LEFTIST EVANGELICALISM

Same as Totalitarian Fascism

The following video goes into quite a bit of detail on how Evangelical big wigs are caving into "leftwing" pressure to promote "leftist" causes among Christians. I put "left" in quotes because it's a vague term. I consider myself to be a liberal libertarian, but not a leftist. I'm also Christian, but not a believer that God's "word" can be contained in a book any easier than it can be contained in our individual inspirations. I applaud Megan Basham for raising our awareness of the unChristian agendas being promoted to Christians by the wealthy worshipers of mammon. But I don't agree with her own views entirely either, such as apparently the view that the Bible is infallible. What mainly persuaded me to be Christian was Jesus' message of Love for All. I understood the New Testament to say that Jesus is our role model and that's what salvation means, i.e. following Jesus' example of Love for All. I agree that Abortion is deplorable, but women who want abortions are not to be condemned. Instead, they should be strongly encouraged to have their babies and let someone adopt them. And the Christian community should agree to support the woman who wants an abortion to make her burden lighter and bearable. I don't know if gays have more STDs than non-gays, but gays are capable of having and raising kids and maybe should be encouraged to do so. No one should be allowed to give sex-change treatments to minors. Climate Change, like the Pandemic, is one of the biggest hoaxes in history. It’s surely part of a globalist/fascist agenda of control and population reduction. The “left” has bought into modern scientism, accepting science as infallible, when it’s mostly a racket. I’ve always liked science, but I found that much of science is totally, obviously wrong, such as sedimentary rocks and dinosaur fossils being millions of years old and that the universe is expanding at increasing velocity from a big bang. There are many societal problems that I don't have definite answers for, but Jesus and the Apostles and other followers gave us a way to make Godly group decisions in Acts 15. Below I'm just copying a couple of book reviews of Ms. Basham's book. You can see the video if you want a lot more info, or you might even want to get the book. I don't plan to myself, since I need to be frugal.

Rick Warren’s Hidden Agenda… We Have Proof | Megan Basham

Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, By Megan Basham

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/shepherds-for-sale-megan-basham

“This may just be the single most important book on modern Evangelicalism in recent years. It is bold, clear, and very well-researched.” — John MacArthur

How deeply have leftist billionaires infiltrated America’s churches?

In Shepherds for Sale, Megan Basham of the Daily Wire documents how progressive powerbrokers — from George Soros, to the founder of eBay, to former members of the Obama administration — set out to change the American church. Their goal: to co-opt evangelicals for political purposes. She exposes:

· The left-wing billionaires, foundations, and think tanks that deliberately target Christian media, universities, megachurches, nonprofits, and even entire denominations

· The celebrity megachurch pastor who secretly encouraged a group of pastors to change their views on sexuality

· The revered Presbyterian theologian who backed a congregation rebelling against his own denomination

These are just a glimpse into the compromises and astroturf campaigns Basham uncovers. Many evangelical leaders are pushing their members to “whisper” about sexual sins, reconsider the importance of abortion, lament the effects of climate change, and repent of “perpetuating systemic racism.” And in exchange for toeing a left-wing line, many of those church leaders and institutions have received cash, career jumps, prestige, and praise. Basham brings the receipts, and names names.

A rigorously reported exposé, Shepherds for Sale is a warning of what happens when the church trusts the world’s wisdom instead of Scripture.

...............................

Book Review: “Shepherds For Sale” By Megan Basham

https://truthscript.com/reviews/book-review-shepherds-for-sale-by-megan-basham/

Amy Simmons July 25, 2024

In the post-pandemic era, we’ve seen our country rapidly descend deeper into a fractured, low-trust society. After the recent presidential debate, the left-wing media was aghast to see a feeble Joe Biden stumble and mumble his way through the moderators’ predictable questions. Of course, the public already knew he was in cognitive decline, but the legacy media dismissed these claims as “right-wing conspiracies.” Instead, we’re told to trust the experts. “Nothing to see here.” In the days following the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, the White House remained radio-silent as the public was left to speculate on the shooter’s motives and the reasons for the Secret Service’s failure to protect the former president. As Biden would say, “anyway…”

As Christian investigative journalist Meghan Basham details in her new book, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, evangelical leaders have employed these same types of manipulation tactics on the average churchgoer for decades. In this extensively researched exposé, Basham unravels how the progressive left has infiltrated the conservative church through shadowy non-governmental organization (NGO) initiatives with benign-sounding front groups that well-respected pastors, theologians, and para-church leaders promoted under the banner of “loving your neighbor.” Based on a compilation of her years of reporting on church issues for the conservative news and media outlet The Daily Wire, Shepherds uncovers the behind-the-scenes political machinations of evangelical elites that have led venerated Christian institutions and publications.

