords. The more skilled you are, the more likely people are to listen, the more you're able to advance even the cause of music itself.

And it's the same thing in opinion shaping fields. So I hope that was helpful. I hope that was an encouragement and get out there, you know, do what you need to do. And I'm always available, you know, on social media.

If you have any questions, maybe I can connect you to someone that would be able to help you in whatever field that you're looking at getting involved with. So with that, God bless.