SBC Elites Enshrine Their #MeToo Moment

Welcome once again to the

Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host John Harris. It has been just about a week, I guess, since I've been behind the microphone here doing the podcast.

I've been away. I was in Charleston for about five days. And of course, when you're traveling, there's the one day you have to spend just traveling and then unpacking, and so it's a seven -day commitment for a five -day trip.

But I did have a good time. I did get some time on the weekend as well, well, a day and a half, really, an afternoon and a day to see some things, and I've been to Charleston, I guess, three times now.

But this time, I got to see some things that I hadn't seen before. I got to see the,

I think they call it the Angel Oak, if I'm, the name is escaping me now.

I'm pretty sure it's called the Angel Oak. It's a big live oak, and it's just huge. It's just, it's incredible.

You could probably look it up online. I probably could have had an image here queued up, but I don't, so Angel Oak.

And then I also got to go see with my wife the tea plantation that is in South Carolina, the

Charleston Tea Company. It's the only tea plantation in the United States, apparently.

There are no other tea. And so I did, you can go there, you can have some samples, and I did.

And I'll say this about it. I think we did buy a little bit of tea there just because, well, we're here, right?

We're at the tea plantation. When are we going to be able to do this again? But the thing is, as I was even drinking it,

I thought to myself, you know, this isn't really, I don't know if this is as good as the Gold River tea.

And I would rather support the Gold River Tea Company. But since we were there, and it's

American tea in Charleston, I thought, you know, we'll get some of this too, because we do drink tea and we do drink lemonade. In fact,

I like mixing them. And they did have a flavor that Gold River doesn't have. They had a raspberry iced tea that I thought, well,

I'll get this. And I probably, once I run out, I'll run out because other than that,

I'm going to be drinking Gold River tea for the summer. And I like it that way, and I'd rather have it that way. But one of the things

I learned while I was there was that the, and I did not know this, maybe everyone knew this but me.

But apparently tea, different kinds of tea, like green tea versus black tea, it's not different plants.

I always thought it was a different variety of tea. It's not. It's the same tea. It's just, it goes through a process if it's black tea where it's dried for a longer period of time.

It's like 45 minutes or something. It goes on this belt and it kind of dries out. And then they have this process that they basically seal the flavor in.

And so then when you boil it, the flavor is then released again. Well, the green tea doesn't go through that process.

It's sealed, but it's sealed without that oxidation. And that oxidation, I guess, is what makes it black as opposed to green.

And so it was fascinating. I got to go see all the machinery they use. And it was beautiful plantation if you ever get a chance to go there.

But I bring that up to tell you this. If you want some good tea and it just, it reinforced again,

I mean, I'm having this fresh tea right there. I thought, you know what, Gold River, Gold River tea is better than this. If you want some good tea for the summer, some good cold tea, get the black tea from Gold River.

Because Gold River tea, not only are they employing American workers, not only is it a good company that's pro -Western civilization, but they are actually pro -Christianity.

You can feel secure, feel good about buying this knowing that your money's not going to a woke company.

It's not going to a company that will employ things that stand against your Christian values.

This is a company of Americans who love their country and they love the church.

And so if you go to GoldRiverCO .com,

Gold River Company, GoldRiverCO .com, you can get their All -American

Trio Bag, which contains their Gunpowder Green Tea, their Premium Ice Tea, and their 1776

American Breakfast Black Tea Blend. Now, the ice tea, that's what I'm drinking this summer.

And if you put in the promo code CONVERSATIONS, CONVERSATIONS will get 10 % off your order.

And so it's a no -brainer if you like tea, just go get some of that. There's descriptions here if you want to know more about the different flavors they have available.

They're coming out with new stuff. They have Pumpkin Spice Tea, they have Cocoa Tea, there's

Earl Grey, and there's so many different kinds and they're coming out with more and I'm thinking this winter they'll even have more as far as hot teas go.

But check them out. That's what I drink and I enjoy it. So let's get to the topic today.

I want to talk about this situation that is going on right now in the

Southern Baptist Convention and I'm going to just blow this up. I'm probably going to spend most of my time just showing you the slideshow because there's just a lot to get through.

I wasn't quite expecting something like this to blow up while I was in Charleston, but that's what happened. It was kind of the day that I was taking to go visit the

Angel Oak and the tea plantation and walking around downtown Charleston with my wife. That's when the

Southern Baptists decided, now's the time I guess, we're going to really, at least the ones on Twitter, the elites that are on Twitter, decided we don't, some of us don't even weigh in on things, but we'll weigh in on this.

We'll weigh in on Megan Basham's article in the Daily Wire on this whole Jennifer Lyle situation and I want to put this in context for you.

David Sills, Jennifer Lyle, this has been a story that's been out there for a while, but hard questions really were not asked about this.

I had been told, I'll just tell you kind of a little bit of what was going on. I had been told about this story years ago that, and really with the, behind the telling of the story was the assumption that, or not the assumption, but the question as to whether or not this was a case of adultery being treated like a case of abuse of some kind.

That there was, not just because of a power differential supposedly, and quite

I suppose in reality there, at least initially with Jennifer Lyle and Sills, but there was actual physical abuse.

There was, you know, this was a rape situation basically. There was a question, there was questions from the beginning about this, but people didn't really say it publicly.

It was murmur, murmur. It was, I think there was a fear about saying something.

Well, Megan Basham came out and she didn't have fear about this. I never really got into it just because I don't,

I didn't think it was, at the time I heard about it, it was kind of already something that already happened and I just didn't,

I didn't foresee that it was going to come up again. Well, it did in the Guidepost Report. It was one of the major, I think it was like 38 pages or something,

I think it was over 30 pages in the Guidepost Report for those following SBC politics that was just about this situation.

