How the Washington Post Uses Social Justice Activists in Evangelical Circles for Political Purposes

The Washington Post’s Strategy of Using Evangelical Credibility

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris. Here for another cell phone on the road edition to talk about the latest, the greatest, the hot off the press breaking news from over a week ago.

That's right, this is an article from over a week ago in the Washington Post about Karen Swallow Pryor and the pro-life movement and ending abortion. And it was sent to me from actually John Cooper who has a great podcast called Cooper Stuff.

You should check it out. He talks about these things sometimes and he's a good guy in this whole kerfuffle between social justice activists and orthodox believers. But the reason I thought he was onto something and thinking this would be a good article for me to talk about is because it illustrates a point that I've tried to make many times once again.

And that point is that the mainstream media, can we call it mainstream media? The lying propaganda media loves to use social justice activists within evangelical circles to promote their cause. They know what tool to use to get their job done.

And they've been using people like Russell Moore and Karen Swallow Pryor for years. And they're not going to the Scott Klusendorf's of the world or the Franklin Graham's or people who are abortion abolitionists to write glowing pieces about them and what's taken place over the last few weeks with this potential ending of Roe v. Wade.

No, they're gonna go to the Karen Swallow Pryor's of the world. And I think the reason for that is because they are credible mouthpieces for the agenda that the Washington Post wants to promote. They can move the needle in the direction the Washington Post wants to move the needle.

They can make you feel isolated, feel crazy, second guess yourself, feel lonely, because after all someone who has pro-life bona fides, who's got credibility in the pro-life movement, who's a seminary professor in the Southern Baptist Convention.

I mean, that's a conservative denomination, right? Someone like that doesn't think the same way you think about the pro-life movement. And actually agrees with Democrat causes on a whole lot of things.

And maybe you should rethink your position. I think that's the whole goal of this. And this is what you see with puppet governments. When a country sets up a government, they don't choose a foreigner to be the mouthpiece for them to promote their cause.

They choose someone with credibility, someone from that country who speaks the language, looks the part, because you want someone who's going to identify with the people, and the people need to identify with that person.

And if they see a foreigner, they'll think, well, we shouldn't listen to that guy. He's from the nation that hates us. We're gonna listen to someone from our own country though. We see the same thing in socialist totalitarian regimes when they set up different ministries of things, education and religion, et cetera.

And they put the person in charge who's from those arenas. They need a mouthpiece who's got credibility. So it's gonna be someone who's a priest. If they're trying to communicate with the Catholic church and promote socialism in the Catholic church, it's not going to be some atheist who's never darkened the door of the church.

So the same goes for Karen Swallow Pryor here. It's gonna be someone who has somewhat of a credible story and the resume to convince evangelicals that she's just one of them. Because you're a trucker, you're a lawyer, you're a housewife, whatever you do for a living.

I mean, whatever it is, I mean, you don't have as much pro-life bona fides as Karen Swallow Pryor, do you? You're not a seminary professor, are you? So you need to follow what Karen Swallow Pryor says.

And so I think it's very specific, the choice that Washington Post makes to have Karen Swallow Pryor be the centerpiece, the glowing piece written about an evangelical pro-life person is gonna be her because they would prefer every pro-life evangelical was like Karen Swallow Pryor.

So let's get into this lying, twisted narrative. And I'll just show you some evidence along the way that what I just said is what's happening. The moment Karen Swallow Pryor had worked and prayed for her entire life came at 8 .41 p .m. last Monday.

And so they talk about in very glowing terms, well, very descriptive terms. She's at her house, she gets the text, Roe v. Wade is gonna end. It says Pryor was shocked and thrilled, but within minutes, the deep divisions and differences and priorities among anti-abortion advocates came into view.

After being put aside for decades, as they worked together to overturn Roe, they had become impossible to ignore. So Justice John Roberts says, hey, we might not overturn Roe, but even if that possibility exists, the piece says if Roe falls, what does it mean to be pro-life now?

So that's the opening question. What does it mean to be pro-life? For Pryor, it means, let's read what it means. More than overturning Roe, it means more support for childcare and pregnant women, as well as, so let me just stop.

