SBC Credibility Shatters on #MeToo

on the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We have a special guest with us today.

We have Megan Basham, once again, from the Daily Wire to discuss the Southern Baptist Convention.

Welcome, Megan. Thank you for being on. Hey, John, thanks for having me. It's been, what, a month, two months since you were on last time and we were talking about the

Third Way. Now we're talking about the Me Too stuff, which I know has been, I think of all the things you focused on, that's probably like your thing.

You know it inside and out. I know it a little bit, but not to the extent you do.

And what we just talked about, just so the audience knows beforehand, is I wrote a sub -stack article.

We're gonna kind of follow the outline of that, but then I'm gonna let you expand on all your research on this issue because I think,

I feel very vindicated today, and I'm sure you feel very vindicated that what you suspected was a trap,

I mean, that's the word I'm using here. It literally was, and you were gaslighted. You were called crazy.

People said, I remember - Crazy would have been kind, but yes. You were supporting abuse and, yeah, abusers.

I remember that because I was, I think in South Carolina, 2022, I wanna say, and it was like one night, you were in the good graces of so many people and it's like one night happened and the next day, all of a sudden, everyone was out to get you because you were asking some of these questions and really not just asking questions, you were pointing out discrepancies.

And now this discovery from the David Sills, Jennifer Lyell case just shows how right you were at that point.

So thank you, first of all, on behalf of conservative Christians, Southern Baptists, and those who care about truth for being courageous even in those times.

Let me just give you the floor here. How are you feeling about some of what's come out?

Yeah, so obviously it was really not fun when my initial report came out in 2022.

As you said, it was a lot of invective, like disgusting and vile and rape apologists being thrown at me.

And I mean, you just kind of go, what can you do? These are the facts and I'm not going to not report them.

I found the story questionable, so I'm not gonna pretend like I didn't. As I started interviewing the principals, one of the first of whom was

Jennifer Lyell herself, who told me several things that didn't check out when I looked into them.

I wasn't going to pretend like I found her a credible person when after one two -hour long interview with her,

I think another one that was about an hour long, and then reviewing materials of interviews that she had given others, there were a lot of discrepancies in her claims.

And so, at that point, I could not do other than report that and say, this is the fact of it. And it mattered because of course, the

Jennifer Lyell case, I mean, it's all very sort of salacious, but what we need to remember is that this case, this incident was what the primary driving force of the

SBC abuse crisis narrative, who was Rachel Denhollander, said this was the linchpin.

The Jennifer Lyell case was the linchpin that enabled the Guidepost abuse investigation to take place.

So, this is what they were hanging their hat on, particularly in terms of the SBC executive committee supposedly mistreating survivors.

This case was their big piece of evidence that the executive committee had allowed a piece to be published that framed

Jennifer Lyell's claims as a morally inappropriate relationship, even though they also allowed her to offer a comment that more framed it as abuse as she was claiming it was, but that was the mistreatment that was claimed.

And so, my investigation was going, is that true? Because if she was not telling the truth and it was a morally inappropriate relationship, then she was not mistreated because all

Baptist Press initially did was correctly frame their relationship. So, these new documents that are coming out of a lawsuit between David Sills and the

SBC, he's suing them and Guidepost and just about everybody else associated with it. At one time before she unfortunately passed away,

Jen Lyell was included in that lawsuit. So, all of this discovery material is coming out and one of the things that has come out is emails from Jennifer Lyell to David Sills that clearly indicate that this relationship was consensual.

They are emails in which she, I mean, they're really odd emails in some ways. She speaks in baby talk, talking about how much she misses him and how much she can't go a month without seeing him.

And she also does things like say she had a nightmare that he was going to end the relationship and she doesn't ever want that to be true.

So, things like that that just clearly indicate this was, I have no doubt, a sick and very sinful relationship, but a consensual one.

Yeah, so for those that are real, Linda, this is one piece of a bigger puzzle here, but it's the largest

Protestant denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention. They have spent now at least $13 million.

I think it's much more than that if you add everything up, but at least 13 million, according to Baptist Press earlier this year on abuse reform initiatives.

And they even, I think they still have their headquarters up for sale because of this.

They've opened themselves up to legal problems that they didn't need to. And it was predicated on this moral justification that there's a crisis, and I talk about three things.

I think there's probably other things you could also add in and maybe you want to, Megan, but the Jennifer Lyle situation is one of them, which we'll get into a little bit more.

Another one is Paige Patterson, and then another one is this Houston Chronicle article. And that all happened around the same time, which is kind of weird to me.

That was in 2018 to 2019, but really it was like the summer of 2018,

Paige Patterson, and then 2019, early 2019, the Houston Chronicle and then

Jennifer Lyle case. And this was, the stars aligned, because J .D. Greer got elected in 2018, immediately hit the ground running with abuse reform stuff.

You had the Caring Well Initiative in 2019, and that became the pretext for Guidepost Solutions, waiving attorney -client privilege, a hotline for abuse victims.

And when did you start covering all of this? I'm trying to remember the timeline, because I know you came into it, I want to say 2021 or so.

Yeah, I mean, my story, first story for the Daily Wire on this came out in summer of 2022,

I think it was June of 2022. And I obviously covered it in my book as well,

Shepherds for Sale, that came out, and I went much more in depth in the book, for obvious reasons, you have more space, in 2024.

But my very first sort of brush with the subject at all, at a point where I had absolutely no knowledge of any of this going on, and didn't really pay that much attention to leadership of the

Southern Baptist Convention, was in 2019, when I was still at World Magazine. I was a co -host of their flagship news podcast,

The World and Everything In It, and Founders Ministries was going to release a documentary, by what standard, and a big kerfuffle popped up about that documentary, because it briefly featured an image of Rachel Denhollander, and it was, the subtext was that, the

Southern Baptist Convention is bringing in worldly unbiblical ideology, and various things were representative of that, including critical race theory, but another one was this

Me Too business, and they used an image of Rachel Denhollander really quickly in the trailer, to indicate that part of the content of the documentary.