And so with that, this situation has been brought back up. So I thought it would be helpful to just go through a few things that might help shed some light on it and then

I'll summarize Megan Basham's article. We've talked about it before and I'll show you some of the reaction and we'll draw some conclusions.

There's so many angles to this and ways I thought about going over this. And I think that what

I'll do is I'm going to actually, some of the things that I want to say that this has revealed,

I'm going to save. I just really want to give you, my purpose in this podcast is just to give you a really direct kind of as much as a summary as I can give you, a helpful summary, just a direct idea of what's going on here, what this is about.

I think some people that just aren't familiar with this situation are wondering what in the world is the internet, the

SBC, Twitter internet blowing up over. And that's, if I can convey that to you and then at least explain some of the issues that are going on here, some of the things that we've got to watch out for, some of the threats really

I see coming from the Me Too movement, I think that it will be helpful. And it really gives you an insight into how

Southern Baptists operate too. I think some people who before didn't see maybe how an

Al Mohler perhaps can be corrupt or not, maybe that's not the word, but authoritarian,

I think they're seeing it now more so. And this is a situation, just one of many that reveals kind of the character of some of these folks and how they work, how they work in tandem and unison.

And so the title is SBC Elites Enshrine Their Me Too Movement. Megan Basham's article was about the

Southern Baptist Me Too moment. And so I'm saying the SBC Elites are enshrining their

Me Too moment here. And so I think I said movement, moment, that's what I meant, enshrining their

Me Too moment. So let's start off this way. I want to talk about Jennifer Lyle.

She's the purported victim in this situation. And she, these are just things that I got off a few websites.

For those who are patrons, you have access to this slideshow and you'll have the websites at the end that I got this from.

But in 1998 to 1999, somewhere in there, she quit her management job at a major theater company, became homeless for six months, and attended a

Billy Graham crusade and committed her life to Christ. In 2001, she then graduated with a

Bachelor's of Arts in Political Science from Southern Illinois University, during which time she retired

Democrat U .S. Senator Paul Simon mentored her. Now, Paul Simon is the Democrat Senator who preceded

Dick Durbin in the state of Illinois. And she, these are, this is the term she used, that she was in a mentorship with this particular

Senator. I'm not embellishing or anything. I'm just trying to accurately depict kind of her timeline here, who she is, so you get an idea.

But I thought that was significant enough to leave in or to let you know about. There is this background where she did, she was mentored by a

Democrat Senator, and she was involved in policy and that kind of thing and think tank work.

2004, she starts, a relationship starts, I should say, somehow with David Sills.

And he's a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And she's, that's where she went after she graduated.

She went to get an MDiv at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And this relationship starts in 2004, according to her on a missions trip.

And it lasts 12 years, during which time Lyell moved to Chicago in the Nashville area. So she moves from Louisville, Kentucky to Chicago, to Nashville area.

She works for Moody and Lifeway in Chicago and Nashville. And during this time, this 12 year period, from 2004 to 2016, there's an ongoing relationship with David Sills, that according to her, is very abusive.

And I mean, she uses language like, in one of the interviews

I was listening to, like he almost or partially, like raped me.

It wasn't, she doesn't, she never really says what exactly it was. She doesn't want to get descriptive.

But she makes it sound like really, really bad and that she was always fighting.

She was always resisting. There was a point, I believe she talks about having bruises and someone seeing that.

And she, but she was always able to fight him off somehow. So that's her story.

She also became part of the family and became really good friends before this, I guess, even this relationship started with his sons and daughters.

And so she goes on this missions trip and then the relationship, it changes.

David Sills decides he's going to pursue more of a sexual relationship.

And it's one that Jennifer Lyle says is abusive. But after she, in 2005, she graduates with an

MDiv in Theology and Intercultural Studies from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She then writes just a few significant things after she graduates for the years after that.

She writes for the Gospel Coalition. She spoke at multiple Southern Baptist Seminary events to students and faculty.

She worked in Christian publishing for Moody and then Lifeway where she became the Vice President of Book Publishing and Merchandising.

So she works her way up. I mean, she is, she's publishing a lot of different books.

I mean, this would be Russell Moore's books. These would be popular Southern Baptist books, including David Sills' books, which

I'll show you. David Sills actually gives her honorable mentions in his books.

2018, she then, at that point, this is two years after this relationship has ended, she reports this abusive relationship with Sills to Eric Geiger, who's her boss at Lifeway, who meets with Al Mohler, who then either fires

Sills directly or just puts everything in place to fire Sills. Sills is fired. And then in 2019, the next year,

Rachel Denhollander threatens the Executive Committee with a defamation lawsuit. The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention for Baptist Press, which ran a story that gave the impression

Sills and Lyell were potentially equally guilty. So Baptist Press comes out with a story after this is reported that basically it just says that it was an inappropriate relationship.

It doesn't categorize the relationship as abusive and therefore this is what prompts

Rachel Denhollander to represent Lyell and they settle. And they settle, the

Executive Committee for the Southern Baptist Convention settles with Lyell for over $1 million. So that's what

Lyell is able to get out of this in 2020. And then in 2022, Guidepost identifies

Lyell's abuse accounts as corroborated. That's the recent thing that's brought this all back up.

Guidepost uses her story as one of their big stories for this is the abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And they just treat it as if David Sills is not an alleged abuser, he is an abuser and everything's been corroborated.

Now, normally when you see corroborated, people just think that means that this is verified, that there was other evidence brought to bear that lines of authentication that seemed to indicate that what

Jennifer Lyell was saying was true about David Sills. Currently, Jennifer Lyell is studying at Syracuse University College of Law.

She's set to graduate with a Juris Doctorate in 2024 with the goal of representing undeserved populations through public policy and legislative advocacy.

So that's what she's doing now. Now, the narrative is basically this. This is a tweet from 2019 from Al Mohler.

