Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1044 ｜ Andy Stanley, Francis Collins & the Plot to End Evangelicalism ｜ Guest： Megan Basham

00:00:00.920 Shepherds for Sale is a new book by Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham.

00:00:05.760 It is a deep dive into the leftward drift of evangelicalism.

00:00:09.640 And man, she has got some bombshells for us today.

00:00:14.220 You guys are going to love this conversation on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:19.220 Megan, thanks so much for joining us.

00:00:32.040 Thank you.

00:00:32.700 It's so exciting to be here actually in the studio, which is really cute.

00:00:36.040 For people who don't know, you have this great art of like C.S. Lewis on the walls and I love it.

00:00:40.940 Thank you.

00:00:41.340 I know we can't show everything in my camera shot, unfortunately, but it's just there mostly for me to enjoy and to know it's there.

00:00:47.480 C.S. Lewis looking down on us.

00:00:51.520 OK, you've been on twice before, but for those who may not know, they're meeting you for the first time.

00:00:56.640 Tell us who you are and what you do.

00:00:58.280 I'm the cultural reporter for The Daily Wire.

00:01:00.540 I'm regularly on our top 10 news podcast, Morning Wire, and it's a little different for Daily Wire.

00:01:06.960 Our other shows are more opinion based, as you probably know, and I'm sure your audience knows.

00:01:11.080 But the show that I am on, Morning Wire, is very newsy.

00:01:15.460 It's straight news.

00:01:16.260 It's like NPR, New York Times podcasts.

00:01:18.980 Yes.

00:01:19.180 And it's doing amazing because people understand that they can rely on it for unbiased information.

00:01:24.360 Yes.

00:01:24.680 To really sort of offer balance to the conversation that is on these news podcasts.

00:01:29.020 Yeah.

00:01:29.220 And how long have you been writing, reporting, journalism-ing?

00:01:32.340 Oh, gosh.

00:01:32.880 Over 15 years, maybe 18 years now.

00:01:35.780 So, yeah.

00:01:36.000 I mean, as you know, it's a great career for a mom because it's very flexible.

00:01:39.500 Yeah.

00:01:40.160 Yeah.

00:01:40.460 I mean, you got the deadlines, but you can kind of choose how you spend your time and how you meet those deadlines.

00:01:45.380 Totally understand that.

00:01:46.880 We're going to get to your book and kind of how you got into this lane of talking specifically about church happenings, SBC happenings, what's going on in evangelicalism.

00:01:56.920 But I want to zoom out and look at the culture because, really, culture and what's going on in the church, they can't be separated, as you know, and as you write about a lot.

00:02:05.560 And one thing that's going on this week is the conversation about an Olympic boxer who is fighting against a female boxer, fighting as a female.

00:02:17.560 And there's a lot of outrage, understandably, and a lot of confusion about this person whose name is Ameen Khalif, an Algerian boxer.

00:02:24.740 And this person was actually deemed to have male chromosomes and then won a fight in the women's division at the Paris Olympics.

00:02:34.220 Today, people are, as I said, understandably, very upset about this.

00:02:38.720 Here is the video of that fight.

00:02:40.540 Khalif, taking the win, has Karini abandoned the bout.

00:03:03.480 Respond to her knees. 1.00

00:03:10.540 Okay, so let me explain what's going on for people, and then I'll get your reaction, Megan.

00:03:24.040 So they have already fought before.

00:03:26.260 The woman who is boxing here, she represents Italy.

00:03:30.040 Her name is Angela Karini.

00:03:31.540 They had already fought after they first fought.

00:03:34.140 When you see this Ameen person punching Angela in the face, Angela just kind of falls back. 1.00

00:03:40.160 And then after the fight, she says, this is the hardest I've ever been hit.

00:03:43.100 So she was injured there.

00:03:44.280 So there, when you saw the second fight, they start the fight, but then Angela just kind of walks off. 0.91

00:03:49.340 She's basically saying, I'm not going to fight this person.

00:03:51.920 This is too hard.

00:03:52.640 I was already injured by this person.

00:03:54.480 And there's been a big debate and a lot of confusion online about whether this person is actually biologically male.

