Megan Basham talks about her book "Shepherds for Sale"

Conversations That Matter

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00:13

Once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. And many of you have reached out to me really now over the last probably year and a half.

00:23

And you've said, you need to have Megan Basham on the podcast. She's doing some great work. And some of you have asked me, have

00:29

I heard of Megan Basham? You've sent me links. And the answer to that is yes, I have heard of Megan Basham. In fact,

00:34

I really appreciate Megan Basham. I've read her new book, Shepherds for Sale.

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And she is joining me now on the podcast to talk about the book. Welcome, Megan. I know.

00:45

It does seem incredible that I haven't been here because offline, hopefully I'm not like associating you with nefarious people, but we communicate a lot offline.

00:54

Yes. Well, you said it. But you mentioned it in the book as well that there were, you know, it's just not just me.

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There are some other folks that have been tracking some of the compromise and evangelicalism.

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And let me just say this before we get to any of the books. I want to talk about the book.

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But if people want to follow you at Megan Basham, you work for the Daily Wire. So you have this institutional,

01:19

I think, credibility you bring to this. But they can follow your work at Morning Wire as well, which, by the way, that's like one of the biggest podcasts now in conservative media, right?

01:30

Yeah. I think we're in the top 10 and we're in the top 10 of, I know, Apple and Spotify's general news categories.

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So like you'll see NPR, New York Times, and us. Well, congratulations. Thanks. Yeah.

01:44

You've been on Tucker Carlson. Yeah. What are you doing on this podcast? I'm grateful.

01:49

I'm grateful to have you and grateful to talk about this. If people want to find the book too, here it is.

01:55

There's a book. Where can they go? Where would you like them to go? I mean, you can order them anywhere that I believe that sells books,

02:04

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, independent booksellers.

02:09

If you want to go directly to HarperCollins, I think you can click on a link to get hooked up with independent booksellers.

02:16

So I mean, ideally, anywhere they sell books. Okay. And I would encourage people, if you do go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, leave a review, give it a high rating.

02:24

I've noticed, Megan, maybe you've seen this on Goodreads, because I just went in there to say, yeah, I've read this. There's already some bad reviews and I'm thinking -

02:33

I'm being review bombed? I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, okay. Sorry to bring that back. It's not, it's only like a few reviews because not many people have read it yet, but yeah, that's like the case with every conservative book now.

02:46

So make sure if you read it and you liked it, let Amazon or whoever know, Goodreads, whatever.

02:53

So Megan, let me ask you this story. Let me set it up because we talked about this off camera. I think the first time we had any kind of interaction was on Facebook Messenger back when

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Enemies Within the Church came out. So I'm trying to think, maybe that was like 2021, late 2021, something like that.

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And I just reached out to say, thank you. I really appreciate you covering this because you wrote a story.

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And in the story, you gave the impression that you were very open to what Enemies Within the

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Church was saying and including about funding from nefarious sources coming into evangelicalism, but not necessarily your viewpoint.

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You weren't adopting that view. Now of course, you are like the poster child for saying there's compromise in evangelicalism and social justice is written all over that compromise.

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So tell me how you went from A to B a little bit. Yeah. So, I mean, that was not long after I had come to the

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Daily Wire. I was at World Magazine before. I mean, I had worked in evangelical journalism almost my entire career.

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I mean, you know, and when I say career, I always feel like I want people to know. I understand I wasn't out pounding the pavement for decades.

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I mean, there was a lot of years when I was taking on easy, light assignments as a mom who was working from home.

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So I wasn't like, you know, doing deep investigative work just because that wasn't the season of life I was in.

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But then, you know, like a lot of people right around, probably started in 2019 is when

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I started to notice it. And I went, I'm kind of, I don't feel good about some of the things I'm hearing coming from formerly trusted institutions.

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And I was, you know, nowhere near the level of engagement or understanding that you and some others were, but I at least started hearing the alarm bells.

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And, you know, I experienced it in my professional life. I experienced it at our church, at our kids'

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Christian school. So it was like on a number of fronts, it was coming to a head where I went, wait, what am

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I hearing? That's not, you know, like when I got a letter from our kids' ministry director at our church saying, here's how you can talk to them about their white privilege.

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That was like a record scratch moment for me where I was like, excuse me? So I just was aware of all of these things going on.

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And that was part of why I ended up going to The Daily Wire, just because I really wanted the freedom to be on the outside of the evangelical world pursuing some stories.

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But at that time, I didn't even know what they would be. I just knew that I wanted to be able to talk about those things as bracingly as I wanted to talk about them.

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And it was probably like very shortly after that, because I started at The Daily Wire in May of 2021,

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I got a pitch from somebody. I don't even know how they got my email, but a pitch from somebody for this movie,

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Enemies Within the Church. And I came from World as a film and television editor.

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And I was like, well, this sounds interesting. Yeah, send me the link to this film. And as I was watching it, that was one of the very early exposures that I had to what was going on within all of these, not all, but within a lot of evangelical institutions.

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And right before I left World, too, the Founders documentary,

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By What Standard, was another. And they were kind of back to back. And so that was sort of my introduction.

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And I watched that movie and I found it really compelling. And having not looked into any of it myself and knowing that, look, any film can be a one -sided presentation of facts.

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And you have to know that a documentary can often be extremely compelling. And then if you go look at it, you may take a look at some of the facts presented in that documentary and come to a different view later.

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So you hedge your bets by saying, hey, this is really compelling. And here's why

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I think it works. And I think at the time, the other thing that shocked me was the reaction to that film, which was not at all disputing the assertions that it made.

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It was the how dare you bring these issues up? How dare you even make these allegations?

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And I kind of went, well, hang on a minute. That's not how you respond to it. If you think it's wrong, tell me why it's wrong.