He says this about the statement from Baptist Press or Baptist Press essentially, I guess this is when they settle with Jennifer Lyell and are basically, they're going back on the language that they initially used and describing this more as an abusive relationship that existed between her and David Sills.

Al Mohler says this about it. He says, he's thankful for this article. I need to confirm, he says, to all that when

Jennifer Lyell came to me with reports of abuse, she never described a morally inappropriate relationship. It was clearly a report of sexual abuse, very thankful for her courage.

This is the narrative. This is what Southern Baptists have just been told. This is what they're supposed to believe. Now, there's no ifs, ands, and buts.

You can't really question it. And that's kind of when I heard about this, it was already kind of, this narrative was set in stone here.

Well, not anymore. Now, I'll point this out. I think there's a few things

I wanna get through here that I think will possibly shed some light on or at least raise some valuable questions for later on.

Jennifer Lyell is mentioned in David Sills' books, at least some of them. His book from 2010,

Reaching and Teaching, it says, one of the great helpers during the writing of my English book, The Missionary Call, was

Jennifer Lyell, an editor at Moody Publishers. She went above and beyond the call of duty to polish the work and make it successful as it has been.

She spent hours, and it goes on. Then you have another one. Jennifer Lyell is listed in a 2008 book,

The Missionary Call by Michael Sills. Which, now,

Michael Sills, I don't, I should've checked this out. I thought this was David Sills at first. I'm not,

I think David Sills must have contributed to this or something. Anyway, point being, David Sills, this professor,

I think it's Michael David Sills, I think it's the same person. So, David Sills, in these, at least these two books, and possibly more, thanks

Jennifer Lyell for her long hours, for what she did to help him make the book so much better.

And this is, it's interesting to me because, let's just stop here for a moment and just consider this with me.

One of the ideas out there, one of the Me Too ideas, and I think it's at play in this story, is there's an assumption that, well, there was a power differential.

And a power differential means that the person with the power is the one that's abusing the other one in the situation.

So if it's, even if it's a consensual adulterous situation, which Jennifer Lyell claims this was not, but even if it is, in many,

Me Too situations, it doesn't really matter because it's the person in power that is the abuser, just because they have power over that person.

I just wanna point out a power dynamic thing here. Jennifer Lyell is publishing, she's at Moody.

David Sills is actually the one that is relying on her to get his book published. And that continues at Lifeway, I'm pretty sure.

So, where's the power dynamic here? Who's at whose mercy? Actually, David Sills needs something from Jennifer Lyell, and Jennifer Lyell lives now hundreds of miles away.

She's not in Louisville, she's in Chicago. And it's in Chicago, working for Moody, that she's helping

David Sills make his book great, make his book great to the point that he's giving her, he's giving her a glowing review of how she helped him.

I just think that that's interesting, and it doesn't fit the narrative, because this means

Jennifer Lyell now, she's in a position of somewhat of authority, power.

David Sills would be at her mercy more to get his book published, because she's the one that's now in charge of, to some extent at least, of publishing at least some of these books.

So there's, and again, there's a distance there too, between Nashville and Louisville, and Chicago and Louisville.

So I think that's interesting to point out in all of this. Now, that doesn't mean that he didn't abuse her in some way, but it does at least make you scratch your head a little bit with, if this is a man that is physically abusing her, and she's fighting him off, and having to fight him off all the time, and he's,

I mean, this is years into now that relationship, and she is helping him in this way.

It's a little bit odd. It's just strange. You wouldn't think that she would have that obligation.

You would think that she's hundreds of miles away, that there wouldn't be this, that power differential wouldn't be at least as potent.

But anyway, just keep that in the back of your mind. Let's keep going here. In a 2021 interview,

Jennifer Lyle made these statements about reporting this David Sills to the police.

And I just want you to take this in. Now, the audio is in the info section in this particular video or audio, whatever you're listening to, podcast.

You're gonna see, if you go to the info section, I'll put the link there so you can check it out. This whole interview is like two and a half hours.

And here's some quotes. She says, I mean, I was like, literally like, I mean, it was police at my house and you know, safety.

I know that's kind of rambling, but a lot of the interview is like this. She talks about police at her house.

She talks about, she says, Moeller did call the police, but he didn't make it public disclosure.

She says, Moeller called the police. She then talks about a situation where David Sills was in a meeting at Southern Seminary.

Now, she's in Nashville. David Sills is in Louisville. So they're, you know, hours apart. And this is what

Jennifer Lyell says happens. After the meeting, all of a sudden, this is the meeting in Louisville, and the meeting in Louisville happens.

And she, well, how about this? You can listen to her tell it. When the meeting was over, I was at work at Lifeway and it's big, and we were waiting on this call and it had been forever, like an hour and 20 minutes, you know, they'd been in this meeting and you don't expect it to take, how long can it take for this confrontation?

And all of a sudden, my boss calls me and he says, where are you? And I was like, cafeteria. And he says, you need to get up to Dr.

Rainer's office right now, go to his back office, turn your phone off and do not leave.

And so, of course, I'm freaking out. Like, is this on the internet? What's going on? And so, why am

I going to Dr. Rainer's office? And so I get up there. The reason they wanted me in Dr. Rainer's office was because it was the place you had to badge the most into to get to, because Dr.

Moeller had called Eric Geiger and when Eric answered the phone, all he heard was Dr. Moeller screaming, where is she?

And he was like, what's going on? And he's like, he's left. I mean, they had police go to his house to make sure to track where he was.

And the reason they gave him the hour and a half time to get his, to turn his letter back in was so they could make sure he stayed in Louisville and wasn't on his way here.

Okay, so the key thing there is she says that the police had to go to his house to make sure to track where he was.

And the reason they gave him the hour and a half to turn his letter back in was so that they can make sure he stayed in Louisville.

The police, so the police were tracking him at some point. That's why this is important. Hold that thought, though.