And so that was a huge controversy, and at that point that caught my attention at World Magazine and I got ahold of the documentary and watched it, and I actually thought it was very well done and very informative, and really sort of revealed a lot to me that explained things

I was seeing that I didn't really understand. And then the other thing I did was, at that point I interviewed Rachel Denhollander also, and she was very unhappy with Founders and the documentary, and really did not like their stance period, their position on abuse, about personal agency and free will, and what that says about our own sinful choices.

So there was a real clash of ideologies there, and so that was what I covered at World Magazine at that point, and that's what put it on the map for me, and why

I continued to sort of pursue that story as various elements of it would pop up.

So when that Jen Lyle story first came up, after I had already kind of just tracked it a little bit casually for years,

I went, this is a very strange story. I mean, the claim is that a 26 -year -old master's student got involved with a professor on Southern Seminary Campus who was 23 years her senior, but she was an adult, 26 years old, and that they began this relationship, and it went on for two years while she was at the campus, but then she left, and she became a publishing executive and lived in other states, and continued to contract books from him, and to meet with him, and to travel to meet with him.

And so the allegation that this relationship that then went on for 12 years, long after she had left

Southern Seminary, was ever and always non -consensual abuse, from the outset, it didn't make sense, and I had a lot of people insisting to me, yes, it does make sense, and I'm going, no, it doesn't.

I have questions, and I wasn't saying, I don't believe this could be possible. I was just saying, the way it was handled from Southern Baptist leadership was do not ask questions.

I mean, you had Rachel Denhollander, and there are records of this on social media, when someone would say, very gently,

I don't understand what we're being asked to believe here. What was the abuse? What is this man alleged to have done to her?

Rachel Denhollander would pop up and say, I am her attorney, and I'm warning you away from this line of questioning.

It has been confirmed to be criminal sexual assault. That was not true.

So that was the problem, is that we kept being told by Denhollander and other SBC leadership that, no, you may not ask questions about this case that is being used to transform your denomination, and I did have obvious questions, and so I went, well, that's not gonna work for me.

I'm going to continue to ask some questions about it, and as I did, one of the first things

I did was talk to people who were on Southern Seminary campus at the time, and they told me we saw them together.

One of them was Russell Fuller and some other people who were not willing to speak on record, but people who were professors or on campus as faculty members at the time, and said, we saw them, they seemed to have an inappropriately affectionate relationship that from the outside looked consensual.

In fact, one person told me, I actually assumed they were not having an affair because I thought if they were, they would not be acting like that in public.

You would try to hide it better. So that's the degree to which people were observing them and saying they seemed very sort of lovey -dovey with each other.

Yeah, I remember hearing about this from Fuller in 2020 when I was doing some interviews with him about other matters at Southern Seminary, and he didn't go on the record at the time.

He did the next year though, but at that time he just said it was common knowledge among those who knew

David Stills and Jennifer Lyle that this was something that was, whatever they had was consensual.

She liked him, she was traveling great distances to be with him, inconveniencing herself, trying to arrange them at times.

Of course, that's all vindicated now, but it was kind of a surprise that Dr.

Albert Moeller, the president of the seminary in, it was a faculty meeting, I think where Dr. Fuller first heard this narrative, but framed it as abuse and was very adamant that it had to be abused.

Now we see in the discovery from David Stills' lawsuit that this was a narrative very early in the making, in 2018, that this was abuse, and it's carried through.

I mean, there's a documentary that has yet to be released. I don't think it ever will be about the situation.

Yeah, the trailer's still out there though, and I don't think the filmmaker, I'm not sure exactly who was making that, but I don't think they're listed as one of the people that the

Stills were going after, but yeah, they really were gonna double down on this, and the whole house of cards is coming down.

And so what I thought would be interesting to do is follow some of the evidence that's vindicated the questions and some of the journalism that you've done.

One of them, and this is I think maybe the key or the most shocking thing, is some of these emails back and forth.

So here's a post that you made. This is just some screenshots from the discovery, and you can see some of the message between Jennifer Lyle and David Stills here.

Is this 2008? I guess that's the date there, 2008. And I don't know if there's -

So, I mean, that would have been years into this relationship, yeah. Starting in what, 2004? I think it was, yeah.

Well, there's been some debate about that even, but yes, so 2004, I'll just say that I, she said it began on this mission trip.

However, I've been in communication with the person who was her roommate on that mission trip, and she has doubts that anything happened there.

But anyway, but probably around 2004. So this is about four years into the relationship. A 12 -year relationship, four years in, and she's over,

I mean, this is, when I was reading this, I was thinking that this is an infatuated girl. He's not responding to the level.

She's talking to him. And what would be like a good representative quote here, I guess, I'm trying to think.

Just, I miss you, with a million exclamation points. I had horrible dreams about you getting rid of me again last night.

What is that about? Sheesh, don't do that. It wouldn't be fun. Let me know what

I can do for you. I'm really ready for you to come home, back to, so she wants him around her.

Like, that's not, is that typical behavior? I mean, I know there's, was it

Stockholm syndrome or something? I mean, but is this typical behavior for an abuse victim to just be longing to be with the abuser?

So I'm gonna say this apparently depends on who you ask. So if you ask me, I'm a person of hopefully biblical wisdom and common sense, and I say, no, that really does not make sense.

However, you do have an abuse activism community that will use terms like enmeshment or trauma bonding.

And so they are saying that this could simply be trauma bonding.

Now, I wanna say why that explanation, even if you buy into that kind of psychologizing and cards on the table,

I don't. And I think I've made that very public and very clear. I'm pretty transparent about how

I view these issues. So that doesn't work even still, because from the get -go,

Jennifer Lyle and Rachel Denhollander claimed that this was violent sexual assault always, that it was coerced, it was forced, she did not want it.

And that was always known the entire time. So you can't frame it as violent sexual assault that was completely non -consensual and never wanted.

And then look at these emails where she says, I miss you. And she's basically, I wanna be with you.

Please don't get rid of me. You cannot make those two things align, logically.