The first sentence here, it means more than overturning Roe. I would agree. Yeah, of course it does. We're trying to stop babies from being murdered. We're trying to stop murder from happening in a legalized form, legal murder.

We wanna stop that. Ending Roe v. Wade doesn't stop that because some states will still have legal murder. So, of course it's more than overturning Roe, but the next sentence isn't about fighting it on the state level.

The next sentence is about support for childcare and pregnant women, as well as supporting sex abuse victims, vaccinating as many people as possible against the COVID, and helping start and run an inner city high school in Buffalo.

That's right. When the Bible said, thou shalt not murder, you know what it really meant? You should go start an inner city high school in Buffalo. You can't make this stuff up, but this is a conflation of quality of life issues and pro-life issues.

Pro-life meaning you shouldn't murder. Murder's wrong. We shouldn't have legalized murder. And then quality of life, meaning if I eat a cheeseburger today and one, and then every day for the next 50 years, I might slowly kill myself.

That's a quality of life issue. I shouldn't be eating that many cheeseburgers. But hopefully someone with common sense can see that those are not the same. As ripping a child out of the womb, cutting them up, or I don't wanna even get into how it's done, the different ways it's done, but it's different, okay?

Not all anti-abortion activists agree, and lately have begun splintering over the next steps, as well as whether to classify abortion as homicide and restrict contraception. Now, I think this is the Washington Post, so are people really talking about restricting contraception?

They're talking about maybe at best restricting abortifacients. So yes, if you think abortion's murder, and that's why you wanna end it, then of course it would be now homicide. And of course you'd wanna restrict chemicals that people use for the specific purpose of killing a child.

That just makes sense. But this is all now part of the debates, as well as whether issues outside of reproduction even qualify as the pro-life cause. Roe v. Wade has been a topic of discussion at most Supreme Court confirmation hearings, since the landmark abortion case was denied.

Let me say this. The whole emphasis here is that it's not Karen Swallow Pryor, it's others. It's other anti-abortion activists who might not think that issues outside of reproduction qualify as pro-life.

But in reality, it's Karen Swallow Pryor who's the one that's made the change. It's people like her who have tried to hijack the pro-life movement, to take its limited resources, to now put into all these other 15 other pro-life issues.

And so it's not others, it's Karen Swallow Pryor. It's the people like her, it's Russell Moore. They're the ones who have tried to fundamentally change what being pro-life is. Roe v. Wade, it says, has been a topic of discussion at most Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

I just read that. As a writer, let's see, professor and podcaster, well-known among many U .S. evangelicals, Pryor that night tweeted her joy over the possible Roe overthrow. Okay, so this is her bona fides.

This is, you should listen to her. She's got credibility. Along with thoughts she had increasingly in recent years, most centrally, was voting for Donald Trump really worth it? Sure, he promised anti-Roe judges on the high court and through epic luck and political maneuvering, it had all fallen into place.

But at what moral cost? Pryor hadn't voted for him. It's not pro-life to incite a riot at our nation's capital where people are killed, she said in a recent morning in her kitchen while making eggs. And I don't think it's pro-life to brag about sexually assaulting women and to have affairs with porn stars.

They're all things that contribute to the culture I've been fighting for all these years. Okay, let's just stop here for a minute. She is so either misinformed or just evil with the way that she views these things.

Donald Trump did not incite a riot at the nation's capital. I don't even think I should have to comment on this. If you just read his speech, we're going to go peacefully, peacefully. He used that term.

He'd never incited a riot. Furthermore, where people are killed. Yeah, one person was killed because a police officer shot her. None of the people that were involved in the supposed quote unquote riot killed anyone.

But it's almost like she's blaming Donald Trump for killing people here. No, and I don't think it's pro-life to brag about sexually assaulting women and have affairs with porn stars. Well, has Donald Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women?

Yeah, I've heard, I think the clip she's talking about and yeah, it's junior high, not junior. It's high school locker room talk. It's repulsive. By the way, this is from years ago, but it's not assaulting.

It's, so her, she's just off. She's, here's the thing. Donald Trump has enough bad moral baggage to draw from that you don't actually have to make stuff up, but they go the extra mile to just completely mischaracterize this.