This is all gonna come together. Just think, once I get to the Megan Basham, the attacks on her, you'll see why

I think this is significant. Another thing that's said here, she talks about the

Louisville Police Department. And she's asked, essentially, why didn't she report what happened?

And, or why didn't she, she reported it, but why didn't she press charges?

And it turns out, she reports it, she makes, she doesn't mention in this whole interview, it's like two and a half hours, when she actually reported it.

That's really, really key and important when the reporting happened. My understanding is it was much after, like 2020, somewhere in there.

But she talks about going to the Louisville Police Department and saying it has one of the lowest prosecution rates in the country.

And she says, I don't have physical evidence, and I was over the age of consent, and if the SBC did all this, and I'm having to explain it to people who know to trust

Al Mohler, this is not gonna, and then she says, Louisville has the second highest untested rate kits in the nation, so if they're not even testing rate kits, here's what she's trying to say.

What she's saying there, and the inflections of her voice in the recording, if you won't go and listen to it, is she's saying, look, the

SBC, they know to trust Al Mohler. The police, this is not a good police department,

I'm not gonna get a fair shake with them. They're not a great place to go to actually successfully press charges.

They can't even test, they're not even testing rate kits. I mean, how am I gonna do that? But it doesn't really matter for the sake of the

SBC, because the people in the SBC, they know to trust Al Mohler. That's what I'm gathering from it, at least.

And so that's why she says she doesn't press charges. Now, that's also interesting to me. I would keep that in the back of your mind, too, that this is her, this is what she's saying.

She's saying Al Mohler called the police. She's saying that the police were tracking

David Sills on some level. She's saying, at some point, I guess the police were at her house. She's also saying that the

Louisville Police Department, when she reported it, so she also reported it, apparently, well, that she don't wanna press charges.

So this is what she's saying about this, okay? Now, let's keep going here.

I want to give you some more background, and then we'll start tying things together. One of the questions that, everyone knows

I would have this question, probably, on some level, especially with the Me Too movement stuff. I thought, well, where is Jennifer Lyle on social justice?

Does she, is she someone who's more on the left? Like, would this fit her political agenda at all?

Does she have a political agenda at all? Even if she is on the left, it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't mean that David Sills didn't abuse her.

I'm not saying that. No one who represents this video should ever make that case against me or smear me that way, like they're doing with Megan Basham, because Megan Basham didn't say this, and I'm not saying this either.

I don't know if David Sills, I'm not saying he didn't. He may have abused her physically in some way.

The root issue of this whole thing, though, is whether or not Guidepost actually was forthright and honest and doing, practicing, using best practices to actually find corroboration when they said that her story was corroborated, because that's the issue.

And so, and that, I think, can be answered, and the answer's no, I mean, they didn't.

And so anyway, but I was also, I'm also curious about, like, is there, is there another possible possibility here?

Is there a potential that maybe part of the motivation in any of this is to move things politically?

Because that is, there is a huge political move happening in the SBC as a result of the Me Too stuff. There just is.

It's changing the whole way that the SBC functions. It is bringing in a new standard, and I'll show you that in a minute, a new standard of what constitutes abuse and what to do about it.

And it's so different than anything before. It's not really, it's not biblical. But, so I just wondered, where's she at?

I mean, because the political left is, they're the ones that are, that's where this is coming from, this new standard, this new way of dealing with things.

And Jennifer Lyle is, it seems like, on the political left, and I'll show you some stuff that seemed to demonstrate that. This is from her

LinkedIn. She said, I don't celebrate the Fourth, well, she supports this. She supports someone, Madison Butler.

It's got his rainbow flag there. He says, I don't celebrate the Fourth of July. I'm not patriotic.

And he quotes someone who says, white feelings should never be held in higher regard than black lives. And that's why he doesn't celebrate the

Fourth of July and isn't patriotic. And Jennifer Lyle, of course, supports this. You have Jennifer Lyle, and she's doing this publicly.

She wants people to know. She, Jennifer Lyle, also in her About section on LinkedIn, saying that she has had an incredible career in book publishing, but now she's going to pursue work that will cultivate solutions for systemic challenges facing marginalized communities.

Which, of course, sounds like the social justice stuff to some extent.

And, you know, she's a lawyer, or she's studying to be a lawyer. And so I'm guessing that that's what she's talking about.

Here, more telling is possibly this. And I looked on white pages just to see if there was anyone else named

Jennifer Lyle. Someone actually sent me this first thing here, that there was a campaign contribution from a

Jennifer Lyle in Franklin, Tennessee, made to, and it's only like 10 bucks, but it was made in 2020 to Biden for president.

And this is on the FEC .gov. And so I went to just to see on white pages, like, well, is there anyone else from Franklin, Tennessee, a

Jennifer Lyle? There is no other Jennifer Lyle listed. The Jennifer Lyle that is on white pages who lived in Franklin, Tennessee also lived in Marion, Illinois.

And lives in Nashville now. And lived in, well, it looks like a number of places, but mostly

Illinois. So it looks to me like that's the Jennifer Lyle.

So if that's the case, which it appears to be, she would be on the left, politically speaking.

Now, when it comes to SBC politics, she's also on the left, it appears. And I didn't do an extensive research in this, but she, there's this whole thread that you can read if you want.

You can screenshot this, where she's talking about basically why you shouldn't vote for Tom Askell. Because he's targeted and attacked people both in public and behind the scenes in un -Christlike ways.

And realize this when you're voting in Amaheim. Do you want your next president to be someone whose convictions bear the fruit of tactics that mirror those of Paige Patterson?

If so, vote for Askell and keep right on saying nothing about the way power is idolized as a doctrine.

And just interesting to me, because when I think of Tom Askell, I think of kind of like a very mild mannered, like the way that he at least communicates is very mild.