00:04:02.620 Riley Gaines, others, I said, yeah, this is a man.

00:04:05.940 He has X, Y chromosomes, and he should not be competing.

00:04:10.360 Others were saying, no, he has some kind of she, he has some kind of disorder.

00:04:16.360 This is a biological female. 0.99

00:04:18.620 And so I asked for clarity from Colin Wright on this because I didn't want to say that a woman who just happens to look kind of manly is a man.

00:04:26.780 I don't think that's the right thing to do.

00:04:28.560 And so I wanted to know what is true.

00:04:30.420 Is this person actually so-called transgender or what's going on?

00:04:33.960 Colin Wright is a biologist.

00:04:35.320 I've had him on the show.

00:04:36.620 He's talked a lot about this before.

00:04:38.680 And so I said, hey, trying to parse out this information about this boxer.

00:04:43.620 I read your tweets.

00:04:44.440 Can you share, can you share more information? 0.98

00:04:47.540 Because Colin says, no, this person was born with testicles and that's why he has so much testosterone. 0.98

00:04:53.640 That's why he looks like a man.

00:04:55.420 Colin said, the boxer failed the eligibility requirements for the International Boxing Association based on a genetic test,

00:05:02.100 which indicated he has XY chromosomes.

00:05:06.140 The limit, this limits the type of DSD condition.

00:05:09.920 So that is differently sexed disorder to only a handful, all of which include the presence of testes, likely 5ARD.

00:05:19.000 That's a condition like castor semenia, but could also perhaps be partial androgen and sensitivity syndrome.

00:05:25.900 These are male disorders. 0.90

00:05:28.380 The two boxers that everyone is talking about are biologically male.

00:05:34.340 And so he has looked through all the documents, all the requirements, eligibility, and everything like that.

00:05:42.380 And he has determined, yes, this person is a man, even though people are defending him, saying, no, this is a woman.

00:05:49.120 All right, Megan, I know that was long-winded and people are here to hear you talk.

00:05:54.080 It's just such a complicated summary, and I wanted to make sure that we had the, you know, the full context.

00:06:00.300 But I just wanted to set this up as an example of how disordered we are as a society, how crazy things have gotten that now domestic violence, basically.

00:06:12.080 A man beating up a woman is now sport that everyone is applauding for. 1.00

00:06:18.120 What in the world?

00:06:19.260 How did we get here?

00:06:20.100 Well, I feel like this story in so many ways illustrates all of the conversations we've been having about biological realities.

00:06:27.780 Yeah.

00:06:28.080 Because, you know, even if there is some sort of intersex issue here, that would still create a problem if you have someone on a lot of testosterone. 0.57

00:06:37.220 And that just tells you what testosterone does to your body to make you bigger, to make you stronger.

00:06:42.480 And you have what seems to be a biological man beating up a woman.

00:06:48.080 And it's not the first time we've seen this.

00:06:49.600 And that's the other thing that I think is the issue.

00:06:52.340 And just to see what this movement does to women is so abhorrent.

00:06:58.060 And you don't know how to put it any other way other than we have gotten to this point that we have a culture that is so unprotective of women. 0.99

00:07:05.680 Yeah.

00:07:05.960 And instead protecting this ideology that it is leaving women crying on the floor. 0.79

00:07:10.460 Yeah.

00:07:10.660 Though there is a part of me, you know, maybe to open a can of worms a little bit that goes, I don't know how I feel about women boxing in the first place for that reason. 1.00

00:07:19.240 Yeah.

00:07:19.980 You know what?

00:07:20.800 That's like a whole other issue is that I think there's a reason why it is reflexively uncomfortable to watch two women fighting each other. 1.00

00:07:29.220 Like, I don't mind watching a UFC fight.

00:07:31.320 But when the women come out, I mean, and they're strong, tough women. 0.97

00:07:35.560 Some of them are moms. 1.00

00:07:36.740 Like, I'm sure they are awesome.

00:07:37.920 But seeing them bloody each other up is really uncomfortable the way it's not if I see, you know, Conor McGregor getting beat up.

00:07:45.400 It seems like one is supposed to be, one is not.