And I will say this. I don't think, I might not even be in the majority on this. I think it's okay. If Karen Swallow Pryor says, this is my conscience. I think that I made the right decision to not voting for Trump because of his moral character.

That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. I think people on the right, like Pastor Kerry Gordon have made the same calculation or decision, I should say. And that's fine. I don't have like a problem with that.

I don't want them to violate their conscience. You've heard what I've said on this podcast. I would want to persuade people that you shouldn't have to violate your conscience, but okay, that's fine. But then to, and she actually even had a tweet I saw out there like this, to then basically say that it wasn't worth it.

Even though Roe v. Wade's being overturned, baby's lives are being saved potentially. Even if that happens, that it wasn't worth it because it was a moral compromise. This is where I just don't understand why you even bring this up during a time like this.

This is just a time to rejoice. If that happens, that's just a time to rejoice. Like why even start talking about that? It's just weird to me, but that would be what the Washington Post would want you to hear.

Like, you've done wrong. You should go into the corner and think about what you've done because even though it accomplished something you're rejoicing over, don't get too excited because that's what's gonna happen.

It energizes the base. They think, well, we voted for Donald Trump. Donald Trump made good on his promise. He appointed these justices and now look what's happening. And they don't want the base to be energized.

They want the base to be subdued. And a lot of that has to do with evangelicals who are pro-life. What's, how do you subdue them? How do you keep them from voting for a Donald Trump again, or keep them from voting for someone like that?

Well, you have to get your Karen Swallow priors of the world out to show them, this is the example you should follow and let her scold you for what you've done. And, you know, this is, your moral thinking is broken.

It's not worth it. Because look at all the other pro-life issues that Donald Trump put barriers in front of. And look at the one thing that he did accomplished. It just, it came at too high of a price.

That's what they want you to think. All right, in response to her tweets, hundreds of priors, fellow Christian activists, including leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, trashed her, calling her Jezebel, horribly, horribly wicked woman, enemies of God.

You're complicit in the death of millions. By Wednesday, priors stood on the same porch in tears. I felt as a pro-life Christian, we were working together, whatever disagreements, politically and theologically we had, we were working together, we were fighting the culture.

And now we are attacking each other. I have reservations about the culture war mentality, where the culture war mentality took us. Now, I don't have the sympathy, I'm sorry for Karen Sullivan Pryor here.

This is the same person who, when there was a shooting in, I think it was Georgia, the spa shooting, wanted to, was insistent that it was a Founders Church, that it was on the Founders website. It was listed there.

And so we should categorize this shooter as part of a Founders Church, even though it was also an SBC Church. I think it was also a Nine Marks Church, but she wanted to make sure it's a Founders Church.

You know, now she's saying, oh, we're just calling each other names, we're so mean to each other. Yeah, Karen Sullivan Pryor has been one of the big instigators. She's been part of the problem with all this.

She's contributed to the state of affairs that we are experiencing right now. And now she wants to stand apart from it to some extent, as if she's the victim of these horrible, mean things that are said about her.

Sorry, I'm just not, I'm not really buying this. A campaign pin from Pryor's run for Lieutenant Governor of New York. Let's see. Oh, sorry, that's the label of a picture on the article. I have the article in text form here.

And anyway, behind her inside her house were books of newspapers, clippings, and photos of her five arrests at abortion clinics. So here's her poor life bona fides, okay? Here's what you're supposed to be impressed with and think she's the spokesperson for pro-life.

Her run for Lieutenant Governor of New York as a no chance third party candidate as an anti-abortion platform, a few miles from where she stood with the Crisis Pregnancy Center, whose board she sat on in the Liberty University pro-life club she advises.

In her mind all these years, she had pictured Roe ending under a truly conservative president who believed out of conviction that abortion was wrong and that there would be justices who weren't accused of sexual assault.

So this is a reference to Kavanaugh, you know, that Kavanaugh actually was guilty. I mean, this is terrible. I thought this would come in a more holistically pro-life culture. I've not until now put it all together.