You just can't. So even if you're making the trauma bonding argument, still doesn't work, because that wasn't the allegation that she made.

Right, right. I am seeing, though, that narrative start to form. And it's not, I don't know if I've seen anyone blatantly say that, but like the story of, from,

I think it was Baptist News Global just a few days ago. They were trying to frame the revelations in this discovery as it's deeper and darker than we first thought.

It's even worse. And then you read it and you're like, what's deeper and darker about this?

Well, they were claiming her testimony, her deposition was new evidence. I'm like, that's not new evidence. That's her story still.

I mean, the entire thing has been built on her story. Every, from Al Muller to Bruce Frank to Bart Barber, I mean, everyone all along the line,

Eric Geiger, all of these various men in leadership roles within the SBC have said, I believe her.

So that has been the basis for their testimony. So when they have called it abuse, under deposition, under oath, they have all said the reason they said that was purely because they believed her, not because they had any additional corroborating evidence.

In fact, under oath, Sills' lawyer, really, I would say grilled

Dr. Albert Muller pretty heavily about, did Jennifer Lyle give you any specific evidence of violent action from David Sills?

And Muller eventually concedes that no, he didn't. He said, well, I did hear something about something unwanted under a blanket on a plane, but that was it.

So whatever these allegations of great violence were, none of these men actually knew what they were.

And under oath, they all admitted it. And I think that is a really important note because as president of the

Southern Baptist Convention, Bart Barber said, these claims have been investigated by credible people.

We now know that was not true. It was never true because not only do people like Albert Muller under oath say, no, we did not look into it at Southern Seminary.

All we had to do, we just confirmed that something sexual had occurred and fired David Sills, which was quite right.

Nobody disputes that he deserved to be fired from a Christian institution. He was disqualified and that's fine, but they didn't investigate.

Guidepost now says we didn't investigate either. They didn't even try to call David Sills before they named him an abuser in the report.

So, and Jennifer Lyle never filed charges. So no proper authorities ever investigated.

So that was never true. No one all along the line ever investigated these claims. The belief was simply coming,

I would argue from a moment in which culturally we were told that belief was mandatory.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was a crisis. It was, you have to do something now. Here's another message, not to get too into the weeds on this stuff, but I think it is important just to emphasize the range of dates here.

And actually I don't see a date on this one. Do you happen to know, this is the one where she's saying,

David Sills is saying, I want you to know I'm praying for you. I do love you. And then this is at night and she wakes up in the morning and says, there's nothing that anyone in the world could say that would mean be more encouraging to me.

And that she says she loves him. I do you remember when that was? I don't know.

I mean, I think, yeah, if there's not a date on there, I'm not sure there were other emails directly to now

I'm trying to pull them up while you're pulling them up. Well, here's one from 2012. Yeah. So, I mean, we're now, you know, six years into the relationship.

So, no, even more, eight years, that's eight years into the relationship. So. Yeah. At that point, we're still saying,

I miss you. You're way nicer than I deserve. You're way nicer than I deserve. Yeah. Thanks for not being upset.

I just, it's so, getting my head wrapped around this as this was an abusive relationship and there was physical violence, which is what

Rachel Denhollander said so many times. It was violent. It just doesn't seem like it's represented in any of the messages between them.

You see what would appear to be the opposite of it and what would fit a biblical definition of adultery.

That's what I think I'm looking at. I don't know if you mentioned this yet, but she was also his, is it an editor and publisher?

Yeah. So, and I think at least one, Moody, but I don't know if also at Baptist Press or -

Lifeway. Lifeway, yeah. Also at Lifeway. He kind of worked for her in a way too. There's a power imbalance you could say there, right?

Yeah. I mean, look, just on a personal level, I can tell you that, you know, the day I got an email in my inbox from an editor saying, hey, we're interested in some of this stuff you've been publishing.

Think it might be a good book. Could you have a call about that? I mean, that was a celebratory day for me.

So I imagine any author feels that way. You feel really happy when you get an editor's attention. So yeah, so she continued to contract books from him and she would have had the power to accept or not accept those books and to hand out advances or withhold advances.

So yeah, I would say that is a position of power. She was at one point the, I believe the highest ranked woman in the

SBC at Lifeway as a publishing executive. And he dedicates or he acknowledges her contributions in at least two of the books and says that she went above and beyond.

And I know in one of the emails that I was reading in Discovery, she is trying to arrange for him to come out earlier on a flight to see her because she just can't wait that long.

And that's a running theme too. Like there was at one point, he's gonna be away from her for a month and she's like, that's too long.

I can't wait a month. So I think everyone needs to understand if you're a Southern Baptist listening to what we're saying and you go do the homework and look at all this discovery, you're gonna find a very different story than what you were told.

And that's, I think, where trust is broken. And I don't know how that's regained. That's the dilemma that the

Southern Baptist Convention is in. Like they went down the BLM narrative, CRT, DEI hole a bit.

They, there's, you could say that there's some things that are related to soft peddling, same -sex attraction and soft complementarianism and stuff.

But this seems to be the thing that has drained their finances. And it's like cut and dry.

They've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Yeah, yeah. And I don't see how anyone, any of the journalists that have forwarded this narrative are able to get out of this.

And I mean, they would just have to - Well, by not acknowledging it, because let me just tell you right now, there have been a little, some flurries of articles from little minor sort of newsletter people about me.

And not one of them is acknowledging. So, and not just those. So you have these kind of little newsletters.

They aren't acknowledging these emails. None of them, you know, the sort of abuse activist type publications that you would expect, they are not acknowledging these emails at all.

But even bigger than that, the Tennessean, which has closely covered all of the issues in the

SBC, including this one, in their reporting, in which these emails were available to them, they don't mention them.

So probably, you know, the most bombshell headline piece of information in these discovery documents are not included in the

Tennessean's reporting, because of course, it undercuts the narrative. They had already taken a position of being extremely supportive of all of the church to activists, including

Lyle. So that is noteworthy that they deliver. Well, I don't know that it's deliberately, but it seems noteworthy, let's put that, that they did not include these emails, which are obviously exculpatory.