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And I remember I think it was Adam Greenway at the time. Yes.

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At Southwestern Seminary. And I mean, I barely even understood what Southwestern Seminary was at that time.

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But saw on social media was doing that sort of shaming. And that bugged me because I went, well, why are you doing this?

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Why are you running interference for a film that, as far as I know, doesn't even involve you? That was bizarre to me.

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So anyway, that's a long winded way to say that was probably my first introduction.

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And at that point, I did start looking into a lot of it myself going, OK, well, how legitimate are some of these allegations?

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And over time, I went, one, a lot of people have been here before me, but they're not people that are maybe able to get the word out to the level that someone who's been around the block a few times has been.

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And I always feel like I want to preface everything. And I try to do that in the acknowledgments of the book to say, look,

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I understand that a lot of spade work was done before I got there. And I'm so grateful for it by people like you, by a lot of really good journalists who are dismissed as bloggers, you know, and I'm like, no, they were doing really good work.

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And when you check their facts, they're right. Yeah. And I appreciate that acknowledgment and that humility.

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It's, I think, a way to minimize opposition and and I don't have a journalism degree.

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Right. I have a history degree. I have an English degree. So. Oh, OK. All right. So, yeah, I mean, I have two grad degrees.

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So, you know, I thought maybe that would give me something. And one of them is from a prestige, you know, quote unquote, prestigious

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Southern Baptist school. But but it doesn't seem to get you anywhere once you're critiquing the complex, the evangelical industrial complex.

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And, you know, to just maybe make the connection from A to B a little tighter. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.

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It seemed to me that the Me Too stuff was where you really started to see. Wait a minute. There is a big

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Eva. I remember I think you tweeted that or you you said it somewhere that, oh, my goodness, there is a big

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Eva. And it had something to do with the Me Too stuff in the SBC. Yeah. And that was kind of the early stuff when

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I said these alarm bells started going off. Even before I got to The Daily Wire, that was one of the very early alarm bells was if everyone remembers the

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John Crist scandal when the comedian John Crist was rightly criticized for being engaged in sexual sin.

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I mean, that was very clear. And there was no reason for anybody to hold back and saying, hey, this is sexual sin.

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It needs to be confronted. He definitely needs to not be performing in churches. And he needs to explain why he's been behaving this way.

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And I had no problem with any of that as we were covering it at World Magazine. But I started to hear a lot of commentary that wasn't biblical at all, where people were saying like there was an

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Ed Stetzer co -authored op -ed saying, you know, these women were not at fault.

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You know, these are victims. And I went, that's not the story I read. Where do you get where did you get victims?

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These are women who willingly participated in sexual, adult women willingly participating in sexual sin with John Crist, with one possible exception.

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And none of these women were named. So it's really hard to follow up and get any more details about those stories.

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But that was really disturbing to me that even the way that Charisma magazine laid out the

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John Crist case made it very clear that all but one of those women willingly participated in sin.

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So I couldn't understand that that was the position that literally every single member of the evangelical media that I saw or, you know, institutional leadership that I saw that addressed this case, that was how they framed it was this was an abuse case.

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And, you know, I just went, no, that's not biblical. And you talk about that case in the book quite a bit.

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You also and you talk about a number of cases, but the Jennifer Liel one also kind of looms large, which

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I mean, that one's fascinating to me. And we've talked about it on the podcast before. Not you and me, but I've mentioned it with other people on the podcast.

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And I guess we could go over some of the details of it, but it's very similar. It seems like a number of these cases where there was adultery, it was framed as if there was actually abuse in the male in the relationship was the abuser.

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And if you didn't get on board, you were somehow a pariah. You were sexist or misogynistic.

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And that and that really leads us to where I want to get. And I don't know. I didn't know when we were going to get to this, but I want to give you the chance to talk about Rachel Denhollander and her influence in the

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SBC and in evangelicalism broadly, because she seems to be the main one behind this push to categorize things in that way.

12:04

Yeah, and, you know, I do write about her quite a bit in the book, and part of the reason is because she has had such an outsized influence on all of these institutions.

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And I write very specifically about the SBC to some degree. But it's also important to know that she's also having an influence in the

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PCA and among the Anglicans and that, you know, this church curriculum that she and J .D.

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Greer helped create and is being promoted and, you know, just across the evangelical landscape, it has a reverberating impact.

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And so I think that was part of the reason it was really important to talk about her specific influence on the

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SBC, because it's emblematic of what we're seeing all across evangelicalism. And so when you look at her influence, what

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I see is that she was used as a steering mechanism for all of these other institutions.

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So Rachel Denhollander, with her incredible credibility coming off of the

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Larry Nassar case. So she was the first accuser of Olympic doctor Larry Nassar.

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And everybody was impressed by what she did there. I mean, yeah, everybody felt that was a heroic moment.

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It was a moment that so many people felt that. The truth of the gospel, one, that you are a great sinner, and two, that there is repentance available even for you was just on full display across the media.

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And so that was understandably something that everybody was really moved by. But then you fast forward a few years and that moment was extrapolated out to say she is now an expert on anything that happens in the arena of abuse or how churches should handle abuse.

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And one, it wasn't clear why that should be the case, that if one has experienced abuse, does that make them an expert in all aspects of abuse and the only person that should be listened to?

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Right. And I would have argued that, no, that was not the case. And so when you looked at the SBC and how it was handling the abuse issue at every step of the way,

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Rachel Denhollander was not just calling the shots. She was almost the only legitimate opinion that anybody would consider.