Is it a feature or a bug? Is it all just grift? I want to believe it's not, but looking at Trumpism, it's getting harder and harder to say otherwise. So apparently this potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, it's all, it's just a grift.

It's not real. This isn't real conservative stuff. And you need to be concerned about how this all came to be. And where's the focus not? On the millions of children who are getting cut apart, who now some of them at least won't be.

I mean, that's where you'd think the emphasis would be and it would be on abortion, but instead the Washington Post knows how to take a story that ought to be about abortion and make it all about how terrible Donald Trump is and how terrible his base is and how terrible even his Supreme Court justice picks are.

And just let's make it a hit piece on Donald Trump, even though this is one of his biggest achievements if this happens. During a virtual meeting, Pryor cries as she apologizes for not believing a woman when she made sexual misconduct allegations against a clergy member.

Pryor was raised in a small conservative Baptist church in Maine around Buffalo. Before the culture wars, she says, the evangelical church wasn't yet so political. And she remembers having no particular expectation when as a newlywed in her early 20s in 1987, she heard her pastor was hosting someone from Crisis Pregnancy Center.

Those are usually Christian run centers. Okay, this is all her bona fides. This is she's one of you, giving you the credibility here that you need to trust her because she's been through all these experiences.

I remember being like, oh, I wonder what the pastor's going to say about abortion. They showed an anti-abortion film at her church. Soon she was getting a PhD in English just giving her story, her pro-life bona fides.

Pryor was popular in the anti-abortion movement on the local level. And Pryor, let's see, she also advocated against the death penalty and let's see, in favor of condoms, socialized healthcare, and equality for women in the workplace.

Back then, she says, as she protested outside clinics with other Christians holding signs against war and euthanasia, she couldn't have imagined how laser focused as Roe their movement would become. So this is a, so this is taking this issue and then saying that, trying to portray that actually the real people who have hijacked the movement are those who want to just make it about murder when it's about so much more.

I mean, socialized healthcare should be part of this, I guess, you know, nuclear proliferation, why not? Now, I wrote a book called Social Justice Goes to Church where I talk about this to some extent.

There was a group and they were a minority. In fact, I think one of the books about them is called Moral Minority by Schwartz and that book is very, it's very favorable to them. But you have people like Ron Sider and Jim Wallace who were pro-life when it came to abortion, but also basically socialists, unlike every other issue.

And they were somewhat, they were ascending in the early 70s, but they, a lot of wind got taken out of their sails and they really never made it into the mainstream evangelicalism. Mainstream evangelicalism, the pro-life movement as we understand it today, was really more started in the 80s.

And it was the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world who were identifiable leaders in that, major figures in that, Francis Schaeffer also. And that was focused on murder. And that's the movement we have.

Now, yeah, you still had your Ron Siders around who they would have, they would do their activist thing, but it was not, don't think that that was like mainstream anti-abortion stuff. And this is where, I don't know what group she was with, but it sounds like it wasn't a mainstream evangelical group here.

Whatever group this was, and it could be too, I don't know, but maybe some people had these personal views, but they also stood together on ending abortion. That was the whole idea behind the pro-life movement was we need to end abortion.

And if you wanna come from a different political perspective on other issues, okay, but we're here for this one reason, to end abortion. So if Karen Swalwell Pryor wasn't part of a group like that, if she was a part of a group that was pushing socialized healthcare and stuff, it was definitely a group that was outside of the mainstream and the way they're portraying it here though is she's the mainstream.

You are outside of the mainstream because you're part of this hijacked pro-life movement that just cares about murder. All right, despite Pryor's memories of a bigger pro-life tent, historians on abortion in America say religious and social conservatives who oppose abortion, birth control, and gay rights coalesced together around reversing Roe.

By the time Pryor got involved, politicians, donors, and advocates also recognized the ruling as something everyone in the pro-life movement could agree on and as a way for them to focus power. The extent to which Roe sucked all the oxygen in the room, that's the whole story more or less, said Kevin Wallstein.

All right, I don't wanna read about Kevin Wallstein. Let's skip ahead here. Pryor talks about it's become more angry and threatening and she saw a woman frightened by anti-abortion signs and we're not convincing people as much.