Yeah, and we're talking about Liam Adams, we're talking about Bob Smiatana, and in the

SBC, is it Rachel Kilpatrick, and I'm sorry,

Rachel Denhollander and Samantha Kilpatrick. We need to talk about that too, yeah. We're gonna, yeah, let's get to guideposts here.

So I wanna set the stage for this. I'm a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2018.

I remember this as clear as day, Megan. And I thought like someone had just come into the school and it's like they said, go, like now's the time because it wasn't just the

Me Too stuff. It was the BLM stuff. It was all kinds of things.

There were three statements that either originated at Southeastern or heavily supported by professors and administration there just in the fall 2017 semester alone against Donald Trump or the alt -right.

It was like, and that's after eight years of like nothing with Obama. And so I was just like, what is going on at this school?

And in around, I think it was June, 2018, the

Paige Patterson stuff starts to develop. And that was a few different things.

There was an off -color remark he made. There was a recording that suggested that abuse victims should not get a divorce.

There was then the main allegation, which became when he was the president of Southeastern because he had moved on to Southwestern, but he had been at Southeastern, that he had advised a student there who had been raped, supposedly.

The student had come forward and said that that's what happened to not report it to the police. And there wasn't evidence of this.

At least, I mean, there was accusations that he had taken the evidence with him and he left Southeastern, but this has never been confirmed.

His lawyer denied it. And I'm sitting there on campus and I get a email from Danny Akin, the president of the institution.

All the campus did. And the whole frame of the email is that he doesn't say

Paige Patterson is guilty, but he implies it heavily. And he just wants everyone to know that they're safe because they may feel unsafe at Southeastern knowing this happened in supposedly 2003.

And then I walk into the student center and there's the Safe Space Incorporated flyers there.

I took a picture of it at the time, just so, because I thought people wouldn't believe me, but that's the picture that was on the desk there.

I've since then, I've looked into the organization and they are supporters of organizations that tell you how to do an at -home abortion and support

LGBT stuff. Now, I don't know if Southeastern still has an affiliation, but this was in 2018, those flyers were sitting there.

And there was, at the same time, a petition, like overnight, a really high quality petition goes out there.

And it's like, everyone I know who's a female, people in small groups and at church, professors, they're signing this get

Paige Patterson fired petition. And I'm like, how is this all coming together?

It just felt organized because it was so instant. And now I'm not saying people can't come together and things can't develop organically, but that happens.

Then Greer is elected and he's talking about the issue. Then in 2019, in February, you have the

Houston Chronicle article, which I want you to talk about in a moment here. And then the Jennifer Lyle thing. We're only talking about a seven month span here and the whole

SBC has to be totally transformed and focused on this issue. And the teaching that comes from the

Caring Well Initiative, the reforms from the Guideposts Solutions Suggestions, they're all predicated based on a few things that happened in the course of about a seven month period, that if you look at all three of them individually, the

Jennifer Lyle case, Paige Patterson, and this Houston Chronicle article. Well, I would say, and the 2019

ERLC Caring Well Conference, where they abruptly decided we're gonna change the theme of the conference.

But so that was one more. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, well, so in 2019, I think it was in the fall.

So right there in this kind of close sequence of events, Russell Moore was heading the

ERLC. They were going to have, I think it was a missions theme, I can't remember, but they were going to have a conference with a different theme.

And J .D. Greer came in and all of these other changes took place. And he also said, well, we're gonna change the theme of the

ERLC conference. Now it's going to be Caring Well, and it's going to feature

Rachel Denhollander. And later learned that before she was brought on on the platform, she and Moore talked about the

Jennifer Lyle case. So he told her, gave her carte blanche to on the platform, excoriate the executive committee for their alleged mistreatment of Jen Lyle and not naming her an abuse victim definitively as she wanted.

And that sort of, there was already obviously a lot of tension and dislike going back and forth between Moore and the executive committee.

So that was kind of the moment that really blew this up into, I would say a fairly public brawl when

Moore brought Denhollander onto the stage to talk about the Caring Well initiative.

And she blasted the executive committee specifically for their mistreatment of Jennifer Lyle. And what was a little amusing in that incident is

Moore refers to Jennifer Lyle at that point as this mistreated young woman, and he kept saying young woman.

Jennifer Lyle was nearly 40 at that point. And so that tendency to infantilize the women involved with this was just thrown into high relief for me, but also the timing of it, that they made this abrupt change.

And that really is what I would say initiated the open power struggle because this issue was ultimately used to completely repopulate the executive committee.

The old executive committee was pushed out, new executive committee members who were not so conservative were brought in.

You know, I looked into that a little bit, that conference that you're talking about, and it's primarily abuse victims, alleged abuse victims.

You don't really have pastors involved as much. I think there's maybe, you can count them on one hand.

I'm trying to remember, I think I wanted to say like three, but that you have like close to 20 speakers and they're bringing in the experts is what's happening.

And it seems to match the Me Too agenda's idea that you have to have the social location to understand the issue.

And Greer gets on stage and basically says that. And then they put out a curriculum and in the curriculum it says you can believe, because love believes all things, you should believe victims essentially.

And these Me Too kind of assumptions are just all of a sudden, Southern Baptists are just taking them at face value.

Maybe comment on that a little bit, because that took me, that surprised me. I really thought

Southern Baptists, because of the battle for the Bible and stuff, they would go back to the clergy, the

Bible. And it seems like because of these abuse situations, all of a sudden it's like, we have to do something now, it's an emergency, no sacrifice is too small.

And we got to accept now power differentials mean abuse and social location determines what abuse is and how to handle it.

And you have to believe in all of these things. Yeah, so one of the things that is interesting is every time sort of the cultural moment happens, and they actually talk in some of these documents about why they were going to put forward

Rachel, or excuse me, Jennifer Lyle's claims, why were they gonna publish her claims at all? You had people at the

Baptist Press saying, well, we need to do this because of the cultural moment, we need to speak into the cultural moment. Well, what was the cultural moment at that point?