00:07:47.940 But it is, it's multiplied when you see a man beating up a woman and people cheering for it and lionizing him for it.

00:07:57.880 That's crazy.

00:07:58.820 It's that C.S. Lewis line that it's a terrible thing when women fight and even more terrible when you see a man beating down a woman and just watching her on her knees crying like that.

00:08:07.560 I mean, that creates a visceral reaction and it should.

00:08:10.460 I think that goes to something that we just know in the core of our being that this is not right, what we're seeing.

00:08:14.880 Absolutely.

00:08:16.120 And you wrote this morning and have written many times before about the infiltration of LGBTQ, that includes this tea that we're talking about, into the church, which has been for thousands of years, at least supposed to be a refuge for women and for children, the most vulnerable.

00:08:35.220 What's happening?

00:08:35.940 Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up because a big part of the soft capitulation of the church has ignored what this does to women. 0.82

00:08:43.960 And so when we heard terms like pronoun hospitality, a part of that conversation was not what that does to your sisters in Christ to be willing to accept biological lies in that way in the name of winsomeness or in the name of being seeker sensitive.

00:09:00.480 And so I think that was part of the problem.

00:09:02.820 But then in my book, I also go into how a lot of this is organic and just sensitivity to the culture, but a lot of it's also being deliberately orchestrated.

00:09:11.680 So you have, I hate to use the term ministry for some of these organizations, but you have organizations that claim to be ministries that are taking funding from secular left-wing gay lobbying groups.

00:09:26.420 Like what?

00:09:26.680 So the Arcus Foundation was founded in 2000.

00:09:31.380 It is the country's largest LGBTQ grant maker.

00:09:36.360 It's secular.

00:09:37.520 Its founder was a surgical supply heir of a hundred billion dollar company.

00:09:43.060 And for up until 2015, they continued to lose at the ballot box.

00:09:47.540 And they realized that the problem was the church, that they could not get this legislation to recognize gay marriage over the finish line because of the church.

00:09:55.720 So even though we had Obergefell, in the meantime, what that foundation started to do, the Arcus Foundation, was look at, okay, how can we reform church doctrine in conservative ministries and in conservative denominations?

00:10:08.040 And that's what they did.

00:10:09.400 And so it has funneled money into every denomination, particularly the United Methodist Church.

00:10:17.800 And we've seen the result of that.

00:10:19.580 They just went through a schism on gay marriage and gay ordination.

00:10:23.320 And they have been pouring money into groups that are associated with churches that you know, like Andy Stanley's church.

00:10:30.720 One of them is a program called Embracing the Journey that is supported financially and also in advice and counseling kind of role by Andy Stanley's staff.

00:10:45.320 And they're involved in this.

00:10:46.660 And that group is involved with some of these Arcus-funded organizations.

00:10:49.660 So they're bringing this curriculum in.

00:10:51.820 And I think a lot of churches don't realize that activists are being trained to come change your doctrine on this.

00:10:57.160 Yeah, and you know what?

00:10:58.240 We've discussed Embracing the Journey before when we were analyzing that recent sermon by Andy Stanley in which he basically said that homosexuality is different than any other sin because saying that homosexuality is a sin is saying that who someone is is a sin, which is a completely unbiblical way to look at sexuality and identity.

00:11:21.920 And what an awful burden to put on someone like, sorry, this is the one sin that Jesus's blood just like could not cover, can't empower you to repent from.

00:11:30.340 But embracing the journey, you're not reaching at all.

00:11:32.940 That's what the organization believes.

00:11:35.040 The people who help run the organization, I believe, if I'm understanding correctly, the family, they are affirming of their son's decision to be in a union with a man.

00:11:46.360 And they have also, in their conferences, hoisted up people who are outright affirming of LGBTQ unions.

00:11:55.700 Andy Stanley, from my understanding, also really just believes that for some people, they cannot help it.

00:12:02.580 They cannot repent.

00:12:03.740 And the best thing for, say, two men in that situation to do is to get married.

00:12:09.240 That's wild.

00:12:10.180 And, you know, when you bring up this embracing the journey curriculum, everything you just said is absolutely accurate.