So she's really coming out against the modern pro-life movement. Pryor took a job at Liberty, it says, and Pryor, and so it gives her credentials and her Christian credentials there. Okay, so she believes in respectful debates, but around her, the country was becoming more polarized.

So it's, again, Karen Swalwell Pryor is somehow aloof from all this. She doesn't contribute to any of the polarization. She's just around her, it becomes polarized because she believes in respect. The pro-life movement focused on abortion and Roe grew so narrow that some protesters also wanted to emphasize saving lives of death penalty prisoners or migrants at the border.

And let's see, at the March for Life, they're just giving you kind of a history here, or trying to, of Karen Swalwell Pryor and her involvement in the pro-life stuff. Let me read this to you. Long known as a trusted, beloved ear to some LGBT students at Liberty, she appeared at a 2015 groundbreaking film festival looking at the experience of queer evangelicals.

Photos of her smiling and posing with openly gay Christians, I've seen those, at the affirming event, even though she was there to share her view opposing same-gender marriage, opened a flood of critical pieces about her from fellow conservative Christians.

For attending the event and for saying abortion and human sexuality are complex topics, and that she sees common ground with advocates for abortion and same-sex marriage, Pryor was called sinful, bizarre, and an example of shocking liberalism.

So here's one of the things, and it paints the critics, by the way. The critics demanded she be not only removed as a fellow from a Southern Baptist think tank, that was the ERLC, but that the think tank's leadership be overhauled.

So it paints, there's division, so out here there's division, there's the modern pro-life movement, it's been hijacked, it's corrupt, there's the supporting for Donald Trump, it's all this bad stuff over here, and then there's Karen Swalwell Pryor over here who believes in respect and who can get along with others and who believes that there's like 15 other issues other than just baby murder that the pro-life movement needs to focus on.

And she's the more reasonable conservative that we'd, the authentic conservative we'd really like more of. And so it does serve exactly the point that I made at the beginning of this, it's painting a picture of people probably like you and me that we're just these unreasonable, demanding kind of moral compromisers.

And that she's, Karen Swalwell Pryor, this poor person who's just trying to navigate life and be nice to people is just being attacked viciously. You know what though, here's the thing, and let me just give you a few things that they're not talking about here.

Like for instance, I was at Liberty University's campus, there was a little bit of an overlap when Karen Swalwell Pryor was there. I remember 2000, I wanna say 19, there was a protest, very pro-LGBT protest that happened on the campus.

And there was a professor who went up and started like hugging the protesters and showing support for them. And you know who that professor was? It's Karen Swalwell Pryor. And the people who were pro-LGBT, I remember this, were even posting things on social media about how much they appreciated Karen Swalwell Pryor.

Why do they appreciate her so much? There's another one, I think it was the same year, where she had just come out with this book called Engaging Culture. In the forward to the book, she says, or the intro, whatever, she says that everyone who's contributed to the book is an Orthodox Christian.

Guess what? Matthew Vines contributed a whole chapter and he supported same-sex marriage. And Matthew Vines somehow, I guess, is an Orthodox believer. Now, Karen Swalwell Pryor did book signings on the campus of Liberty University, even though that position, that idea, would contradict Liberty's code of conduct and it would give students reasons to question Liberty University's code of conduct.

But here she is doing these book signings. This is the kind of Karen Swalwell Pryor that made, I think, conservative Christians uncomfortable because they're like, hold on, we have a code here. We have a student code of conduct.

Why are you undermining it? Why is it that, I mean, she's endorsed revoiced theology, even though she's kind of tried to distance herself from revoiced now. Why is it that she ends up being so loved by people that are in these particular groups of people, LGBT, pro-LGBT folks, why?

Why do they, because she's, I don't think it's just because she's so reasonable and everyone else is foaming at the mouth. I think it's because she validates them to some extent and she validates their arguments to some extent.

She tries to find common ground with them. And then she's harsh against those, she punches to the right exclusively, pretty much. And so that's the reason I think that there's a frustration with her or has been.

Then came the election of Trump, accusations of sexual assault and his very fine people on both sides comments after the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville. Yeah, he, again, this dead, fine people on both sides.