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I mean, when I looked at the SBC, for example, they had her first, she was the person who advised

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Southern Seminary on how to respond to Jennifer Lyle's accusations. And then she was the person who represented

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Jennifer Lyle against the SBC executive committee. And then she was the person who the task force then looked to to say, we should get

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Guidepost in here to be the people to investigate the executive committee. And then

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Guidepost used her as the person saying, this is how we know that what happened at Southern Seminary was adjudicated correctly.

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And you went, OK, so wait, she advised Southern Seminary on how to handle those allegations.

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And then Guidepost, she recommended Guidepost and then Guidepost used how

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Southern Seminary handled it as proof that it was handled well. And so and that just, you know, that just that's the tip of the iceberg, because she was also the person who helped co -write the resolutions to demand that attorney client privilege not be maintained during the investigation.

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Later, there were leaks that revealed that she was both advising callers to the

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SBC abuse hotline at the same time that connecting them to legal representation, excuse me, at the same time that she was advising the task force.

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So she was on both sides of that question. So the upshot of all of that was that it was just it should have been a violation of major ethical boundaries.

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But because it was Rachel Denhollander, there was no sober minded approach to how are we handling this?

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Like to me, any normally functioning organization would have said this cannot be the only voice speaking into all of this.

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Yeah, yeah. And that was an issue that I saw early on. You were really sharp on and I think you had run the numbers or you had someone you talked to, someone who advised you on the numbers that they were promoting, essentially framed the

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SBC as this abuse characterized institution. A diseased orchard, if you want to borrow.

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Yeah, yeah. And in the New York Times and all these major media companies with headlines about how terrible it is.

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And you were one of the few who said, wait a minute, let's actually look at these numbers. This isn't the big deal that they're saying.

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It is not that, you know, of course, the comeback is like any abuse is wrong, obviously.

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But it's not this systemic thing that's just happening everywhere.

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And and it just I don't know what to attribute this to still, even though I'm in this world,

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I'm looking at these things. I know some of the players involved. I think a lot of people have the same questions

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I do. And that's what was that about? Why was Rachel Denhollander the person?

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Was it left wing money with her? Was it who elected her the prophetess to come and teach us all about abuse?

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The whole thing just seems weird to me when I look back at it. And I don't know if you've come to any conclusions. I'm cynical and I think there's, you know, there's self -serving things going on there.

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But what explains everyone losing their minds and waiving attorney client privilege and that kind of thing?

18:06

Well, I mean, I mean, it is a very sort of multi pronged effort there that I go, what were different people's motivations?

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If you look at someone like Russell Moore, you can go all the way back to twenty eighteen. You know, he clearly had some personal enemies within the executive committee.

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And this was an issue that he seemed to suddenly take up to pursue those enemies with allegations that later in no way proved to have any grounding.

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If you remember, he talked about an abuse apocalypse. He talked about the executive committee.

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And I don't I don't have his exact verbiage in front of me, but it was something to the effect that they absolutely, horrifically mistreated this victim,

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Jennifer Lyle. And then by the time the Guidepost report came out and you read what these internal communications said between these members of the executive committee, who would have had no reason at that time to ever suspect that anyone else would ever see them were extremely mild, extremely respectful.

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And nobody ever came back to Russell Moore and said, how did you make those allegations at the twenty nineteen conference from the stage that that this woman was severely mistreated when there was never any evidence that she was severely mistreated?

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It's strange. Russell Fuller even talks about that in the meetings at Southern Seminary. And he's public about this now, but I'm sure you've talked to him.

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But he says that it was like someone flipped a switch and all of a sudden, you know, Al Moeller is even saying she was abused.

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And like, that's an important thing to emphasize. And this was for those who don't know, because we were bantering these names around.

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But Jennifer Lyle was a student of David Sills, a professor at Southern Seminary. Well, actually, it's not clear that she was ever his student.

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They were at the seminary at the same time. But he has not. OK, good. I asked you that.

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I don't know if she was my student and she has not said she was his student. They were just there on the seminary campus.

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He was close to the family somehow. Like there was a relationship there. And but they would rendezvous when she moved away.

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They would drive hours to see each other and rendezvous. And so every, you know, situation that they went through looked like an affair, classic textbook.

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And it's framed as abuse because of power dynamics. So this was one of,

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I guess, many cases to come that are seek to undermine the

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SBC as this abuse, abusive place. And you were one of the brave people,

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I think, that called Rachel Denhollander out for that. You took the shots for it.

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That's when I remember you saying something about like there is a big Eva because you had all these people coming after you who had been nice to you.

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And yes, it makes sense. Why? You know, I guess they just don't like the truth. Yeah, that was a harrowing experience and that was maybe, you know, my sort of running the gauntlet because everybody sort of treated me as at least someone who even if we don't love what she's reporting, she is a respectable member of the media.

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And I had interviewed people like Russell Moore and J .D. Greer in the past. At that point, though,

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I remember there was like a unified front from all the seminary presidents and from SBC President Bart Barber and I think a few other people put out a statement that was very clearly intended to discredit me and suggest that I was asking questions or even suggesting that maybe there was more to the story, that it was very disreputable for me to have done that.

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And I feel like, you know, I want to go back and say, you know, part of you asked why.

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And I think two reasons is one, you did have Rachel Denhollander on the scene so quickly at Southern Seminary when these allegations were brought up.

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And I have no doubt that that certainly shaped the response. But also there was a moment in time, just like with the

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George Floyd death, that was the height of the Me Too movement. And it always feels like when there is this flash moment in the culture, there is a corresponding scramble among evangelical institutions to position themselves in the same way as however, you know, the dominant culture is positioning itself in relation to that issue.

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So I do think that's part of what we saw. Did it surprise you when you found people that had been nice to you and treating you with some modicum of respect to see them turn on you like that because you pursued the truth and the truth wasn't convenient for them?