It's not Paige Patterson. It is, I would never use the word aggressive to describe

Tom Askell's demeanor. If anything, there's times

I've been, I've wanted, and I think many probably listening have wanted to hear maybe even some more aggression.

He's kind of a mild mannered guy. And that's, I think, probably part of his personality. But Jennifer Lyle, like the way she's describing him,

I'm like, is this the same Tom Askell? Like, who is she talking about? But clearly very against him for SBC president.

She's inserting herself in the SBC politics. And it's interesting because that interview from 2021, she talks about how she doesn't want to be trending or she doesn't want to be like, she doesn't want the limelight.

She doesn't want the internet talking about her. She doesn't want to be used as a political pawn, all this kind of thing. But she's inserting herself into politics here.

She's cultivating her own little following. There's no doubt about it. Now, all that background is leading to this, okay?

Everything that we just said, I think we're going to now use it in evaluating the current situation.

Here's the current situation. Megan Basham published an article in the Daily Wire, the Southern Baptist Me Too moment.

Her thesis was this. The Me Too movement in the SBC is discredited itself by overstating its case and conflating unmistakable instances of abuse with messy adult entanglements.

That's basically her point. That it's murky, that Southern Baptists are engaging in what the secular

Me Too movement was involved with, and it's discrediting itself. And some of those same weaknesses you can see in the

SBC. Now, she draws on three different things. One is statistics. There are not many identifiable cases of sexual abuse compared to the size of the denomination.

That's number one. There isn't this big systemic problem that David French talks about and others, like that it's this horrible thing the

SBC is going through and it just characterizes. It's so fundamental to what the SBC is. Sexual abuse.

And it's not. She draws on corroboration. And this is where Jennifer Lyle comes in, that the

Guideposts counted belief in Lyle's story as corroboration. Basically, the words, definitions are changing.

The SBC can't figure out what a pastor is. They can't seem to figure out what adultery is quite either sometimes.

And I'll show you an example of where that's starting to happen. Adultery can now just be abuse as well.

And apparently corroboration. The Guideposts can count corroboration as, well, someone says,

I believe her story, though that's not corroboration. As one person on Twitter, captive to the word, put out there, for those who continue to miss the point that Megan Basham is making, she is asking for real corroboration, not just shared belief.

Corroborate. Definition, to add proof to an account, statement, idea, et cetera, with new information. Obviously, if someone just says, well,

I heard her story and I believe her, that's not corroboration. And that's all Megan Basham is saying. She's not saying that there wasn't abuse.

There could have been. I'm not saying that either. She's not saying that David Sills didn't potentially even rape her or something.

What she's saying is Guideposts didn't do their due diligence. They didn't follow best practice in this.

And that is a valid point. And it has not been overturned. In everything that's happened since then, it has not been addressed.

And then the conflict of interest, that Rachel Denhollander was appointed to advise the Executive Committee and was instrumental in the decision to hire

Guideposts and communicated with them, though she previously represented Lyle against the Executive Committee.

So that represents a conflict of interest. Those are the three things she drew on to say, this is me too.

And it's happening in the SBC. Now, there are charges of inaccuracy.

This is where this started. Charges of inaccuracy. And so we have two examples here of that.

The first one, I think this is the one, this is the one that got a lot of attention by this guy named

Bob Smietana, I think, Smietana. Anyway, he writes, and this is from Religion News Service, probably the most progressive, like, it's like the

CNN of the MSNBC. No, you know, it's more NPR. It's like the NPR, I guess, of evangelicalism, kind of.

If you can even call it evangelicalism, it's so far to the left. Anyway, a number of pastors have passed around a story that questions whether Jen Lyle spoke to the police or if her allegations were accurate.

A Jeffersontown officer confirmed that she reported and several

SBC agencies corroborated the allegations. So all he's saying is that she did report.

And so it's people now calling for Megan Basham's public apology. And the relevant section from the article is that Major Mark Tipperman of the

Jeffersontown Kentucky Police Department told Religion News Service in a phone call that Lyle had reported the abuse.

Now, this is the thing that they're trying to slam Megan Basham with, is that this was reported, and kind of the implication then ending up being, well, it's proven, and we'll see that in a minute.

Like, you just gotta accept that this happened. And the thing is, in Megan Basham's article, though, if you read it, this doesn't actually conflict with anything that she herself has written.

And they're acting like it's a smoking gun, like this is proof positive that Megan Basham is a liar or something.

But here's what Megan Basham said in her article. Here's what she said, and I quote from the article.

Louisville PD told me they have no records pertaining to Jennifer Lyle or David Sills and Lieutenant Glenn Parkes, commander of the

Sex Crimes Unit, could not find any cases matching Lyle's description. And this is, remember, after, remember

Lyle's, what she claimed that Mueller reported, that she reported, I mean, they were tracking the guy, apparently.

And, I mean, they showed up at her house, I guess. I mean, you'd think there would be a record, right? When I spoke to Lyle, she was not willing to provide details about her allegations on the record, but said the

Baptist Press had made a mistake and that she'd actually reported Sills to the Jeffersontown Kentucky authorities.

However, their department too told me they were not able to locate anything on either Sills or Lyle in their system. Okay, so she's not saying that she didn't go and try to report it.

She's just saying there's no record of any of this. That's all she's saying. And nothing in the

Twitterverse, nothing out there has demonstrated that this is wrong, that the record exists.

It's just saying that someone spoke to Mark Tipperman and he says, well, yeah, she came in,

Jeffersontown Kentucky police. She came into our department, but there's no record that's cited here.

And I think that's the key thing is, and Megan Bashin, if you read the Twitter comments, basically, Megan gets into this and is like, well, when was it?

Was it, it wasn't during the time of this, it was much later. And it was, and there was no, there is no, at least, identifiable record that can be shown here.