Yeah, people who supported the Robert E. Lee statue. And then people who were against the Robert E. Lee statue, they were fine people. If you look at the context of his comment, he wasn't sent, anyway, it's Washington Post spin.

When Pryor arrived at the National Mall in January to see Trump address the March for Life, the first president to do so live, she looked out over the MAGA hats and felt deflated. She'd chaperoned a big group of Liberty students by bus to the march.

The group from Lynchburg was there, she was there with Charlie Kirk, a young right-wing leader who, what? Who was with other leaders and they were, it says, they had recently been shown making white power signs and comments that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler.

I don't know what to do, you just laugh, I guess. Then as Trump addressed the crowd, Pryor was overwhelmed. It was like some O. Henry short story. We got what we wanted, a quote-unquoted pro-life president and this was not what I wanted, she recalled her.

So this is just, anyway, let's just skip ahead. This is, I don't even know if I can finish this article. Later that year, hundreds of Liberty students protested Kirk's presence on campus and his contracts there wasn't renewed.

I don't know what they're talking about. I would have been at Liberty, I think at the time. Hundreds, I don't think it was hundreds. And I don't even know, I don't even think that was the reason that his contract ended.

But that's the Washington Post spin on this. Soon after, Pryor left Liberty and began teaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Tensions with fellow conservative Christians, however, only intensified.

Some savaged her on social media for comparing abortion deaths to COVID deaths. Yeah, because she had a whole tweet thread basically about John MacArthur and how terrible John MacArthur's church was for opening during COVID and that this was not consistent with being pro-life.

And it was like, what? You're comparing what John MacArthur's doing to murdering children. It makes no sense. But if you start doing that with people, calling them in even a veiled way murderers when they're not, people do tend to get upset.

And that's not exactly a winsome. So to make her out like she's the victim and standing apart from all this controversy is ridiculous. Oh man, all right, I'm just gonna skip ahead here because it's more of the same on so much of this.

Let's see. They talk about the criticism we get isn't about how we spend our time and money, she said, but how we act and what we say. I think it's more posture, our attitude, our rhetoric towards the other issues.

Okay, other pro-life issues, not just murdering. That involves not just quality of life, but literal lives, whether it's the lives of refugees, black lives, or anyone who's is oppressed, that is the heart of it.

And so that's her answer against the argument that I brought or the distinction really I brought, which is that there's life issues, there's quality of life issues. And she's trying to say, well, it's not quality of life, it's literal lives because these black lives matter and refugees lives matter.

And of course they do. So I would agree that if what you're trying to say is we shouldn't just kill them, murder them, then agreed. If there's a law on the books that supports that, then we shouldn't do that.

But guess what? There's no laws that support that. So it's not the same thing, Karen Swallow Pryor. The pair was later asked about how abortion opponents should look at voting. Okay, let's see here. I'm gonna skip ahead again.

They cover a little bit the gospel coalition's debate between Scott Klusendorf and Karen Swallow Pryor. She talks about, she makes fun of Christians who say, I'll get martyred for Christ, but they won't get a COVID shot, which is just...

I don't even know if it deserves comment. Let me just read for you the end of this article, okay? Soon all the peach cobbler was gone. The sun was down, Pryor was exhausted. She said her goodbyes and headed in to the dark for home.

So it's so descriptive. It puts her in this really favorable light, Karen Swallow Pryor. She's adored by the mainstream media, which you would think a conservative Christian just normally wouldn't be.

And you have to ask yourself, why then is Karen Swallow Pryor? And the reason is not because she's just, everyone else has rabies, and she's the only reasonable one out there. It's because she does the work the media can't do because the media lacks something.

They lack credibility. They don't have the full ear of conservative Christians, but they want so badly to get into the mind of conservative Christians. But who does have their ear? Well, maybe Karen Swallow Pryor does.

That's why they have Karen Swallow Pryor say some of the things that they'd like to say. And I don't think it's any more complicated than that. All right, hopefully that was helpful for some of you in understanding why these pieces are out there and what they accomplish and how to read them maybe in the future.

And that's all I got for today. God bless.