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Yeah, it did surprise me somewhat, though not entirely. I mean, I think

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I knew with that issue, I knew there would be blowback. What I think what's the blowback didn't surprise me as much as how organized it was, like it was very clear that meetings had taken place and that we are going to collectively as institutional leadership put out a statement and that the overwhelming power of our institutional respectability should overwhelm this one journalist out there.

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And then hopefully my sense was hopefully she will tuck her tail in and slink away embarrassed about what she said.

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And that didn't happen. And Me Too is just one of the chapters. You actually so people know who get the book and you should all get the book because this has the chapter and verse.

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I don't even know how many citations are in here. There's a bunch. But, you know, you did your homework. But you have climate change.

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You talk about immigration, abortion, all these different issues that I think evangelicals have wondered, why is my church saying things that don't make sense?

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They didn't say this even five years ago or 10 years ago. And now I'm supposed to think that climate change is a pro -life issue.

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I don't get it. And you explain a lot of this, not just the sources of how the left wing is coming in with money and influence, but you explain some of the even theological problems in the dynamic.

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I know that wasn't the purpose of your book, but you do give an explainer to why there's a problem there. To pick one of the other issues in the book, the climate change thing fascinated me a little bit because you have a whole section on Southeastern and I went to Southeastern.

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I have a MDiv from Southeastern and Lederbach, Mark Lederbach was my ethics professor there.

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So I had to read his book, True North, which is about some of these creation care issues.

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And it's a lot more mild than Jonathan Moo or Hayhoe, Catherine Hayhoe.

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But that edge was there even in my ethics class. I remember that.

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I remember thinking that climate change was a problem, that this was man caused.

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It was vague as far as like what the solution should be. But this was reinforced to pastors, aspiring pastors who are going to enter pulpits.

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And that's 2017. And Mark is, I should say this because, you know, Mark, people who like Mark are going to listen to this.

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I thought Mark was, as far as a person, a great guy. And a lot of these guys are. That's not all of them, but there are many who you think that their intentions may be good and they seem to come across in an affable way.

25:23

But the framing and the shifting and the way that students who 10 years perhaps before would never have been taught that stuff are now being taught this stuff is scary.

25:33

So anyway, I am I'm rambling, but I want to get to your perspective on this as a

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Southern Baptist in a Southern Baptist church. You look at a lecture from, let's say, Jonathan Moo, and I saw this exchange where you talked to Ken Keithley.

25:49

Actually, no, it was Catherine Hayhoe. I think you went online or I don't know if you have private chats, too, but you engage

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Ken Keithley, the professor there who conducted the interview. And the only response you got from the outside perspective, from what

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I saw, was essentially that you don't understand. We're presenting all perspectives. We're an academic institution.

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You're framing things like it's gaslighting. They're accusing you of what they're doing, like you're the one that's slanted and reading things through this highly selective lens.

26:22

And so many people that I know have gotten that same run around. And so now that you're used to it, how do you how do you handle that when that happens?

26:33

What do you see as your mission when you have the truth and the people that should normally honor the truth aren't going to honor it?

26:43

Because you just wrote a whole book exposing this. Leadership's not going to change.

26:49

You could stare them in the face and say, this is what happened. What do you expect to happen? What do you think should happen? Well, at first,

26:56

I'm not above thinking I could be wrong and that I'm always certain I have the truth as far as, you know, some individual issue goes like this climate change issue.

27:08

I went, OK, maybe I missed something. I'm you know, I'm infallible. I'm fallible, excuse me, not infallible.

27:16

Someone's going to clip that. I'm just going to say, but I'm fallible. It's entirely possible

27:22

I could have missed something. So I typically will come back with, OK, show me then if you are presenting other sides to this and you have welcomed people to your campus who have presented a presentation where they are saying, actually, we don't think that climate change is a human caused existential crisis that requires the church to engage on an activist level, then show me that.

27:49

And, you know, I'll go ahead and I'll correct the record on that. But they don't do that. So I think that's one. They may show me something that's sort of neutral to positive, but that's not the same thing if you have a

28:00

Jonathan Moo literally saying bicarbonate credits from my friends at Arosha, on which

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I sit on the board. Right. So if you're going to counterbalance that, you better counterbalance it with somebody who's really coming in, bringing a we're going to interrogate that position.

28:15

And that hasn't happened. And to this day, when I ask, no one has shown me that. And I've searched and not found it.

28:21

So can Keith Lee say something like Liederbach was the more conservative voice of a right, which

28:27

I'm like, and he was my professor. So I'm like, that's not true. Right. And in fact,

28:33

I asked some people, you know, you know, a few people came in and said, well, Cal Beisner, whose

28:38

Cornwall Alliance you recommend as one of what as one of those counterbalance voices he endorsed.

28:46

Is it leader Mark Liederbach? Mark Liederbach. Mark Liederbach. He endorsed Mark Liederbach, which

28:52

I will then go and ask Cal Beisner, who leads the Cornwall Alliance, which is a group that is critical of these kind of efforts.

29:03

Yeah. And so when I ask him, he says, I would not make that endorsement today. I made it then.

29:09

And seeing where that has gone, I would not make that endorsement today. So I do follow up and I do go say,

29:15

OK, how do you respond to this? And what was part two of your question,

29:20

John? It was honestly a very open ended question. That was more of my frustration.

29:27

It was really just what do you do after you meet this impasse where you've delved deeply, you've gotten all the facts, you show these people expecting them to be

29:35

Christians and to adjust to that, maybe retract themselves or at least admit that you're showing them the truth.

29:42

They don't do it. I don't know what like I think that's what a lot of people have a question about is that they're stuck in this limbo and they don't know what step two is because all the leadership is telling them they're the crazy ones.