00:12:16.720 And part of what they do is they're involved with this other organization that is openly LGBTQ affirming.

00:12:23.400 Now, embracing the journey is to if you ask them, they try to fudge it a little bit.

00:12:27.580 But if you go look at other organizations they're involved with, they're very transparent when they're on their websites.

00:12:32.160 And if you read the curriculum, they hold up transgender pastors or Bible study leaders as being solid, sound Christians that we can learn from.

00:12:44.280 And they talk about their son who is in an open gay relationship and an ongoing practicing, you know, same-sex sexual activity. 0.70

00:12:55.320 That, yeah, that he's, you know, that he's going to go to heaven despite what we know from certain passages of scripture that they call clobber passages.

00:13:02.900 So when they're involved with these groups, I think the thing that so many churches unwittingly don't know is that they want to talk about these things in a soft way.

00:13:14.460 And they don't realize that our reticence to talk about it is being exploited by actors like this.

00:13:21.880 This Reformation Project that Andy Stanley's staff pastors and some church members who are behind this Embracing the Journey curriculum are involved with, it has a Pastors in Process program.

00:13:35.120 And it is described as a confidential program to help secretly affirming pastors slowly move their congregations to affirm LGBTQ doctrine and to say it is not sin.

00:13:48.820 Wow. Okay. And how does a congregant find out if their church is involved in this? Will there be obvious signs? How do they dig into this?

00:13:58.600 Well, I mean, first, we kind of brought up some of the things with Andy Stanley's sort of fuzzy language.

00:14:03.800 I think that is one of the red flags. Like this curriculum, when you read it, the language is at first a little fuzzy.

00:14:09.700 When you go deeper, it becomes more explicit and it is clear that they're very affirming.

00:14:14.060 If you see their speeches and their activities with some of these openly affirming groups, then it's crystal clear.

00:14:21.000 There's no question about it.

00:14:23.200 But, you know, part of what I would say is to be really aware and ask questions because some of what I cover in this book is how a counseling pastor at Saddleback Church was involved with this Embracing the Journey group, involved with this ARCUS-funded Reformation Project.

00:14:40.340 The last I heard, he is still a counseling pastor at Saddleback, even when I asked them about it.

00:14:46.360 So when I asked them about it, they just took all of the Embracing the Journey materials off the website.

00:14:52.360 And in fact, even the counseling pastors, LinkedIn, was taken down.

00:14:56.960 But yeah, I've talked to people at the church and they say he's still there.

00:14:59.860 And so that's the first thing is I would ask for transparency.

00:15:02.680 When you see the fuzzy language, just know that that can be part of this process.

00:15:06.880 Yeah, and this is I mean, this is really a gospel issue because like when we read the passage that a lot of these pastors will say is a clobber passage, 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11.

00:15:22.820 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

00:15:26.980 It includes in there the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality. 0.92

00:15:30.300 But the good news that I think Andy Stanley misses, which is so central to the gospel, it says,

00:15:35.380 and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:15:41.860 And they really get sexuality and identity wrong, which is really fundamental to tell someone this is who you are.

00:15:50.940 It cannot be repented of.

00:15:52.420 It cannot change.

00:15:53.300 This defines you and someone telling you to repent of it is actually hateful and wrong.

00:15:58.720 That makes me question if they even understand what Jesus did.

00:16:02.320 That's why this is a big deal.

00:16:03.640 We're not trying to find little technicalities.

00:16:06.120 Like we're talking about people's souls here.

00:16:08.780 Right.

00:16:09.380 And, you know, one of the things you can also look at is the minimization of that by pretending that it's a political issue.

00:16:15.780 You saw Andy Stanley do that in my book.

00:16:18.920 I talked to some pastors who were aware of where Stanley was and disagreed with it.

00:16:24.200 But when I asked them to go on the record about it, they didn't want to because they said they didn't want to get into a political issue,

00:16:29.760 which was just astonishing to me to take something that is so clearly a biblical issue.

00:16:34.860 Genesis 1.

00:16:35.680 You have false teaching going out into the church.

00:16:37.660 And let's be clear that Andy Stanley is incredibly influential among other pastors.