In 2018, it was the height of the Me Too movement. That was the absolute pinnacle. So that was the moment they were speaking into.

But I think you did see the same thing with the sort of BLM, racial injustice, social justice movement.

You also saw sort of a crisis of, well, we now need to do something on that because that's what the culture is doing. So in that sense, maybe not surprising that that was the moment that they sort of chose to sort of redefine some things like what abuse is, what agency is, what adultery is.

So that doesn't really surprise me. But when I look at how it evolved after that, it did seem like everybody just sort of lost their common sense.

But I think part of the reason for that is one, that Houston Chronicle story. I understand a person who doesn't work in media sees something like that.

And once the Houston Chronicle came out with it, it was trumpeted everywhere. I think New York Times, Washington Post, all these other outlets pick it up.

If you are not used to that kind of media glare, it is, it's a scary thing.

It's a fearful thing and you can tend to crouch. And so I think you just had a lot of denominational from the lay people, let's be clear, from the people in the pew, they don't wanna be characterized like this because of course they abhor abuse.

These are Christians. They do love their neighbors. They don't wanna see vulnerable people harmed.

So I think it was playing on really good instincts, even though common sense went out the window. So when they saw that report from the

Houston Chronicle, massive abuse coverup in the SBC, and that was an echo by all of these other major outlets, there's an instinctual desire to fix it without looking at, okay, well, hang on a minute, let's see what these claims are.

Because when you looked at the claims in the Houston Chronicle reporting, yes, absolutely, there have been instances of abuse over the course of decades in Southern Baptist churches.

And that's tragic and we don't want that, but we also live in a fallen world. So what they did for that report was essentially call everybody else's reporting and put it into one story.

So essentially it was going back and just pulling hundreds of cases over the course of more than 20 years in 43 ,000 churches, and not just pastors or staff, but anyone who'd ever attended one of those

Southern Baptist churches who was charged with or alleged to have abused someone, all of that got put into that story.

Well, none of it was new information, or maybe a couple of cases were new information, but the rest of it, these were all cases that had already been reported on and adjudicated on and were largely local stories collated together into one new report.

And when I talked to a demographer about it, because you don't wanna be callous about these stories, but you also don't want to be over emotional to the point that your intellect doesn't kick in.

So I asked him, okay, can we look at these numbers, 700 alleged abusers of every station over 20 years, more than 20 years in 43 ,000 churches, is this a crisis?

Is this a bombshell, an apocalypse, as Russell Moore called it? And this was someone with the

Institute for Family Studies, and he said, no, actually, these numbers are much lower than I would have expected from this number of churches, given the rates that we see in the general population.

He said, this is actually quite a low number, and he was astonished that they only found in the guidepost report two current cases in the entire

SBC. So that was the first thing, is that people didn't really look at it and go, okay, what kind of pool of potential numbers are we talking about?

So that was the first thing. And then the other part of it was, once those numbers came out and they didn't look at that, it was used to do some fairly foolish things from just a responsible legal perspective, like waiving privilege.

I talked to a few lawyers from my reporting who were absolutely astonished that the

SBC chose to do that because they said, you should absolutely be able to bring any sort of lawsuit you want, or to investigate, or to get more information, all of that without waiving privilege.

They just thought that was a rather insane proposition. And I would say that brings us to the role of Rachel Denhollander, because she was

Lyle's attorney, represented Lyle in several, I won't call them lawsuits because they never filed lawsuits, but they did make legal threats against the executive committee, against Southern Seminary, and received large payouts, one of them for a million dollars.

And so as she was doing that, she was also advising people like Grant Gaines, a pastor at Grant Gaines, helped him draft a resolution to get privilege waived.

So, you know, from the very outset, there was this conflict of interest that was encouraging people to do, I think, well -meaning but foolish things.

Yeah, so I'm trying to think where to go next. There's so many things to talk about in this.

Al Mohler called it a crisis right when the Houston Chronicle story broke. J .D. Greer went on CNN, and he basically said the same thing.

We're gonna have to initiate some reform initiatives, and now we're on the other end of that.

We're seeing what the consequences of that were. But you had people that conservative SBC followers trusted.

They thought that these men wouldn't lead them down the wrong path. And I think they feel very betrayed right now, or they at least feel like they can't trust some of the voices, and they don't know who to trust, which is part of a problem.

Do you see any heroes in this, in the SBC? I mean, we mentioned Dr. Fuller. Were there others who you discovered were saying the right things, warning about what would happen if the

SBC went down this path? I mean, obviously, Tom Askell. I mean, he was banging the drum so loudly.

And there's been claims that I'm really close with Tom Askell, and none of that was true, but I did reach out to him as somebody who obviously had a lot of background information, has been around the

SBC, knew it well, and asked him, okay, who would you connect me with?

Who would be some of the sources who could talk about some of these concerns that you have? Because I wanna talk to people all the way around the spectrum here of people who've been involved in this.

So Tom Askell was certainly someone who from the outset was saying these are not wise decisions. You saw the famous picture of him and Tom Buck at the convention when some of these abuse reforms were being voted on, and every single paddle is in the air except the two of them sitting there kind of with their arms crossed.

I think that was under Ed Litton when they were forming the Sexual Abuse Task Force.

Or by the way, the Sexual Abuse Prevention Task Force, right, I don't wanna get that wrong. Yeah, and they're sitting there and they're like, we're not gonna go along with that.

I did wanna just clarify something real quick. So I was close with the Caring Well Initiative Conference.

I said three pastors, so it's four actually of the 20 speakers were pastors.

And only one was a counseling pastor from J .D. Greer's church and spoke in his capacity as a pastor.

The others were not speaking in their capacity as a pastor. So it's like, it was not,

I think it's important for people to understand, it was not a clergy -led, Bible -led movement in the convention.

This was bringing in the outside experts. And some of them may have, you know, they're Christians, they may have had experiences.

Some of them, a few of them may have been pastors, but they were bringing them in because of something else, because they had access to a new way of dealing with the problem.