29:53

Right. I mean, my my approach is I will just continue to lay out the facts as I have them.

30:01

And I'm not going to back down from institutional respectability. I mean, if they are going to come to me and say we have something else that complicates what you've presented, then sure.

30:11

But if it's simply how dare you criticize this revered person? Well, I'm not going to do that.

30:17

But as far as what happens after that, I kind of feel like that's not my mission. You know what

30:22

I mean? I feel like institutional leadership, how they are addressed needs to come from other leaders within the church.

30:31

And that's not me. And, you know, I see some organizations being founded, the

30:37

Center for Baptist Leadership, the founders, the CBN, other groups like that.

30:43

Those are the groups that to me, if someone is going to push back on the people who hold the levers of power right now, then that's up to them.

30:52

I'm just here to provide the information. So, I mean, I always hope I would like, you know, somebody who is a

30:58

Southern Baptist and who is in these institutions, I want to see change. And, you know, when you see a new president elected like this year, you go,

31:06

I hope it's different. I hope that they see it and they hear it. Right. But I do think that that is part of the problem.

31:13

As you go as a journalist, it's just not my job to do anything more beyond that than to give you the information.

31:19

And then it's up to everyone else out in the world to go do something with it. I think I'm just trying to channel people's frustration.

31:26

That's the thing that you laid out so well in your book. And I think it is going to move the needle.

31:32

I think people are going to bring this up. It exposes things. I just know a lot of people have gotten discouraged when they bring it up and then it's like they're told they're crazy.

31:40

They're told they're not seeing it right. And and they're clearly like that's not true.

31:46

They actually are rooted in the facts. What's the most? Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Well, I was going to say, and I don't want my saying that I don't want people to feel discouraged like there is no reverse momentum happening here, because I do think there is.

32:02

It may not be the satisfying someone coming out and saying, I got it all wrong. And every once in a while you see someone who says that I repent.

32:11

Rosario. Yeah. You saw Rosario say that. And you saw Andrew Walker, for example, do that on the

32:17

Love Your Neighbor COVID shots. He came out and said, I got that wrong. I apologize.

32:22

I repent of that. And I have so much respect for that. That's going to be really rare. What you tend to see more is just a repositioning and people pretending like they were over there the whole time.

32:32

It frustrates me so much. But it is so frustrating. But in a weird way, it's also a little bit of a victory, right? Because you're like, that just shows you that you've been effective and the needle has moved.

32:42

Otherwise, there wouldn't be this rush to get into the new respectable place. Yeah. So I think that's good.

32:49

And then the other thing, since we brought up Kal Beisner, and I talk about him at the end of my book, he was such an inspirational figure to me, because he's one lone ...

32:59

At the beginning of the climate change issue in evangelicalism, he was like a lone guy.

33:04

And you saw some really powerful institutions, secular left -wing institutions, saying our efforts were thwarted by a professor who was only opposing us part -time.

33:19

And we had millions of dollars and all of these networks and this one guy just on the phone to people getting in their ear, trying to alert them to the problem.

33:30

So it does have an impact. And you don't have to have equal resources to have an impact.

33:38

I mean, we're a David and Goliath people. So to me, that was an absolute David and Goliath story. And I think that's another thing we should take encouragement from.

33:46

Yeah. Amen. And I know a number of people have been praying that there would be a journalist or someone to kind of hold these people's feet to the fire a little bit.

33:57

And I think you focusing on this is an answer to that, to some extent.

34:03

Some of the organizations you talk about, Evangelical Environmental Network, Evangelical Climate Initiative, Evangelical Immigration Table.

34:11

I'm noticing a trend. The Ann Campaign, the Lilly Endowment, Arcus Foundation, Democracy Fund.

34:17

I was just writing these down and I didn't know about all of these. Like the Lilly Endowment, I didn't know that they had given Christianity Today all this money.

34:24

And RNS, I'm always seeing Religion News Service bandied about as this reputable website.

34:30

And I knew that they were compromised, but I didn't know it was the Arcus Foundation that was and totally radical left giving them all this money.

34:38

And it makes you, I don't know, it's a little bit of a sigh of relief in a way because you think, OK, at least there's some really bad guys pumping money into this.

34:49

It's not all like just the evangelical leaders have all gone crazy. But I am open to the idea that the evangelical leaders have all gone crazy.

34:58

Like that is still a possibility. So I want to ask you, when you look at that, what do you think?

35:05

I don't know if you want to put percentages on it, but some people like when I started looking into this,

35:10

I know there are guys who came to me and that's what they thought. It was just money. It's just dark money.

35:16

That's all it is. Kern Family Foundation was the big one. I don't think you mentioned them. I didn't. But that was the one at the time because all the seminaries were getting ready as well.

35:26

I mean, that was a little bit. Yeah, that was a little old. So I didn't really get into that much in the book. I tried to stay, you know, the last 10 years or so.

35:33

But which I think was good. Yeah. James Riotti. And then, of course, the Soros thing, though, has been a constant.

35:40

But some people comfort themselves, I think, with that because it means if you can just cut off the money or expose the money, then you solve the problem.

35:48

I'm not convinced that's true. I wonder whether there's because I trace more the ideological roots of stuff.

35:54

And it seems to me there's a whole lot of elites who really want to go this direction. But I'm just curious from you, like, what do you think would happen if we cut off the money?

36:04

I mean, like, to what extent is this a money problem or an ideology problem or both? Yeah. And, you know, that's something that I try to stress in the book and stress in some interviews because I get people like you who think there's just, you know, someone coming in, twirling their mustache, passing checks under the table.

