SBC Elites Enshrine Their #MeToo Moment

Gold River Tea and the Charleston Trip

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 really, 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 iced 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.

The Southern Baptist Me Too Controversy

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. But this is, 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.

Jennifer Lyell’s Background and Timeline

So let's start off this way. I want to talk about Jennifer Lyle. She's the purported victim in this situation. And 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 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 was mentored by a Democrat senator.

And she was involved in policy and that kind of thing and think tank work. In 2004, a relationship starts, I should say, somehow, with David Sills. And he's a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And 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.

She uses language like, in one of the interviews I was listening to, like, he almost or partially raped me. 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. 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 Lyell says is abusive. But after she, in 2005, she graduates with an M .Div. 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'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.

Al Mohler’s Narrative of Sexual Abuse

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. For Baptist Press, essentially, I guess this is when they settle with Jennifer Lyell and are basically 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 want to 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, 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.

Now, Michael Sills, I should have checked this out. I thought this was David Sills at first. I think David Sills must have contributed to this or something. Point being, David Sills, this professor, I think it's Michael David Sills.

I think it's the same person. David Sills, at least in 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. 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's a power differential. A power differential means that the person with the power is the one that's abusing the other one in the situation.

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 want to 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.

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 a glowing review of how she helped him.

I just think 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.

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

Jennifer Lyell’s Police Reporting Claims

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 Lyle 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, you know, I was at work at Lifeway, and it's, you know, 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 could make sure he stayed in Louisville.

So, the police were tracking him at some point. That's why this is important. Hold that thought, though. This is all going to 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, or why didn't she, she reported it, but why didn't she press charges?

And it turns out, she reports it, it's, 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 going to, and then she says, Louisville has the second highest untested rape kits in the nation, so if they're not even testing rape 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. You know, it's, this, the police, you know, they're, this is not a good police department.

I'm not going to get a fair shake with them. They're, you know, they're not a great place to go to get, you know, to actually successfully press charges. They can't even test, they're not even testing rape kits.

I mean, how am I going to 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 she, 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, you know, when she did, when she reported it, so she also reported it, apparently, well, that they, she don't want to 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, you know, where is Jennifer Lyle on social justice? Does she, you know, 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?

That 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 using best practices to actually find corroboration when they said that her story was corroborated, because that's the issue.

And that, I think, can be answered, and the answer is no. I mean, they didn't. So anyway, but I was also, I'm also curious about, like, is there another 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 is 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 seems 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.

You have 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. 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, and it was only like $10, but it was made in 2020 to Biden for president.

And this is on the FEC .gov. And so I went 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 what 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 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 it's 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. I would never use the word aggressive to describe Tom Askell's demeanor.

If anything, there's times 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.

It's interesting, because that interview from 2021, she talks about how she doesn't want to be trending, or 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.

Megan Basham’s Thesis and the Guidepost Corroboration Problem

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 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. It's so fundamental to what the SBC is. Sexual abuse. 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 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 counted corroboration as someone says, I believe your story. 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 your 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 Lyell against the executive committee.

So that represents a conflict of interest. Those are the three things she drew on to say, like, 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 the Demand to Trust the Officials

Charges of inaccuracy. And so we have two examples here of that. The first one, I think 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.

It's like the CNN of the MSNBC. No, 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 Lyell 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 Lyell 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.

We'll see that in a minute. You've just got to 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 Lyell or David Sills, and Lt. Glenn Parkes, commander of the Sex Crimes Unit, could not find any cases matching Lyell's description. And this is, remember, after, remember, Lyell's, what she claimed, that Mueller reported, that she reported, I mean, they were tracking the guy, apparently.

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 Lyell, 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 Lyell 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.