00:16:41.720 He does a lot of pastoral training.

00:16:43.180 So the fact that he was taking this stance and they knew it and that he was privately admitting that he had changed his theology on these issues to not be willing to go public about that once they had addressed it with him and to try to get him to repent, that to me is the most biblical of issues.

00:17:01.560 It's not political.

00:17:03.020 And, you know, as we were just talking about, Andy Stanley is one of the greatest and most effective communicators, I think, in the world, in history.

00:17:10.580 I mean, he has some like isms that he says that are just true and they're good.

00:17:15.180 And I say that because I think that he could probably find a really effective way to share the truth about what God says about sexuality and identity in a way that is really compelling, that communicates both truth and love, because he is good at that.

00:17:30.400 Right.

00:17:30.720 But it's not truth and love if it is compromise.

00:17:34.140 Yeah.

00:17:35.540 And, you know, and I don't want to just single out Andy Stanley because I think he's gone the furthest down the road.

00:17:40.920 And he's the biggest.

00:17:41.680 And he's the biggest.

00:17:42.380 Prominent.

00:17:42.920 But we have seen other pastors who I don't necessarily think have become affirming or anything like that, but they become very soft about how they address it.

00:17:52.360 And whether it was this interview that I detail with Rick Warren, where this British journalist had to really, really press him, is homosexuality a sin?

00:18:02.900 And he kept trying to turn the conversation to pedophilia.

00:18:06.360 And I credit this reporter because she refused to sort of let him wriggle out.

00:18:10.860 And she's like, no, no, no.

00:18:12.140 We're talking about homosexuality to consenting adults.

00:18:15.480 And he finally did admit, well, it's not God's best.

00:18:18.840 But he wasn't willing to say sin.

00:18:20.880 And, you know, as much as there was a lot to admire about Tim Keller, there were also some interviews.

00:18:27.620 And you typically see it when they're talking to secular media where it was the same thing.

00:18:31.040 There was just this unwillingness to be very clear about homosexuality or transgenderism or any of the other letters that go in that acronym.

00:18:39.800 Just being sin that, yes, will condemn you to hell if you don't seek repentance.

00:18:44.780 And that is the good news of the gospel.

00:18:46.500 And it's why we're depriving people of that good news if we lack that clarity.

00:18:50.360 Yeah.

00:18:50.620 And it's telling people that a testimony like Christopher Yuan's or Rosaria Butterfield's or Beckett Cook's, that those are actually impossible.

00:18:59.040 They're out of your reach.

00:19:00.640 And you cannot have that liberation.

00:19:03.820 You and only you have to be burdened by your sin forever.

00:19:07.100 You don't get the fullness of the grace of the gospel.

00:19:10.340 And that's really sad.

00:19:12.520 Yeah, because, I mean, given my sinful past, I constantly reflect back, even though it's been a lot of years since I came to Christ.

00:19:19.460 And I think I am so glad that I am not what I was.

00:19:23.380 Right.

00:19:23.980 And if someone would have told you at the time, sorry, this is just who you are, your choices are who you are, then that would have been devastating.

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00:21:14.660 Can you tell me what role Revoice plays in all of this?

00:21:23.040 Yeah, so I go into Revoice quite a bit.

00:21:25.900 To me, Revoice was not one of those ARCUS-funded groups, though some of the people involved in Revoice are connected to those groups.

00:21:33.400 But essentially what Revoice was was a way of one, and actually I'm glad you asked, because I would say it is a way of leveraging toxic empathy.

00:21:43.780 I don't know where I got that phrase.

00:21:45.000 I heard it somewhere.

00:21:45.860 But it's a way of saying we as, and they will use this term, so I'm going to use their terminology, we as gay Christians or we as transgender Christians have been abused by the church.

00:21:58.000 We have been so hurt by the people in the church that you need to treat our sin in an especially soft way.

00:22:05.400 And in order to do that, you have to be willing to adopt particular terminology. 0.96

00:22:13.020 You have to adopt, so instead, so you need to use gay Christian or queer treasure. 1.00

00:22:20.060 We've heard terminology like that.

