On this episode of The War Room, host STEPHEN K. BONFILLA is joined by Megan Basham and Mark Mitchell to talk about the growing influence of the "Woke" wing of the evangelical movement.
00:01:49.000It's what really got me involved in politics.
00:01:51.000Megan Basham joins us now, one of the top writers and analyst about the evangelical movement.
00:01:57.000Megan, first off, I was at a meeting with you a couple weeks ago, and you kind of shocked me because I didn't know the details about how woke part of the evangelical movement is and how that's growing.
00:02:10.000And Mark Mitchell is going to jump in.
00:02:11.000He's got a bunch of questions for you also, ma'am.
00:02:14.000Yeah, I think what people don't realize is there's a real divide between the ordinary evangelical in the pews going to church every Sunday and where their leadership is.
00:02:25.000So if you look at where evangelicals are politically, they are extremely conservative.
00:02:30.000They were Donald Trump's strongest supporters.
00:02:33.000They've been rightly called America's most powerful voting bloc by left-wing outlets like the Atlantic.
00:02:39.000But there's been a really strong effort over the last decade, 15 years, to try to move that all-important evangelical voting bloc to the left.
00:02:49.000And so what you have seen is a lot of really large secular left foundations, NGOs, people like the Soros Foundation, Open Society, like Mark Zuckerberg's foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the Rockefellers,
00:03:05.000pretty much all of the usual suspects, pouring money into these evangelical front groups to try to move evangelicals to the left.
00:03:12.000And while it hasn't had the impact, I think, on the rank and file that they've been hoping for, it's been incredibly effective in the leadership class.
00:03:20.000So those dangled carrots have really done their work.
00:03:23.000So if you look at so much of the theologians, the seminary professors, they're all espousing something that's largely known as the third way,
00:03:34.000which means that Christians shouldn't get political, we should stand outside of politics, we shouldn't align with the left or right.
00:03:40.000But what it functionally means is we we punch right and we coddle left.
00:03:46.000And so that's what you see from the evangelical leadership class who has gotten so involved with so many of these secular left foundations.
00:04:20.000And so he really became sort of the the the model and exemplar of this third way approach.
00:04:26.000And so it's it's a method of evangelism that says in order to save lost people.
00:04:33.000And for some reason, these idealized lost people are always progressives on the left.
00:04:39.000What Christians need to do is not take a political position and publicly align with either the right or the left.
00:04:47.000They should be sort of politically agnostic in order to draw people to Christ.
00:04:51.000But what was interesting is that even though this was what someone like Tim Keller espoused, it's not what he lived,
00:04:58.000because while he sort of famously was not very outspoken about issues like abortion or marriage or transgenderism
00:05:06.000or the sort of things that are very clear biblically, he did take public positions opposing, for example, President Trump's border policies.
00:05:13.000So, you know, it was a funny way of saying, well, we're going to be outside politics.
00:05:17.000And to be outside politics means we have to show that we are willing to promote certain leftist policies.
00:05:24.000Is that had a is that had a big impact on the evangelical movement?
00:05:28.000I mean, is this third way this is like 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent?
00:05:32.000What percentage and what percentage of the seminaries?
00:05:35.000Because the seminaries is where it all starts.
00:10:45.000You're telling me that a senior member, and Russell Moore is a renowned never-Trumper, I mean hates Trump,
00:10:54.000that while they were part of the Southern Baptist lobbying group or official part of the apparatus,
00:10:59.000they actually approached institutions like Soros and Open Society,
00:11:04.000people like this that are openly anti-Christian and openly atheistic, ma'am?
00:11:09.000Yes. Well, I would say probably Soros approached them.
00:11:12.000But yes, that's exactly what happened.
00:11:14.000So Russell Moore, in several instances, not just one, was involved with Soros-funded organizations
00:11:22.000like the Evangelical Immigration Table.
00:11:24.000And he and his predecessor, Richard Land, got the Southern Baptist Convention involved with the Soros-backed groups,
00:11:32.000also with Zuckerberg-backed groups, with Gates-backed groups.
00:11:37.000So yes, this was happening continually over the last decade or so.
00:11:41.000And so what you have seen is these organizations saying, for example, with Russell Moore and the ERLC,
00:11:47.000you've seen something like the Democracy Fund, which again, Marxist, left-wing, Buddhist, Pierre Omidyar of eBay founded that NGO.
00:11:55.000So they were funneling money into the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, that policy arm of the SBC,
00:12:01.000to do things like study how evangelicals engage politics.
00:12:05.000And then they produced a report saying evangelicals are too politically polarized.