And so that's clearly so much, much less than you'd expect to find if you had

Mueller, you had her, Lyle herself, and you had reporting this, and you had police tracking him according to her, and you had them show up at her house at some point, you'd think there would be a lot more.

There'd be some record somewhere. Why isn't there a record? So I think it's, that question's still out there.

And there's nothing inaccurate about the, Megan Bashin's article isn't contradicted by this, but they're like,

Megan's gotta apologize now. And you got Eric Geiger. Several people have asked me about this article where it's purported that I simply believe,

Jennifer, that is not what I shared with Megan. Here's what I sent her. And he sends this, and I've read it, this whole thing about, you know, but here's the thing.

Megan doesn't quote from any of this statement. Megan's quoting from, I believe it was a Baptist Press article when she's quoting

Eric Geiger. She's just quoting another article. So it's, there's nothing in here that is contradictory to anything

Megan Bashin wrote, but they're acting, I mean, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention retweeted this, acting as if Megan is somehow being less than genuine.

And so, so here's what we end up getting with all of this.

We have all these SBC, I recognize some of these people from just all these, these even years ago on Twitter.

Danny Slavich, thank you, Dr. Moeller. Oh, I should mention, yeah, Dr. Moeller weighs in on this and basically says, we cannot and should not respond to every public controversy, but I hope this statement below is helpful and clarifying.

And then he talks about how Jennifer Lyle came to me with an accusation of sexual abuse by David Sills. We followed appropriate processes.

And then he goes on, let's see if I can find that. He goes on and he says, and the accusation of abuse was confirmed as we indicated publicly and have substantially, subsequently confirmed.

Statements directly made by the Sills in the course of our confrontation clearly confirmed the allegations of abuse. So clearly confirmed these allegations, clearly confirmed, clearly.

Nothing that you can, you can't really point to much. There wasn't, charges weren't pressed. No records at the police departments, but clearly, clearly confirmed.

And it's just, you wonder, you know, a predator like this, you're not gonna call and press charges and it's just weird.

So anyway, Danny Slavich sees this. He says, thank you, Dr. Mueller. It's clear Megan Basham does not have credibility on this issue and her writing should be ignored.

I mean, it sounds like a robot. It's just like, I'm like, what? I'm looking at some of this stuff. I'm like, Dr. Mueller has spoken from on high.

I mean, I know Protestants aren't supposed to have a Pope, but my goodness, Kristin Dumez, who wrote

Jesus and John Wayne, right? Infamous Kristin Dumez. Important connections in all of this.

What are the important connections? Well, if you saw a Daily Wire writer, can't even say her name, a

Daily Wire writer, publicly attacking a sexual abuse survivor's account of their assault. Keep in mind, Basham is a 2022

Claremont Fellow, Hillsdale College. President Larry Arnn is Claremont's vice chairman, co -founder, and 1985 to 2000 president.

This isn't incidental. Hmm. Oh my goodness. She's got a connection to Claremont.

Now I look at that, I'm not a big fan of Claremont, but again, I'm not a huge,

I don't know everything Claremont's put out there, but they're kind of of that Harry Joffa school of American history.

And I just think it's, I'm not the biggest Claremont guy. I wouldn't consider them raving right -wing lunatics.

I would think of them more as, you know, they're kind of like the propositional nation folks.

They're just very, I don't know, neoconservatives more so.

I think they lean more that way. That's the impression I've gotten at least. But Kristin Dumez, making it out like Megan Basham.

She went to a Claremont event. She's a fellow there. Oh my goodness. That means, we know what's motivating, it's

Larry Arnn. And we know what that means, that's Hillsdale. We know what that means, Trump.

Anyway, it's the tenuous, the connections that critical race theorists love this kind of thing.

Like let's form a connection. Let's try to connect this person. Forget about the facts of the situation. Forget about the truth.

Doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter. What we need is to find the connection to something we really don't like and that we can try to get everyone not to like and then discredit it.

And the truth is a casualty of this. Megan, let's see, Megan Nichols -Lively, reporting her, and she got a lot of likes on this.

Twitter safety, Megan Basham continues to harass and spread false information about a survivor of sexual abuse. Oh my goodness.

Can you please block her account? Natalie, she has her pronouns in her profile, quote unquote, journalists.

She doesn't know, so they're not journalists, but I mean, this is someone who probably, she doesn't know what a woman is, I don't think, but journalists, quote unquote.

She went to a one -week Christian journalism course and wrote movie reviews. So, you know, don't listen to Megan Basham, but also don't destroy

Megan Basham in the process. You have Jared Kornut. If you're going to choose to believe a writer of the

Daily Wire over two of our seminary presidents, perhaps it's time for you to leave the SBC. Megan Basham says,

Pastor, respectfully, I did not assert that Jennifer Lyle's claims against David Sills were not true. There is no belief over.

What I critiqued was guidepost terminology and methodology. You are being dishonest about me and what I reported, and she's absolutely right.

It's like they're responding to an article that Megan Basham didn't write. That's how this whole thing seems to be going down.

And you can see the political weapon, weaponry coming out in this. Joel Rainey, who's been high up in different SBC positions,

I think in the Maryland -Delaware Convention, and I think he's a pastor now. He says, people ask me, why are you so insistent that we purge the

SBC of any semblance of the Baptist network, conservative Baptist network? Isn't that just being punitive? Nope, it's living in obedience to Titus 310.

This is but one example why we should show them the door. Because Jennifer Lyle says, you know what,

CBN founders, just tell me when and where you want to stone me or have a firing squad.

As long as you all finish me off without saying another word, I'll show up and let you write the ending since you're so sure

I'm a slut, is the word she uses. Pick a place in time or shut up. And then you got rushing to, this is someone who, honestly, this is someone who needs help.

This is someone who, this is not rational thinking here. But you got Joel Rainey coming in to defend this.