36:20

And it's not like that. It's more of a soft influence game. So when you talk about all of these evangelical institutions that, you know,

36:29

I mean, they are front groups in their AstroTurf campaigns with evangelical in the title, like Evangelical Immigration Table or it's more giving money to the people who were already willing to be that guy.

36:43

You know what I mean? They were already the people who I think are the sort who want to glom on to whatever the fashionable cause is and baptize it with some

36:53

Christianese and say, we're doing what the culture is doing too, see? But we're doing it for different reasons.

36:59

We're doing it for gospel reasons. They're just doing it for other reasons. But we're all doing it together. So nobody despises us.

37:06

So I think it is a tendency for the people who are already there to set up organizations that are then funded.

37:14

So yeah, it's not like an individual person is bought in a really transactional way with,

37:21

I will say, maybe one exception of a man who was named grantee in George Soros documents who has made such a 180.

37:30

And that would be Russell Moore. To this day, I don't know why he is named a grantee in George Soros documents, but it is literally the only time

37:39

I saw it. Yeah, that was, I think, 2015 for the...

37:44

Wasn't it a shooting out in California or something had happened? It was a Muslim. And anyway, they were saying, this is great that we have

37:52

Russell Moore to kind of soften the evangelicals. As our grantee, yeah. But it wasn't really clear what that was all about.

37:59

So normally, an organization is named, not an individual.

38:06

Yeah. What was the most surprising thing you saw that you just thought, wow, I cannot believe that's happening?

38:14

Probably getting into the LGBT issue. You brought up Arcus Foundation.

38:21

I found the fact that we're so far down the road shocking.

38:26

I found the fact that when I confronted a Saddleback, when I reached out to them and said, explain to me why you have this affirming curriculum in four different, some type of Bible study, small groups within your church, and you have a pastor on staff who is speaking at openly affirming

38:49

Arcus funded events. What is your response to that?

38:54

How are you planning to handle that? That they just didn't answer at all, that they just removed that stuff off the web, but were so brazen that they went, we just don't have to respond to it at all.

39:04

And also Andy Stanley, just that it had been, it had gone so far down the road that he felt no fear to have a conference that had extremely openly affirming, married to a man, married to a married, let me put the quotes, married to another man speaking at these conferences.

39:30

I don't know that I realized the hour was that late. And those things, some of those things happened as I was working on the book.

39:38

So that was jarring to me to go, I knew we were in peril on that issue.

39:43

I didn't know how much, and I also want to know, well, just really quickly that that organization, the

39:51

Reformation Project, which is funded by this hard left secular

39:56

LGBT foundation, they have a group called

40:02

Pastors in Process. It is a confidential program that openly says, we will teach you pastors how to quietly and carefully nudge your congregations towards being affirming.

40:19

And you match that up with some of the language you hear out there from some pastors on this issue. And then you suddenly wonder how many pastors have been through this confidential program?

40:29

Yeah. And I think I said this off air, so I'll say it on air. You make a brilliant point, I thought, that these guys who in their churches are so shallow on theological terms will dive really deeply into systemic oppression and white privilege and things from these leftist systems.

40:48

And they'll dazzle you with their knowledge of this. And so you have to learn it and provide, as you just said, trainings, whether it's

40:55

LGBT acceptance, normalization, whether it's Me Too, like the Caring Well, or CRT stuff.

41:01

They have, it's almost like theological training classes, only it's not theology that you're learning to integrate with your faith or your,

41:11

I guess, whatever Christianity you have. It's the trauma informed approach. It's the

41:17

CRT language and all of it. Yes. It's highly technical. Exactly. So I think laymen get confused and then they'll just say,

41:25

I just trust my pastor. Like my pastor knows what he's doing. I don't understand all that jargon. Some, of course, do.

41:32

And they push back and they suffer the consequences. But I wanted to ask you about Title IX because you talk about this a little bit.

41:40

And I see Preston Sprinkle with the LGBT stuff as he's like the explainer, not just for the cultures going this direction and, hey, church, let's try to understand our culture.

41:53

It seems like it's more or it's in addition to that, it's the government is also suppressing the church and Christian institutions,

42:02

Christian schools in particular. And there's a lot of money to be made if you're the guy who can navigate this.

42:08

So your institution survives and isn't stuck in lawsuits. So Title IX, this is an excuse that I've seen brought up a number of times.

42:19

Well, I'm saying this is my bias. I say it's an excuse. But people think it's legitimate that our school has to have a

42:25

Title IX office of DEI because we're required to by law. So I know you don't get into this extremely deeply, but you do mention

42:34

DEI or you do mention Title IX rather. What's the deal with that? Are you required as a

42:41

Christian institution, like a school? It's really, I guess, for schools to have that office and to...

42:47

What are the, if you know, the limitations on that? And just to get people away from using these nonsense secular training seminars.

42:57

Yeah. If you take federal funding, then you're going to answer to them. And that is the case on Title IX.

43:03

And I think that's why you're seeing a move from some of these smaller Christian colleges to go, we have to get out of taking any federal funding and we have to sort of move to the

43:12

Hillsdale model because otherwise we're reaching an age now where that freedom of religion is not going to be respected.

43:23

And what Title IX can be used to do is create a fog of condemnation around your campus without any understanding of what the individual allegations were.

43:37

And so for those who don't know, Title IX was put in place by the

43:42

Obama administration to completely change the understanding of what abuse is on college campuses.

43:51

And it used trumped up statistics, really ridiculous statistics, like one in four women are raped on college campuses, which, you know, like I said, in the book,

44:02

I found even, you know, very liberal writers who went, no, no, no, no, no. Elegant Slate Magazine going, if that were true, college women in America are being raped at the same rate as women in the

44:13

Congo, where it's a weapon of war. So that's just not possible that that is true.