00:12:11.000So then they would send materials into churches to say, here's how you're going to make your church less politically polarized.
00:12:19.000And what that essentially means is you, as a conservative, need to pull your punches on your biblical convictions in the public square for the cause of Christ.
00:12:29.000So that's what's so insidious about how this works, is they're basically telling you, if you want to be a good Christian,
00:12:35.000you need to set your politics to the side.
00:12:37.000And not only that, you need to take up this other set of policies, things like amnesty on the border,
00:12:44.000like cap-and-trade policies with climate change, you must take the shot.
00:12:50.000I mean, during COVID, we saw it in high relief.
00:12:52.000The evangelical immigration group that they stood up that were part of the Southern Baptist Convention,
00:12:58.000I take it that they were for building the wall in mass deportations?
00:18:46.000By the way, a piece from one of the audience just sent me about talking about everything's big in Texas, including the illegal aliens developments.
00:18:57.000Daniel, the last couple of days we've been talking about Patriot Mobile, how you guys on the political side stepped up and helped get these five seats.
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00:36:41.880So the lead is that 49% of all evangelicals say that they believe that the Jews are God's chosen people, but only 29% of those under 35 believe that.
00:36:56.740So that is a really strong generational split.
00:37:00.080And maybe another headline for that reason, I do think you're seeing Israel getting concerned about shoring up that evangelical support.
00:37:07.780Because we also saw stories in the last week about Israel's foreign ministry planning to spend a few million dollars in promotional and PR materials for evangelicals generally to try to restore that support.
00:37:22.960My buddy, Brad Parscale, I think Brad and the guys at Salem registered as foreign agents.
00:37:28.640Right before I let you go, Megan, is that also coming out of the seminary?
00:37:32.680And when you go to the seminaries right now, if you walked in for the faculty and the debate among the students, is that break?
00:37:38.400Is this because it's coming out of the seminaries or is this driven by the Tucker Carlson's and Megan Kelly's and the way we talk here in the worm?
00:37:45.940Is that coming from a secular source or is that now one of these issues that are bubbling up in these seminaries and then that's promulgated out to the flocks in these megachurches?
00:37:58.640No, I would say this is a reverse situation.
00:38:01.040So what you have in the seminaries and the seminary leadership is still that very strong support for Israel.
00:38:07.020You do still have some of that dispensationalist theology.
00:38:10.840And the split is that I would say the students are the ones who are questioning this.
00:38:15.740So once again, you're seeing that under 35, the younger evangelicals.
00:38:19.420So, I mean, everything you're seeing in the broader conservative landscape is happening even more strongly in the evangelical subculture.
00:38:28.400So, I mean, it is a strong battle going on between generations.
00:38:32.800Part of this, right, Fred, let you hear.
00:38:34.380Part of this is about institutional rejuvenation or institutions.
00:38:37.940You know, some people say burn it all down.
00:38:56.860But it was always individuals building solo institutions instead of something like the Anglican Church or the Church of England or the Catholic Church.
00:39:04.860Are you seeing this now in this fourth turning?
00:39:07.740Are they even the institutions that have been built, the seminaries, like Wheaton College, are they under assault like so many of the mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic Church are really under assault with this institutional kind of rot?
00:39:21.560And you're seeing young people say, hey, there's got to be major reforms.
00:39:26.220Yes, that's absolutely what you're seeing.
00:39:27.960So, you know, as we've been talking about Southern Baptist, I can tell you there has been an absolute fight for what you might call the soul of the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:39:35.700So there is the younger, more conservative, reformed, you might call them rabble rousers who are trying to push for these reforms.
00:39:42.840And you have the older guard who are very established in their comfortable, I would say, you know, soft, progressive, welcoming position.
00:39:52.280They don't want to be challenged to say, hey, why aren't we doing a better job bringing our biblical values into the public square?
00:39:57.780Why are we not standing for these things more strongly?
00:39:59.960Why are we partnering with all of these secular left organizations who want to stifle Christians' voices in the public square?
00:40:07.660So you are absolutely seeing that split.
00:40:10.740And I don't think it's going to go away in any sense.
00:40:14.320Just really quickly, if you know who Carl Truman is, he's a professor at Grove City College, a well-known Christian evangelical writer.
00:40:22.680He did this piece lamenting just recently in First Things the fact that the younger people are no longer respecting, quote-unquote, Big Eva, meaning Big Evangelicalism, the institutions.
00:40:35.980Instead, he says what we now see is the rise of Gig Eva.