And ASPC is an autonomous organization of churches. The stats you just threw out there from Houston Chronicle, I mean, this is something that normally would have been handled with police.

That's why the Houston Chronicle even had access to that was because there were police reports and so forth. And now there's an abuse hotline.

What has happened with that? Because I know that they were building the hotline and then

I think the executive committee said they're going to instead do reform training materials and not do the hotline.

So where's the SBC at with all this? Yeah, I think all of the sort of measures that they proposed fell by the wayside, because I do think that, you know, all of those ordinary church members that we talked about who were initially like, we got to stop this crisis.

It took a little time, but I think they then started to go, well, hang on a minute, you know, this database that they wanted to create.

And we do really quick before we go, need to talk about the conflicts of interest that were found in that ethics report, but really quickly.

Well, let me just, yeah. Okay, go ahead, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, you know, the database that they wanted to build, essentially they were

Title IX style reform. So if you're familiar with how Title IX works on college campuses, it basically does away with largely men's due process rights so you don't have a right to confront your accuser.

They will not consider exculpatory evidence against you. It's called trauma informed. So even if a woman's story starts to break down or she has details that don't align or don't conflict, you are to write that off to trauma.

You are not to say, well, maybe I'm not dealing with a credible witness. So, and the pinnacle of that was the database.

So they wanted a database based on people who had been credibly accused. And what they meant by credibly accused was if a pastor got involved with a staff member and it was a 50 % or more chance that it could be abuse, flip a coin, then you would get put on the list.

And they said, well, that's, you know, it's a preponderance of evidence standard. And that's the standard in a legal trial, a civil case, except a civil case comes with all sorts of protected rights that these processes that are implemented based on Title IX reforms of the kind they were trying to bring into the

SBC do not give you those rights. You do not get to confront your accuser. You don't get to do things like cross -examine witnesses and things like that.

So anyway, you know, those were the big issues and eventually they all fell away because I think people did start to realize once they understood that's what these reforms will mean, they recognized this is not biblical justice.

And I really quickly just wanna be very clear. We're talking about allegations between adults. So, you know, it's a totally different thing when we're talking about children where, you know,

I am absolutely with the zero tolerance policy and I have no problem with some of the reforms they wanted to make with regards to protecting children.

This was a matter of how do we define abuse and how do we handle allegations coming from adults? Right. So I know you've been waiting to get to this and I think it's probably one of the most important things, if not the most important thing in the discovery from David Sills, but Clear Resource LLC did a analysis, 72 pages,

I think, according to the PDF is, of the side post report.

And they determined a number of things, but one of the things that they focus on is that there were severe conflicts of interests that were kind of startling between, especially

Samantha Kilpatrick and Rachel Denhollander, but also Jennifer Lyle. And then they also talk about the lack of due process.

So where do you wanna start with this? Well, so let's start with, since we've already talked about Lyle, if you look, you know, one of the big pieces of information in this ethics investigation of how

Guidepost handled its own investigating was that one, it does not look, and this is so baseline, it's almost embarrassing that you have to say it.

It doesn't even look like they were legally empowered to investigate in Tennessee. So their entire investigation was illegal.

And in the words of this ethics investigation, malpractice. That's so insane.

I didn't catch that by - $2 million and it was illegal from the outset. So that's pretty eye popping.

But then, you know, the other big headline was again, because Jennifer Lyle was the most prominent case in this particular report was the fact that Samantha Kilpatrick, and you know, it's convoluted how she ended up being

Guidepost's main investigator because Guidepost was brought on. Guidepost is kind of a left -wing company. They promote

LGBTQ stuff. Ordinary Southern Baptist saw this and said, why are we having an immoral company that is already, you know, very morally blinkered that they are celebrating

Pride Month? Why are we having them investigate our morality? That makes no sense. So the way they solved that was to say, let's ask

Rachel Denhollander what we should do. And Rachel, who again is the attorney for the key accuser, she recommended her friend,

Samantha Kilpatrick, who she wrote the Caring Well curriculum with to come in and be sort of the

Christian representative of Guidepost who is now going to do the bulk of the investigating. Well, the problem with that is that Samantha Kilpatrick, back at that 2019

Caring Well conference, long before this investigation, had already told Jennifer Lyle that she believed her and she found her story so courageous.

She took the initiative to email Jennifer Lyle and say, I find your story courageous.

I'm so proud of you for speaking the truth. Well, now she's investigating the case when she has already sent out an email saying that she believes the key accuser.

Admires her courage. So that's a problem. And Guidepost allowed that to happen.

Additionally, that she is good friends with the key accuser's representation as well is a problem.

So that was one of the things that this ethics report found. And then also, it's almost hard to overstate the level of how

Rachel Denhollander was ethically conflicted in so many ways. You know, so we start with the fact that she is

Lyle's attorney. And then she is called by Southern Seminary to advise them on how to handle

Lyle's allegations as she's representing Lyle as her attorney. She's then wins a settlement from the executive committee of over a million dollars for Jennifer Lyle.

And at that point, she is appointed to the task force of the SBC to be their advisor on how they should handle the abuse of its investigation.

So this is a little nuts. She's also communicating through that hotline with quote unquote survivors.

So if someone called that hotline and questioned, okay, I feel that I was abused by an

SBC pastor, what should happen? Rachel Denhollander, as she's advising the task force to investigate, was the person that was their advocate that they were calling.

And she said in private texts and emails that have now come out, I was advising people on how to sue the

SBC as she was advising the SBC. So, I mean, these are just a couple of the conflicts of interest.

There was more that are detailed in this report. Did you say, I thought I saw someone say that she was in Jennifer Lyle's will as well.

Is that true? Yes, she is a beneficiary of Jennifer Lyle's will. And I don't have many details on that, but certainly that was something that people found really surprising and it's not necessarily illegal, but it's highly unusual.

Well, it could be illegal. I mean, I had a number of lawyers tell me I would never accept this because that's gonna open you up to a huge mess of ethical questions and that will bring you before the bar.