44:19

But nobody was questioning these sort of really hyperbolic terms and unfounded statistics.

44:25

And so based on that, the Obama administration put in place a reporting system that did not have any of the due process of the courts where you could cross -examine your accusers, where, you know, you had the right to be judged by a jury of your peers, where there was separation between the investigator and the person who is rendering condemnation on you.

44:51

None of the things that we have in our basic legal system. So it was an extra legal system that ran parallel to the legal system and wasn't answerable to it.

45:00

And that was where all of these things were adjudicated. And, you know, as one judge said, it was closer to,

45:08

I think, Salem 1692. And that was really striking because the purpose, what it did was it gave the federal government control over all of these campuses.

45:20

So when they took that charge saying we have a crisis of abuse on college campuses, therefore we need this new bureaucracy and we need this new investigative system that will be apart from our normal legal system, that gave them all of this power over college campuses.

45:40

And as I looked at the SBC in this case, it was the exact same pathway that was followed, the exact same mechanisms for arguing it.

45:50

And so, you know, when you look at something like Title IX, people are very emotionally manipulated to go,

45:57

I don't want women to be abused on college campuses. So, yes, I am for this.

46:03

And they don't look at, well, what is being required of me to say I'm against women being abused?

46:09

What am I agreeing to? Because you could also say, well, you know how I'm going to keep women from being raped? I am going to assume that every man is a potential rapist and keep a file on him.

46:20

Well, we don't do that in our country for a lot of really good reasons. But it's something you could do.

46:26

Why don't we? Because it's not just. And so anyway, what you're seeing is unlike our actual system, something that is based entirely on a secular attempt to seize power rather than a biblical understanding of justice.

46:41

And a presumption of guilt. And that's what's going on with the SBC right now with this task force that wants to create,

46:49

I guess they're in the process of creating this database. Yeah, I mean, it looks like maybe they may back away from it.

46:57

It's still up in the air. So, I mean, that is one where, like I said, I'm here to inform. So I've been banging the drum really loudly to explain to people what, you know, some of this means that when they tell you, well, it's just like in a civil, a civil case in the courts,

47:10

I'm like, no, it's not because you have due process rights in a civil case. You don't have that from some third party investigator.

47:18

Yeah, it's so concerning to me to see this, whether it's on a college campus where they're required to have a

47:25

Title IX office or it's in a Christian organization that maybe they're not required to have that, but they want to follow the leader.

47:32

And it's like they're just going to do what's popular, what the government's doing. Well, and it's even worse for Christian institutions, you know, to bring this full circle back to the

47:42

John Crist issue that we started with. It's that when you are now defining things the way these secular organizations are defining issues like abuse, you're not just potentially wronging men with false allegations or conflating allegations.

48:02

I mean, there is a difference between a sexual sinner and an abuser, and we need to acknowledge that.

48:08

And those distinctions matter. And the reason that they matter is because a sexual sinner is sinning with another sexual sinner.

48:16

And an abuser is leaving an innocent woman. And that matters because you are to shepherd and minister to women.

48:23

And if women are being told, if that man has more power than you, then you're free to sexually sin at will and claim victimhood.

48:31

You are leaving that woman's conscience burdened. And that's an issue. So to me,

48:37

I go, once we strip all that away, you're failing to shepherd that woman by doing that. Yeah.

48:42

No, it really does come back to shepherding. And these are spiritual issues at the end of the day. They are political, but they're not strictly political, of course.

48:52

I got to ask you about this before we end the podcast, because I know this is one of the big organizations that does not like you, and they're so sensitive.

49:01

If there was an award that I could give to the most sensitive organization that I've ever covered in evangelicalism,

49:07

I would give it to the ERLC. They're just so sensitive. Their reputation matters a lot to them.

49:14

And whenever you start saying that there's left -wing money coming into the ERLC, they just get all up in arms.

49:20

We already talked about how they treat you, but you have a number of things in the book.

49:26

You talk about, is it Fetzer, I think? Facebook?

49:32

I didn't know Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg gave the ERLC money. Mark Zuckerberg, mm -hmm. I don't even know about that.

49:38

Biden, now, so the point person at the ERLC who arranged for this, it's not specified, but a criminal reform at the height of that George Floyd moment, saying, we're going to have a criminal reform project, and Facebook's going to give money to the

49:57

ERLC for that. I don't know what it was for. They don't have any documentation of this. He left shortly after to go work for the

50:04

Biden campaign. Oh, well, Democracy Fund, that's another one.

50:09

I think you were recently called out, or someone was called out. I don't know if it was you or someone using your information.

50:16

The guy's name, I thought I had it written down. It was an Indian - Omidyar. Yeah, yeah.

50:22

Pierre Omidyar. He's Iranian, yeah. I say Indian, sorry. Iranian. He's this billionaire,

50:32

I guess, but he's given tons of money, and they just deny this kind of thing, or at least people who work for the

50:39

ERLC just deny that this is happening. I don't know how to explain that. Is it just lying?

50:44

Is it just the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing? They don't really deny it, though. It's more of a how dare you.

50:52

Yeah, that's true, I guess. Yeah, and I remember this is, I think, before you were tracking this stuff, because the

50:59

Soros thing has been from the - That they denied, and that was a lie, yeah. Right, right, but that's been a stickler for a long time.

51:05

And I remember finally, who was it? It wasn't Moore. It was another, it was a staffer, I think, at the

51:10

ERLC. It might have been the guy who leaked the video or the audios with Moore.

51:16

I'm trying to remember the guy's name, but I remember he said something online about, well, hey, even if Soros is funding the

51:23

ERLC, don't you want that? Don't you want left -wing orgs to send their money to us, and then we're going to use it for good purposes?