And, you know, Jennifer Lyle, it's not like she needs help or something. No, Baptist network needs to leave.

We need to show them the door. Oh my goodness, it's CBN's fault.

Apparently Megan Basham's article is CBN's fault now. Like, talk about irrationality, taking this out on CBN.

It's all politicalization. It's all about power. It just seems that way. See, I, for some of these people, at least.

Jennifer Lyle said, hey, Rod Martin and Tom Askell, I'm done, stop what you either started, fueled or passively enabled.

It's lies and is evil. If you don't stop, then you are too. Yeah, it's, that's who's behind all this.

Megan Basham was, so she's, it's Larry Arnn behind her, apparently, and the

Claremont Institute, or it's really just CBN. Like, Megan can't just write this herself for the

Daily Wire. It's gotta be attached to something else. Then we have

Jared, I mean, I don't even know how much of stuff I wanna read. Don't ask questions is basically how

I labeled this one. Some of the people reacting, Jared Cornut being one of them, that, let's see,

Dr. Moeller and Greenway confirmed that he abused. He abused her, Dr. Moeller and Adam Greenway.

They said it, so therefore, you know, God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Well, in the SBC, it's like Moeller said it, I believe it, that settles it. Hannah Anderson, one manifestation of a pornographic culture is how easily perfect strangers demand the intimate details of sexual abuse in order to determine the truth, quote unquote.

They need to know the sexual specifics of abuse allegations is not just asking questions, it is voyeurism. Okay, and that's very similar to actually something

Rachel Denhollander said to Russell Moore in the context of this whole thing. Initially, I think in 2019, she said something very similar.

So you can't ask questions. If you ask questions, if you want proof, then that makes you, you're a pervert or something.

It's just, it's a lose -lose situation. Jennifer Greenberg, broadening the definition of abuse here, she says, and let's talk about adultery.

Adultery is a premeditated and willful abuse of your spouse's trust and love. It's the betrayal of your child's hopes and security. It's the intentional breaking of hearts and ruining of marriages and lives.

Adultery is abuse. Stop defending church leaders who cheat on their wives, especially with their own congregants and people in their care.

You look ignorant at best. Adultery is abuse. This is where, are we going here? That adultery is abuse now?

What is, I mean, I agree in a generic sense, I guess there's an abuse there. There's abuse of the privileges that God's given you.

I mean, but we know in the context we're talking about abuse. We're talking about someone forcing themselves.

We're talking about there wasn't consent. That kind of thing. If we can just now broaden it to, well, if Sills, let's say

Sills is an adulterer, well, it's still abuse. Stop defending him. Well, okay. Let's say it's adultery.

Really bad. He should have been let go, obviously. But that doesn't mean, as bad as that is, it doesn't mean that he was forcing himself on her, if possibly, if that's all it is.

And so it's okay to have an open question. There's really, there's no problem with that, but we can't have that for some reason.

And then, so here's some of the things that I'm seeing with the Me Too, the merger of the Me Too and the SBC political corruption.

Don't ask questions. Broaden the definition of abuse. And then we have the main one here. Allegations equal actualities.

Allegations equal actualities. Mueller heard allegations. David French even retweeted this from Mueller. We just, we found that it's true.

It's confirmed. Can't give you evidence, but it's just confirmed. Bart Barber retweeted

Adam Greenway. He says, I was serving as the dean of the Billy Graham school when Jennifer Lauer reported.

I witnessed that conversation as well. I am fully confirmed Dr. Mueller's statement. May these reprehensible attacks against Jen please stop.

Logan Smith pushed back and said, Dr. Mueller, with all due respect, this statement reads like you're tap dancing.

No one, to my knowledge, doubts the allegations of abuse. They question the actuality of abuse.

And that does get to the heart of it. Okay, there's allegations, yeah, but where's the beef? Okay, what was the evidence?

What did you see? What was it that showed you that this is definitely abuse? And Griffin Gooledge, I think he's pronouncing that right, steps in.

And Griffin Gooledge, I mean, he's kind of, I don't know exactly what, I think he's a pastor, but I remember in 2019, he was the guy that first tweeted out that this whole situation with Mike Stone and Hannah Cate and like, oh my goodness, look what

Mike Stone did. And then he did again this year, it was that CBN had this secret plan or not this, that they were gonna go to the convention center and vote to go straight to the election of the president.

And of course, neither of these things took place in the way that he reports them, which is why

I'm just like this guy, why does anyone trust this guy? But he is active somehow in some of the SPC stuff and people, some people do listen to him apparently.

And he says, confirming allegations is confirming actualities, it's pretty clear. Okay, then

Jennifer Lyle says, for all those asserting I have never been publicly clear about what I reported, this tweet was from June, 2021.

And in 2021, she said the things that happened to me and thus what I reported to Al Mohler included the use of force, felonies for which

I could still press criminal charges if I chose, if she chose, she says she could still push for felonies, she could still press charges.

Well, and again, this just gets you back to square one, this is what she's reporting. We don't have any, what the guy, the root issue here is what

Guidepost said, that this was, that there was corroboration of some kind here.

Let's go back to the Me Too moment thing here. Guidepost counted belief in Lyle's story as corroboration.

That's not corroboration. And that we keep, that's what we keep getting as a broken record that she said it,

I believe it, that settles it. Mohler said it, I believe it, that settles it. Okay, well, who said what doesn't, that shouldn't matter.

Unless they were a witness to something and none of the, Mohler, what was he a witness? If he was a witness, why isn't he speaking up?

If David Sills is such a person that is terrible, doesn't, shouldn't be on the street and stuff, why haven't charges been pressed?

If there were, if the police were tracking him, if there were these calls made to both by Mohler and Lyle, why aren't there records of this stuff, of reports filed?

There's so many questions in this whole thing. And it doesn't mean that David Sills didn't abuse her in some way.