00:22:21.720 But also that you need to see how we need to form relationships in a way that's different than heterosexual relationships so that the standards are different.

00:22:32.420 So they will say things like, we're going to have a spiritual friendship, which is some sort of commitment between two people of the same sex.

00:22:42.100 It's romantic in nature, and they may even cuddle, they say, in some of this material.

00:22:47.500 Not explicitly sexual.

00:22:48.480 Or live together, yes, but they just don't have sex.

00:22:52.020 And this is side B, right?

00:22:53.640 This is the side B, yes.

00:22:54.880 Yes.

00:22:55.440 And so to me, this is a way of real, in a strange way, it's a little like what you hear from teenagers, or how much can I get away with?

00:23:03.240 Yeah.

00:23:03.460 And we would not counsel our teenagers that this is a good way to go about holy sexuality.

00:23:08.220 Ironically, it's kind of like purity culture that just says, okay, as long as you don't have actual intercourse, everything is fine, which of course purity culture is something that they say is very damaging, but it's not all that different.

00:23:20.840 It's very legalistic.

00:23:21.860 You're towing the line, which is, of course, not the holiness that Jesus calls us to.

00:23:26.240 And that is really where that toxic empathy comes in, because it's saying that you have to treat us in a much more soft way because the church has been very damaging to us, which I would dispute.

00:23:36.580 But very frequently, if you push and say, okay, what are the specifics on how the church has been so damaging?

00:23:43.120 Because when I look back, I don't think that on any issue has the church handled everything perfectly.

00:23:49.020 But I have never seen willful cruelty.

00:23:53.800 I think those would be really isolated cases if it happened.

00:23:56.540 I've really seen a desire on the church's part to try to figure out, okay, how do we help people who are struggling with this particular sin?

00:24:04.400 So I've never seen just a malicious motivation there.

00:24:09.560 But that's one of the things they used to bring in revoice.

00:24:11.840 And once it came in and there was this, okay, we need to make amends for how badly we treated the LGBTQ community, it was then to bring in these new definitions.

00:24:24.460 And then these, you know, odd relationships that we're supposed to condone that are clearly unbiblical.

00:24:30.600 And then that has expanded into, okay, now what we're going to do is start to slowly redefine our terms and we're going to bring in these conferences.

00:24:40.900 And when there was pushback, it was surprising to see how many of the pastors were very wary to confront it early on when it wouldn't have gotten so far.

00:24:50.280 And I think that's part of what I trace in the book is that it isn't necessarily that everyone is compromised on this issue in the sense of where they stand doctrinally, but they became compromised on their clarity on the issue.

00:25:07.160 Your book is called Shepherds for Sale.

00:25:09.600 And you are going into evangelicalism and you are basically affirming a lot of our suspicions that there has been a leftward drift.

00:25:18.060 Now, you and I, we're kind of like in the know, at least we're on acts.

00:25:22.940 And so we've seen statements that people like Andy Stanley or like Russell Moore or David French have said over the years.

00:25:29.640 And so we know, yeah, it's going that direction.

00:25:32.660 But for others who, you know, that's not their job, but they're just sitting in their congregations.

00:25:37.200 And maybe especially after Trump became president in 2016 and then again in 2020, they just felt like, hmm, things seem to be shifting.

00:25:47.120 And I'm not sure if it's biblical, but for some of them, they're like, OK, but these are my most trusted Bible study leaders.

00:25:53.680 This is my trusted pastor.

00:25:55.180 I know he knows the gospel.

00:25:57.280 I know he knows scripture.

00:25:58.840 Who am I to question?

00:26:00.300 And yet that little alarm keeps on sounding off in their brain.

00:26:04.420 This is basically a book saying, yeah, that alarm is telling you something true.

00:26:09.180 Yeah.

00:26:09.620 And that was really the purpose of it was to say, OK, yes, I think this has been going on.

00:26:13.960 And for the people who were not very online but would just hear a little bit of the controversies, you would sometimes see some of these well-known pastors, people like J.D. Greer, sort of use their platform to suggest that the critics or the people who were sounding the alarm were malicious or that they had nasty motivations or things like that.