51:32

I just thought, wow, that's one of the worst defenses you could have made, but - And it was specifically on the immigration issue, which is a very debatable issue.

51:41

And I wanted to clarify, when I said they were lying, I've never - Now, the

51:47

ERLC takes money from other left -wing billionaires, but I didn't allege that they took money directly from Soros.

51:53

But what they did do is this. They were involved in the Evangelical Immigration Table, which has taken money from Soros.

51:59

And it is essentially a front group of a secular, left -wing, open borders organization.

52:07

The Democracy Fund that they have been directing. Right. So there's a little bit of both, but they kind of went, they were conflating.

52:13

I'm always very specific. They were conflating, we didn't take money from Soros. And I went, okay. I didn't say you took money from Soros. I said you took money from all these other people.

52:21

And you're involved in this group that has taken money from Soros. Right. So that is, and the point was, and it was,

52:29

I think it was Richard Land who said, aren't you glad if Soros is giving money? Oh, was it Richard Land? Maybe -

52:34

I think it was. Maybe more than one person said it, but yeah. But it was like, aren't you glad if he's giving money to this effort?

52:40

And I went, well, no. One, an organization, the policy arm for Southern Baptist should really be funded by Southern Baptist because you are going to tend to serve the person who is funding your effort.

52:53

So that's one. And then two, no, because what our policy should be on immigration is a very debatable issue biblically.

53:04

We can all agree that, yes, you should serve the needs, the material needs of a needy person in front of you, regardless if they're here legally or illegally.

53:14

If they're starving, give them a meal. If they don't have the gospel, share the gospel with them.

53:20

Absolutely. But that's not what the Evangelical Immigration Table does at all. What it does is push policy, specifically efforts like the, back in 2015, it was the

53:31

Gang of Eight Bill, which would have legalized millions of illegal immigrants for the low, low price of a thousand dollars.

53:39

So that's one. And then they also backed the Lankford Bill much more recently, just a few months ago.

53:46

So part of what I want to make people understand is that they create sort of this aura of we are doing the gospel work.

53:55

We are doing Christ's work and sharing the gospel. That is not what the Evangelical Immigration Table's purpose is.

54:02

Its purpose has been to lobby for legislation and very debatable legislation.

54:07

Yeah, no, excellent point. What do you hope people do with this as far as, like, they're going to know the truth, so they're going to be aware of what's going on, but what do you hope to accomplish?

54:21

I mean, you kind of already said it, I guess, with like these other organizations that you'd to help kind of move them in a better direction.

54:29

But in exposing these guys, do you want to see better leadership kind of take the mantle and maybe some of these guys get deposed, more or less?

54:41

Yeah, I mean, there are definitely some guys that I would like to see deposed. I think if you have so abused your position for some of these political reasons, then it is reasonable to say you should be disqualified from leading an organization.

54:57

No one's saying you're not a Christian and a brother and that forgiveness isn't possible. But I think you have shown that you cannot be trusted with that level of leadership.

55:06

And, you know, someone like Brent Leatherwood at the ERLC, to me, would be an example of someone who has used that position to pursue some personal political views rather than represent the collective agreed upon views of the

55:21

Southern Baptist Convention. I think that's fair to say. Beyond that, what

55:26

I would like to... One is I would like to wake up a lot of pastors in terms of this trickle -down influence that you see happening, because I think with some of these organizations, the approach is, hey, all your friends are doing this thing and you admire a

55:41

Tim Keller, don't you? Don't you admire Shirley Hoogstra, the president of the

55:47

Council for Christian Colleges? And don't you want to be aligned with them?

55:54

So one, they may be these people's friends, they may look up to them. And so without really thinking the issue through, but with not necessarily nefarious motives, they move to align with that.

56:05

So one, I would like for pastors to take a minute and go, if you don't know what this organization does, don't sign your name to that letter.

56:12

You know, don't just assume that you're aligned with whatever their efforts are because you don't know what they are. So better to do nothing and say, hey, you know what?

56:19

We're just going to do the work of our church here. And we're focusing on what we're doing in our communities rather than getting involved in these movements that we're not really clear what they are and where they're getting money.

56:29

And then also to encourage people in the pews, if you see your church getting involved in some of these efforts, ask some questions.

56:37

Try to get some understanding of, gosh, I don't really understand why we're taking a position on something that's very biblically debatable, like we have to back fossil fuel legislation or cap and trade legislation.

56:52

I feel like maybe that's not our mission as the church. So that's the other thing that I hope to see happen.

56:57

Yeah, we're very supportive. I think the whole podcast audience is very supportive of that because there is this hierarchy beyond the local church that even people in autonomous church structures need to understand exists.

57:08

Your pastor is influenced oftentimes by organizations, whether it's because your pastor wants to be on the conference circuit.

57:17

That's an aspirational thing. Or that's just the information that he's digesting because those are the publications he reads or listens to.

57:27

So I think you've done a great service, Megan, and just putting this information out there. And my prayer is that the

57:32

Lord uses this. I'm sure he already has, but he will use this even more as a corrective so that we can see a purity that emerges from this as people realize kind of what's happened.

57:47

It's just like a stupor that people have been under some people. And we need to wake up from that and realize that we have a book.

57:55

We have the word of God. A lot of these things that are being told, and I think you just hit the nail on the head, we're told they're gospel issues or that they're somehow in line with Christian discipleship or some major, like even the image of God, right?

58:09

Some major doctrine. And that means migration and amnesty.

58:14

That's the image of God. How did you get there? But they just say it with a straight face, and people just believe them.

58:20

And it's really not any more complex than that. So anyway, congratulations on the book.

58:25

If people want to find it, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, wherever books are sold. And leave Megan a really good review, five stars.