So I would not do that. So that's another one. And then the fact that Julie Wood, who is the

CEO of Guidepost, Denhollander's friend, Samantha Kilpatrick's boss, they were all in communication with Lyle before the investigation.

And we're talking not formal communication, but informal friendly communication before and during the investigation.

So that would obviously compromise what they were doing as investigators. So, I mean, and there's so much more.

We couldn't even begin to cover it here, John. And I know you wrote a piece, but I just think it's really important for people to understand how much was being brought forward that this was just massive conflicts of interest all the way down the line.

And then the biggest revelation, of course, is Guidepost admitting, we actually didn't investigate these cases where we named men abusers.

We didn't look into it. And then the strangest part is that they included information that was not within the scope of their investigation, the years and the parameters that they were supposed to be investigating, but they left out people who were sort of abuse allies who also did some questionable things on abuse and they did not investigate them even though they were a part of the parameters of what they were supposed to be investigating.

Yeah, yeah. I've been still waiting for Bruce Ashford's name to be brought up somewhere. It's never brought up and, or Joni Hannigan, or I don't know.

I mean - And this was a different one. As you're speaking, I'm like frantically swiping through my tweets seeing if I can find which one it was, but.

Well, there's also the fact that like, aren't there men who are abused too? Like, does that ever happen? Right.

And it's like, there's no men in any of this. I'm not saying they would make up the predominant percentage, but.

So one of the things - Oh, by the way, I thought it was, as I reported, Guidepost Global gave special treatment to its ideological allies in the

SBC. It did not investigate one time executive committee president Frank Page for sexual abuse, though he had an inappropriate relationship with one of his church members during the time that Guidepost covered in its scope.

So the very president of the executive committee, they did not investigate because he was viewed as an ally.

Yeah, yeah. It's so disgusting. And it's so complicated and - It's very complicated, yes.

Yeah, and I'm so grateful you've taken so much time to study this. Not everyone wants to study this. This is not something that rejuvenates your soul.

It's actually just kind of sickening. I think because it's part of the church, it's even more sickening because these are the people, their very presence is supposed to, you had one job, right?

You're supposed to be the example of ethics and to see that even people who have made it to the highest levels of the largest

Protestant denomination are involved in this. So when I was writing yesterday, I was learning things.

And I thought, man, I've covered a lot of SBC stuff. I thought this was gonna be a little bit old hat.

Like, okay, there's some new emails. And then I saw the amount of discovery and I saw just,

I was learning things. I didn't know actually that Southern Seminary, I think it was $300 ,000 if I'm not mistaken, that they had paid in Jennifer Lyle's legal fees.

And - Strange, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, where, what, how? Like, she didn't just get the payoff from the executive committee because of the

Baptist Press article, which was over a million dollars, by the way. But you got Southern Seminary involved with backing her paying legal fees.

Well, where are those legal fees going? Her lawyers, Rachel Denhollander. So Southern Seminary's paying Rachel Denhollander.

Like, who's not paying Rachel Denhollander in this equation is the question I'm asking. Well, I was gonna say, that was a kind of another interesting little piece that came up in these discovery documents was that Lyle received money for her therapy and medical treatments from various SBC entities.

And at one point came to the executive committee again and said she was experiencing brain atrophy brought on by stress and had had to have a brain surgery for that and was pressing them to pay for that because the argument was the stress of things that I think at that time, executive committee,

I don't know if he was a member or what Ronnie Floyd's role, but apparently something Ronnie Floyd was saying, she said was causing stress that causes brain atrophy that required surgery and they needed to then pay for that.

In the discovery material, she lists all of the doctors and medical practitioners and procedures that she's had and that brain atrophy treatment was not in her depositional records saying, here's the medical treatment

I had, though we know that she asked the executive committee for money to pay for it. It's insane.

I know it's almost, oh, it's after actually five o 'clock. I can stay a few more minutes.

Do you have a few more minutes just to answer some questions? Okay, so we have some questions and comments coming in.

If you have any and you're streaming now, please put them out there. So Juan says, what's some practical advice that you can give us for those of us who are still in the

SPC? Well - Go ahead. Come, go to the convention, send messengers, send messengers, send messengers and vote.

I think that's the number one thing. And then the other thing I would encourage people is understand the spiritual, these are all big, some of it's salacious, some of it's complicated.

Some of it sounds, ooh, people grabbing money and using this issue as a club against their enemies.

That's all very interesting, but here's the thing I wanna come down to. It's harmful to women.

They need shepherding, they need pastoral care, just like every other sinner in the church. And if you leave women with sin on their conscience, that does cause mental health issues.

It does cause fragile, unstable people to leave sin on your conscience. And they need that pastoring.

So if it's a situation where a woman, where it's possible that it was consensual and some sin has been committed on her part, doesn't mean it's equal sin, but if it's there, you can't erase that.

You can't tell her you did nothing wrong if she did, because it will remain on her heart and on her conscience, and that's damaging.

And then the other thing is, it's also damaging to real abuse survivors. Abuse happens, it absolutely happens.

And it does a disservice to those people who have suffered it and need restitution to have other people playing games with what it is and when it happens.

That's excellent. And I would just add one thing, set your expectations, because so often the decisions we're talking about that were made were made at very high levels in the denominational structure.

That doesn't mean the pastor of your local church is just like all those other leaders. And I do see on social media, at least, a lot of people will see stories like this or other failures, they'll see a pastor who had financial indiscretions, for example.

And then you're kind of left to think that this is just the way the clergy are. And I'm just here to tell you, that's not the case.

This is a very big denomination of about 47 ,000 churches. And there are some really, really great, neat, wonderful shepherds in this denomination.

In my experience, it seems like some of the ladder climbers, those that James 3 would say have selfish ambition, tend to get into positions where they can do a lot of damage.

And that's why it's important for the virtuous people to rise up and take those positions.

So yeah, I would just say that that doesn't mean all Christians are hypocrites or anything like that.

Natalie says, I was physically and emotionally abused by my husband and would have said, I miss him because I loved him, but had no self -esteem or confidence.