00:26:35.560 And then you look at what was actually said and you go, no, this is concerning.

00:26:39.300 You know, it was concerning when affirming the term Black Lives Matter in a specific way, which was giving a certain amount of support to the Black Lives Matter movement, was called a gospel issue.

00:26:54.340 That was something that was going on.

00:26:56.400 And it was a way of binding consciences to say you must view this issue this way to be acting faithfully as a Christian.

00:27:03.680 And I think we saw that on so many issues, whether it's been climate change or how we approach immigration policy or gun control or all of these things that should have been debatable Christian issues where we could say, OK, let's we can all look at various scriptures and that might inform our consciences differently.

00:27:23.240 Secondly, it became an issue of biblical fidelity was you have to agree with how we approach this particular piece of legislation or policy.

00:27:33.720 And at that point, it becomes legalism.

00:27:35.980 Yeah.

00:27:36.280 So that was a lot of what I explore.

00:27:38.560 Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

00:27:39.520 And there's so many issues that that's true on.

00:27:42.340 Like for me, there's a couple that first come to mind.

00:27:44.940 2020 was such a crazy year, but it was such an enlightening year.

00:27:47.780 And like Votie Bauckham's fault lines, I think, was very illuminating for a lot of people.

00:27:51.660 Another book that kind of confirmed people's suspicions like, oh, this person seems squishy.

00:27:55.600 Are they?

00:27:56.340 And then he named names like gave us quotes, gave us examples, which I think was really helpful.

00:28:01.540 But I think the whole social racial justice issue in my mind is almost even more slippery than the LGBTQ issue, because I know a lot of pastors, they probably call them and female Bible study leaders who probably call themselves conservative Christians.

00:28:17.640 And who would say publicly or not, yeah, a man can't become a woman or no, two men or two women getting together is not a biblical marriage.

00:28:27.460 And yet they will pay homage to Black Lives Matter. 0.77

00:28:30.960 They will say, I even heard riots are the voice of the unheard in 2020, or we're not going to criticize the violence because we have to at least understand why it's happening.

00:28:41.200 Talking about white privilege, systemic racism, we need to listen and learn a lot of how to be an anti-racist, white fragility.

00:28:50.260 You just need to be empathetic.

00:28:52.120 This is where the whole inspiration from, you know, for my book came from is the conversations that I was having with these prominent Christian leaders at the time.

00:29:01.020 And I'm asking, like, where's the biblical support for it?

00:29:04.000 And there really wasn't.

00:29:04.840 They're pushing partial justice, social justice that is not biblical justice.

00:29:11.200 In your research, when you're looking at, you know, some of these shepherds for sale and others who were just, like, compromising it in some ways, did you find that that subject was kind of, like, the impetus for a lot of compromise?

00:29:24.640 Yes, very much.

00:29:25.780 I mean, and what was so interesting to see was how all of these issues have sort of mirrored whatever the cultural flashpoint is.

00:29:34.820 So when in 2020 and 2019 that DEI was a really important issue to corporate America, suddenly it was coming into the church.

00:29:44.220 We had the president of the Southern Baptist Convention saying, all of my committee appointments now are going to be 30% women or minorities.

00:29:53.220 So that is DEI.

00:29:55.380 Yeah.

00:29:55.620 And it exactly mirrored what you were seeing from Nike or Hewlett Packard.

00:29:59.460 And that was so bizarre to see the exact same sort of statements coming out of the church that could come out of any Fortune 500 company.

00:30:07.180 Yes.

00:30:07.460 And a lot of what I go into also is how it is impacting people in the churches.

00:30:12.000 Some of the stories that I tell were so heartbreaking of Bible study groups that use that Be the Bridge curriculum.

00:30:19.220 Yes.

00:30:19.560 And they were told you had church members who were told if you were a white church member for the first six months of this Bible study, you are not to talk.

00:30:28.000 You're just to sit and listen.

00:30:29.160 I chronicle one woman who's a good friend now, and she was telling me, sweet woman, you know, not somebody who would have questioned her pastors.

00:30:38.980 She's not like us. 0.53

00:30:39.820 She's not online.

00:30:40.780 She's not paying attention.