00:40:41.860These are the people who start blogs, who start podcasts, and they are becoming incredibly influential and gaining huge followings.
00:40:47.880You're seeing a lot of these podcasts that are critical of the big evangelical institutions, drawing hundreds of thousands, millions of subscribers.
00:40:56.420So I don't think it's too far to say there's a bit of a cold civil war going on right now in evangelicalism.
00:41:14.080So you can buy my book, Shepherds for Sale, which presents all of the receipts for all of this money going to all of these evangelical institutions, how it's moving churches, how it's moving ministries.
00:41:26.360And so you can get that at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, anywhere you buy books.
00:41:31.040And you can find me right there on X at at Meg Basham and on Twitter at at journalists or excuse me, on Instagram at at journalist Megan Basham.
00:41:40.420And I write at Daily Wire and you can find me several times a week on our Morning Wire podcast.
00:43:04.960Probably going to die out in 10 or 20 years.
00:43:06.840You know, the final boomers who go to Methodist churches and who still are weathering this complete co-opting of this organization that was a big part of American culture for a very long time.
00:43:18.100It's going to die. And the new institutions have to be rebuilt.
00:43:38.100It was just he took him apart brick by brick because the kid, you know, it clearly studied, knew the information, brought the receipts, brought facts.
00:43:47.320And you had the kind of old guard just wants to throw out this kind of bizarro, you know, disconnected parts of the Old Testament.
00:43:57.420If you're going to make that argument, you've got to come in and go bang, bang, bang and make it connected to the day.
00:44:02.780Otherwise, it just doesn't make any sense.
00:44:04.420That's just as convoluted as when somebody in the establishment Republican Party tries to explain to you how, no, this time conservatism will win.
00:44:13.460Yeah, no, that's all conservative ink.
00:44:15.100Conservative ink is not going to, you know, particularly with the facts of the day, conservative ink never won.
00:44:20.380And in fact, any time it did, like Reagan is an outsider, as soon as he got in, it's surrounded by the Bush guys, right, trying to always tap it down.
00:44:28.180And they just, what they ended up being is the Washington Generals to the progressives, Harlem Globetrotters, you're just there.
00:44:42.160We're going to go to take, let's take a commercial break, and we're going to go to something extraordinary happening down at Real America Voice.
00:46:32.600You know, I didn't know this until the guys at Field of Greens, the doctors and the experts, told me about it and then gave me information.
00:46:56.260Because Americans eat so many processed and ultra-processed foods and not enough fruits and vegetables, many, perhaps most, are 10 years older on the inside than their actual age.
00:48:52.120So, no, we're totally excited about it, too.
00:48:55.500I may be more excited about it than Rob.
00:48:57.540But today, we are adding the orchestral instruments to the re-recorded version of Justice for All.
00:49:05.520So, very much like what you heard while MBS was pulling up to the White House, that beautiful orchestra, we're going to be adding which instruments?
00:49:14.040Today, we're going to have violin, cello, and viola.
00:49:18.660They're going to be accompanying a beautiful piano part.
00:49:22.000And we have all the J6 Choir singing behind.
00:49:26.240And it was quite a great experience to be a part of that.
00:49:29.760And, of course, we'll have the President's Pledge of Allegiance interpolated, just like the original.
00:49:55.900Then we do some additional production just to make it all come together, all the mixing effects, and kind of try to paint a beautiful picture.
00:50:05.100Because we want it to sound a little different than the original, while having still a traditional classic approach with the orchestral and just the piano, as opposed to the original recording.
00:50:16.580I mean, Steve, the sonic quality on this one is insane.
00:50:19.760The original one was certainly a tearjerker for all of us.
00:51:24.800So now the choir has expanded from 20 to 40 because we don't have to squeeze them into one little room to capture them through a cell phone.
00:52:05.700What do you mean they're still struggling?
00:52:07.020Well, I mean, Danny, you can speak to this as well.
00:52:09.540When we were in the studio about two months ago, I had about 20 of them do spoken word and just tell us their stories about what took place in prison.
00:52:18.600And I had not met these people in person until that day.
00:52:22.900I had been in communication with a lot of them.
00:52:25.120But the stories that I heard, I mean, we had the entire control room was crying.
00:52:30.140One individual showed me his hands and his finger was going the complete opposite direction.
00:52:50.460And to elaborate a little bit more, you're talking about fathers, you know, hardworking Americans that were separated from their families.
00:52:58.320And to hear their testimonies of what they went through for me as a producer was very moving and definitely, you know, was a privilege and an honor to be there to help put together the choir arrangement.