But she's claiming abuse as coerced sex. I don't see that here. So that's interesting.

Yeah, and I think you can say, look, that again, I have no doubt that this was a toxic, mutually abusive in some ways, because every sinful relationship is going to be a relationship.

So I have no problem saying, I don't doubt that some mistreatment was happening, probably on both sides, because that is the nature of sin and sinful relationships.

Yes. Would Megan like to comment on the report of claims she helped procure a lawyer for Sills?

Kind of an odd charge as it comes from one email, says Matt. Yeah, no, that is completely not true.

Absolutely didn't do that. Now, Sills did get an attorney and he did reach out to me well after my reporting came out and said, is this true?

And just wanted to correct some facts for me and check with some, you've reported this, am I understanding what you were saying correctly?

So we communicated, but I certainly didn't recommend a lawyer. I've never recommended a lawyer to anybody.

So yeah, absolutely not true. Matt also follows up, says, we don't actually know whether Den Hollander was paid that much through this period.

We don't know what she made. So we know that there are a lot of potential revenue streams. That's a good way to frame it, yes.

So I will, I guess, adjust, or I don't know if it's a retraction. I'll adjust what I said. Who's not paying

Rachel Den Hollander? Who's not potentially paying Rachel Den Hollander? Rachel Den Hollander has the opportunity to take advantage of all these things.

Okay, yeah, okay. So her desire, there's a whole war about Rachel. Let's not get into that. Conceptual Clarity says, is

Rachel, oh, here's another Rachel Den Hollander. Is Rachel Den Hollander not an SBC member? Still lurking around behind the scenes, sort of playing the part of Lady Macbeth.

Okay, let's stay away from Macbeth. Is she an SBC member? I don't believe so, no, no.

She's not, because she was, no, she's not. I don't know what she is, but I know her husband was at one point going to Southern Seminary, but I don't believe they've ever been

Southern Baptists. Could be wrong on that, so let me caveat that. If I'm wrong, apologies, but I don't believe so.

And I don't think she really, I don't think, I think the jig is up, to be honest with you, and I think there's not a lot happening on this front anymore, and I don't think

Rachel's probably doing a lot with the SBC anymore. Well, she was also involved in other denominations, doing similar things, trying to bring about abuse reform initiative stuff.

I know in the PCA, she had a connection there. I don't remember exactly all the places, but that was kind of like her thing.

All right, cosmic treason. I guess I'll ask, regarding abuse victim advocates, Meghan is aware of the actions of the

Sons of Patriarchy, and if not, okay, so do you know who the Sons of Patriarchy are?

You know, I'm a little bit familiar. I think they were created to be critical of Doug Wilson and Cannon Press.

I think I don't, you know, I've interacted with them a little bit on social media, and I think I, and I did not follow this closely, but I think there were some allegations about the guy who's running that, maybe infidelity or pornography or something,

I don't know. Okay, all right, yeah, I'm not really that familiar. Shannon says, my husband is currently reading

Shepherds for Sale and is impressed by the pages and pages of footnotes for all of this, so that's a compliment. Cleave to Antiquity says,

Meghan is doing okay with the cancer battle. I was critical of her attacks on Gavin, but cancer sucks, pray for her.

Thank you, not attacks, but thank you. Kind of a mixed review there. That's all right. Look, I can, you know,

I can love people who disagree with me, and I certainly appreciate the cancer wishes, so I will take it.

CCOT, Faith in Action says, is there any way Mike Cosper and David French can be held accountable for the slander they have thrown on the

SBC with the glee it often seems? I mean, the only way I know how to do it is what

I've been doing, which is getting the information out there. So, you know, that would be one of the things is I would say, you know, as they are proven incorrect and bad actors, go ahead and highlight that for people.

Yeah, and that's what I try to do too. I mean, I don't know of any other mechanisms of accountability, but I will say this, the

Lord himself has a mechanism for accountability, and he chastens those whom he loves.

He also, there's also rewards and punishments after this life, and so I would not wanna be in the shoes of someone who is sinning and in a pattern of sin and not repenting,

I'll just put it that way. Well, we are actually over an hour now, so I really just wanna say thank you,

Megan. I appreciate you bringing your knowledge and your clarity to this issue. Is there anything you would like to plug?

You don't know, go buy my book. If you haven't bought my book yet, Shepherds for Sale came out last year, and you can always find me at Daily Wire, Morning Wire, I'm on several times a week, and just for fun,

I'm only plugging this because I'm gonna be doing sort of a fun watch with me pre -production of Pendragon, which some of the costumes are a little skimpy in the first couple episodes, but as they depagonize these characters, that changes.

So I'll just say that in Pendragon - Is that like Lord of the Rings style? Yes, it's wonderful, it's like a

King Arthur style fantasy series we have coming out, and I'm gonna do a fun watch with us, a little production to go along with it.

So it's really fantastic, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. So I just - So you do that online, you sign up for it somewhere?

Yeah, so if you're a Daily Wire subscriber, you'll get it, and I think it comes out later, available in a different format, but I don't remember what that is now.

So, and yeah, I'll be doing that kind of, if you've ever gotten into one of the show podcasts where if you really get into a show, they do break it down and let's analyze,

I'll be doing that for fun, because I just really enjoyed it and volunteered. Yeah, and that's your background, a lot of people don't know that, but you were,

I mean, initially you got into this because you were focusing on media and - Yeah, I was the entertainment editor over at World Magazine and spent a lot of years as a film critic, and so I still love this stuff.

So it's kind of fun after all this heavy stuff to go, yes, sign me up to be the Pendragon girl. Yeah, I do wonder a little bit, and this is not for now, but like, how do you go from costumes and fun and plot lines to,

I'm just gonna focus my time on SBC abuse crisis stuff. Right, that was the Lord, I'm gonna say, he just went,

I picked you for a whole bunch of reasons of your unique position and where you're at, I'm giving you this task.

Yeah, well, we're all thankful. Well, God bless, go check out Megan's book and the

Pendragon, I think you said it. Pendragon, yeah. And yeah, we'll talk to you later,