It just means you can't claim that this is corroborated. And then there was some pushback.

Some people were defending Megan Basham. I mean, Rod Martin, hey, did you call the police on Mohler? Did Adam Greenway? If not, why not?

Don't sex abusers belong in jail? Jenna Ellis supporting Megan Basham. You have

Louis Richardson here, not sure who he is, but just basically pointing out like, you were silent on the

Jennifer Buck thing. Why are you, why are you talking about this when you were silent on that?

Like what's, what determines what you speak on and what you don't? And so you have

Bart Barber though, the president of the SBC, retweeting Jennifer Lyle's stuff, retweeting Al Mohler's stuff. That's, he's, that's who the acting president is.

By the way, who's been heralded by even some of the prominent, at least conservatives, two of them

I'm thinking of, on the conservative side of the Southern Baptist Convention as a step in the right direction or just someone who would make a good

SBC president, a good pastor, you know, this is someone who makes a good

SBC president here? Just retweeting all this stuff or tweeting this stuff trying to cast shade on Megan Basham as if, you know, there's some smoking gun that she left out?

No, that's someone who's playing politics. I thought it was an interesting, Will McCraney posted that the

Houston Chronicle, well, it talks about this Highview Baptist case where I guess it was

Kevin Eazell of the North American Mission Board. He ended up, let's see,

Highview's principal, Bill Maggard, was accused of molesting boys prior to 2003. Charges were filed,

I guess. Do you others know that Kevin Eazell, Kevin Eazell knew about this?

And anyway, this whole issue, though, he's saying at Highview was,

Guidepost had the details to it and did not report it. Why is that? And again, why is some of these, why is the

Joni Hannigan, when she, you know, asks questions about this stuff, why is, you know, she's never mentioned?

Why, Al Mohler doesn't weigh in on that, but he does on this Lyle case, why? You gotta ask that question.

And then I think this is a good conclusion. Joshua Abatoy had a great, this is the root of all of it. He goes, no one, and he's responding to this ridiculous, thank you,

Dr. Mohler, it's clear that Megan Basham does not have credibility. Her writing should be ignored because Dr. Mohler has come from on high and spoken to us.

Joshua Abatoy says, no one can point out what precisely Megan Basham misreported. She did her homework and has receipts and stated her case carefully.

Megan didn't attack Lyle and didn't conclude that her allegations were false. Megan's crime was simply questions.

And that is the root of this. Megan's crime was simply asking questions. That's all she did.

And that's all it took, was her asking some, really some questions that should have been asked by someone else.

And you have to ask, why aren't there other reporters? Why aren't there other people asking these same questions? And the answer is,

I don't know. I can gander out an answer that there's a lot of weakness out there, a lot of fear.

The progressive left media is gonna, they're gonna root for their side in this whole situation.

They're gonna be on the side of the Russell Moores of the world. They're asking a question about this, even just a basic question.

Is there really corroboration? Was there? You said there was, but was there? That question is off limits.

And the attempt will be to discredit you, to destroy you. I've lived through this.

Other people have lived through this. Megan Basham's now living through this. And it's, they go ad hominem really quick.

And this is not a Christian way of responding to this stuff. Someone who asks questions, really. So that's what

I wanted to bring to you and just show you is a perfect example in my mind of what's happening in the

SBC, why it's so bad. How corrupt it is, how the wagons circle so quickly. How just uncaring about truth and how personal it gets so quickly.

Just how authoritarian it is. This is the current SBC. These aren't people that are beholden to a biblical standard of the,

I mean, even I was reading today with doing some discipleship with a guy I'm discipling.

And we were reading through 1 Timothy and talking about widows who are widows indeed.

And what does that mean? Well, verify. Like even something as small as that, verify.

This is, it's not wrong to verify things. And really that's all Megan Basham is doing. Just asking a question.

Can't ask the question. Just trust us. And that's what you're getting. Just trust us. That's a sign that you're in a cult.

That's not a sign that you're in a healthy Christian setting. Just trust us.

We have the proof, but we can't show it to you. And it's a bunch of us have this. And the extra step is, and if you don't trust us, you are to be destroyed, essentially.

You, there would be maybe some understanding if there was a situation, I'm thinking hypothetically, where there's

NDAs and there's legal things and just trust us, this is what happened.

But I can understand, you don't have to believe us. We'd like it if you did, but please trust us.

But if you don't, that's fine. Like we're not at liberty to disclose that. That's different than trust us and you will be destroyed.

That's trust us, or you don't care about abuse. Trust us, or you need to be reported to Twitter to be taken off of it, or you're helping the abuser out or something like that.

Talk about uncharitable. Talk about, I mean, is this winsome? It just doesn't seem winsome, people that wanna be winsome.

That's a, it's a sad state of affairs. And I'm glad that God's kingdom is there and way bigger than the

SBC, because the Southern Baptist Convention is just going downhill, in my opinion, at breakneck speed. So there you go, that's the situation with Megan Basham.

She has nothing to be ashamed of. She's done a good thing for Southern Baptists, if they could recognize it.

She's one of the only adults in the room willing to ask questions, willing to be bold, willing to stand behind her questions, willing to stand behind her journalism or article, not caving like a folded chair when someone applies a little bit of pressure.

I can't say, I mean, there's a lot of men in the SBC who should be as aggressive as she is, and they're not.

And in fact, I think she's putting some of them to shame, I'm just gonna say it. But I'm thankful for her doing this and shining a spotlight on this.

And I hope she continues to just ask good questions. That's all she's doing, that's all she's doing. And that's where it's bringing her.

Okay, well, I hope that was helpful for some of you out there, you Southern Baptists. God bless, more coming. Might be a little later in the week, we'll see lots, lots going on.

So trying to think through what's the best stuff to focus on. But I did wanna get this out there early in the week just because I saw what was happening.