Utilizing her research acumen, personal anecdotes, and connections with evangelical insiders, Basham systematically unmasks the benefactors of current progressive left ideologies being pushed into conservative evangelical churches. The amount of players involved in what is akin to a conservative evangelical ”deep state” is overwhelming at times, but that serves to show the level of obfuscation under which the current regime operates. Basham writes with precision and thoroughness while still wearing her layperson’s hat. The reader senses her righteous indignation as she does not hide her own beliefs and convictions, and her commentary is fortified throughout with biblical refutations. The following are some takeaways one can glean from a good-faith reading of Shepherds.

1. The “Divisive Groups” Were Right

In her introduction, Basham states that her chief aim for writing this book is to validate what the discerning Christian has suspected for some time: “that [their] pulpits and […] institutions are being co-opted by political forces with explicitly secular progressive aims…” (Basham, XXVIII). Of course, this flies in the face of the messaging they have received from Big Eva leaders like JD Greear (who is featured prominently in Shepherds) and his guild of “Great Commission Baptists.” At the 2023 SBC Convention in New Orleans, Todd Unzicker, executive director of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention and close friend of Greear, scolded his fellow believers who pushed back against the social justice causes promoted by his colleagues. He characterized them as “divisive groups” who were more interested in posting their concerns on social media than “soul-winning” and keeping “on mission.” This textbook example of deflection is what Shepherds succeeds in debunking by showing how off-course evangelical institutions have gone.

One case in point is Danny Aiken’s Southeastern Theological Seminary, which platforms climate alarmist Jonathan Moo. As Basham notes, Moo and his secular backer, A. Rocha, set their sights on the younger generation to start grassroots campaigns in churches in order to pressure the GOP to join the cause (22). As if climate activism weren’t enough, leaders such as former ERLC leader Russell Moore, linked arms with the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), an initiative of Soro’s backed National Immigration Forum (NIF), which to this day exists to persuade evangelicals to vote for open borders (34). This “mission” seems more aligned with The Great Reset than The Great Commission.

2. Unfit Leaders Cower Under The Progressive Gaze

One particularly illuminating quote in Shepherds comes from its second most cited figure (behind Russell Moore), JD Greear, which can be found courtesy of a Woke Preacher Clip taken from the 2019 Just Gospel conference. Here he states that his “main task” as SBC president “is …to appoint people on committees who will then appoint trustees who end up shaping the institutions…” (emphasis added). He then goes on to give the typical DEI criterion of hiring mostly women and minorities. This type of posture falls under what Joe Rigney aptly calls “living under the progressive gaze,” It operates under the assumption that: “It’s progressive sensitivities that we must take into account, progressive concerns that we must speak to, progressive hopes that we must show the gospel subversively fulfilling.” In order to appear acceptable to the world, Greear and other evangelical leaders have championed causes such as racial justice.

In the chapter “Critical Race Prophets,” Basham takes the reader down “memories-we’d-like-to-forget lane” when the topic of systemic racism came to the forefront of evangelical conversations. Suddenly, white evangelicals, America’s most powerful voting bloc, had to recognize their “white privilege.” This is why in 2019, Greear’s culturally diverse executive committee framed “Resolution 9: On Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality” as a neutral “analytical tool” useful for church governance. In fact, according to Southern Seminary professor Keith Whitfield, “it was meant to provide cover for SBC professors who were already teaching CRT” (130). From Greear’s perspective, it looks like the institutions are shaping up just fine.

3. Everything Is Political

In the fearful initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, people were weighing advice from the medical community and following the edicts of the governing authorities. Still, believers sought further guidance from trusted shepherds. Unfortunately, several influential evangelical leaders espoused vaccine propaganda and sided with the government’s oppressive lockdown mandates rather than listen to the concerns of their congregants. One such person they promoted was former National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins, a professing believer, who fought the Trump administration for the continued use of human fetal cell research and is a staunch “ally” of the LGBTQ movement (107). In the chapter “Gracious Dialogue,” Basham delivers a devastating account of how Collins vilified Christians who opposed his establishment’s COVID narrative while receiving the blessing of evangelical heavyweights. She states that “[Tim]Keller, [Rick]Warren, [N.T.]Wright, [Russell]Moore, and [Ed]Stetzer all publicly lauded Collins as a godly brother, as did Christianity Today and Relevant [Magazine]” (108). Indeed, while many Christians were derided for following their convictions, the men who were supposed to lend biblical counsel were more concerned about their reputation among liberal elites.

In addition to propagating the left’s COVID narrative, Basham chronicles how high-profile evangelical leaders like the late Tim Keller took to shifting the Pro-Life argument into a “whole life” or “womb to tomb” issue. In the chapter “Hijacking The Pro-Life Movement,” Basham relates this to her personal experience as a reporter for WORLD Magazine, where the Kellerite former editor-in-chief, Marvin Olansky, told her that “their work should challenge Christian readers to moderate their tendency to rank abortion as the ‘single issue’ that settled their vote” (58). In “Christian Media and The Money Men,” we discover that the denigration of conservative voters by Christianity Today and Religion News Services is to appease the leftist Lilly Endowment and the pro-LGBTQ Arcus Foundation, respectively. Additionally, she discredits the claim that conservative believers are “too political” by exposing the role leftist billionaires played in funding initiatives that purport to teach Christians ‘what healthy democratic participation looks like’ and how to ‘love your neighbor politically’” (89). Evidently, Christians are not the right kind of political.

4. Untethered Empathy Imports False Ideologies

Since our society has become more feminized, we’ve seen a propensity for leaders to cater to the whims of those who are led by their emotions. Rigney is again helpful here by describing this inclination as “untethered empathy,” which is “a concern for the hurting and vulnerable that is unmoored from truth, goodness, and reality.” Basham goes to great lengths to show how the SBC abuse reforms are based on specious arguments from “trauma-informed” counseling and the now-rescinded Obama-era Title IX Sexual Abuse guidance. In fact, it’s a deception that will keep women in bondage to a “victim status” rather than taking accountability for their own actions, which Basham demonstrates through powerful anecdotes.

In “None Dare Call It Sin,” Basham describes the origins of Side A/ “affirming” ministry, Embracing The Journey, started by Andy Stanley’s North Point Church. A remark Stanley made at a pastor’s conference illustrates where untethered empathy leads; he states: “‘A gay person who still wants to attend church after the way they’ve been treated – I’m telling you, they have more faith than I do… They have more faith than a lot of you.’” (200). However, it’s the Side B position that warrants the most concern, as it adheres to the traditional sexual ethic but keeps the LGBTQ identity markers. Basham traces its infiltration into the PCA, through the Revoice Conference, and how revered pastor Tim Keller dismissed it’s influence while endorsing the work of its main advocate, Greg Johnson (223-224).

Conclusion. Much of what Shepherds covers will not be shocking to those who truly know “what time it is.” However, it is helpful to be aware of the secular power brokers behind the leftist propaganda in the evangelical church. It will be a valuable resource to share with those who have remained skeptical of the leftward drift. Basham’s experience covering major cultural events and her knowledge of political inner workings helps frame church issues in a wider context while her commitment to biblical fidelity informs her analysis. In a time when evangelicalism is facing a major leadership crisis, Shepherds offers not only a diagnosis of how we got here but also the remedy – standing firm on the authority of Scripture. Basham closes with an admonition for shepherds and laymen to engage in the “open war” on Truth around them. Shepherds certainly helps to clarify what “arguments” and “lofty opinions” they are fighting against (2 Cor. 10:5).

Amy Simmons

View all Amy's TruthScript Articles

Amy Simmons is a high school teacher, but prefers to be identified as an inner-city missionary. She holds a Master of Arts in Christian Education from Dallas Theological Seminary. She enjoys serving in women's ministry at her local church and doing evangelism with her husband Jeff.