00:30:42.300 So, you know, when her pastors told her we're going to have segregated Bible studies because our minority church members need their own place to lament, she went, okay, I'll go along with that. 0.99

00:30:53.640 And she really did try to do the work of dealing with her white privilege and making amends for that. 0.84

00:31:00.220 And it was so divisive and damaging in her church.

00:31:02.960 And those are the kind of stories that, you know, we see the little funny viral clips of, you know, Matt Chandler or someone doing his white privilege video.

00:31:11.220 But we don't see the stories of how this is impacting ordinary people in the pews.

00:31:16.920 Yeah.

00:31:17.160 Yeah.

00:31:17.480 So.

00:31:18.000 Yes.

00:31:18.480 Yes.

00:31:18.760 It really did damage relationships.

00:31:20.660 I remember everyone was pushing be the bridge.

00:31:23.860 And, you know, I thought at the time, like, okay, we obviously do need a way to talk about what's going on in 2020.

00:31:31.240 Like, there's a lot of misunderstanding, misrepresentation.

00:31:35.140 And I thought maybe be the bridge is the solution to that.

00:31:38.280 Maybe it is a way for me to come together with someone like Jackie Hill Perry and, like, really try to understand and parse things out.

00:31:45.760 And then I looked at the Facebook group and the rules of the Facebook group.

00:31:50.200 They're out there, or they're probably not anymore, but very explicit about, okay, white women and white people in this group, here's what you can do. 0.97

00:32:00.240 And here's what you cannot do.

00:32:02.140 Do not correct a person of color. 1.00

00:32:05.340 Do not try to rebut them.

00:32:07.360 Don't try to say that they're wrong.

00:32:09.240 Don't compare your lived experience with their lived experience.

00:32:12.620 If you are frustrated, you need to give the POC space to cuss or wail, yell at you. 0.98

00:32:22.520 If you need to take a break, step away and come back. 0.87

00:32:26.040 So you white person, you have to exercise the fruit of the spirit of self-control. 0.99

00:32:31.140 But these black women do not. 1.00

00:32:32.800 And that, again, was my whole big problem with this is that over and over again, whether they meant to or not, these pastors are preaching two different gospels. 0.98

00:32:40.000 A gospel of chastisement to white people and a gospel of unconditional understanding of partiality and resentment and anger toward black people. 0.95

00:32:52.960 Really burdening both sides with a burden that Jesus doesn't give us rather than saying, hey, like, here's impartial justice.

00:33:01.540 And, oh, by the way, the statistics in history don't bear out the narratives that you're hearing about systemic racism and policing.

00:33:08.680 I saw very few pastors willing to stand up and do that.

00:33:12.980 Yeah.

00:33:13.180 And the big issue to me, again, was just the tying that to being biblically faithful.

00:33:19.600 I mean, some of these issues of, OK, what is the policing statistics show?

00:33:23.660 That you were not allowed to bring those things up because that was not following the way of Jesus.

00:33:28.960 Yeah.

00:33:29.220 I mean, more than racist.

00:33:30.460 It was you are now not a faithful Christian. 0.99

00:33:32.780 You're an unloving, unchristian Christian. 1.00

00:33:35.040 Yeah. 0.95

00:33:36.020 So, you know, those were the issues.

00:33:37.620 And it's not the only issue that you have seen it on, though that one is really glaring.

00:33:42.340 And it has been since 2020.

00:33:44.320 But those same sorts of leverage points were used, obviously, during the pandemic to say you must get this vaccine to show that you love your neighbor.

00:33:55.900 And it's been done on issues where you do see the left wing funding coming on, coming in.

00:34:02.800 And it's a little more explicit buying of shepherds on issues like climate change and how Christians have to think about immigration policy.

00:34:10.220 Yes.

00:34:10.760 Let's talk about COVID for a little bit.

00:34:13.020 Let's talk about Francis Collins.

00:34:14.660 Yes.

00:34:15.040 And who really, over the years, has been seen as our representative, our evangelical representative in science.

00:34:22.800 Yay.

00:34:23.220 Like, we have a creationist.

00:34:24.960 We have a solid Christian who is in a secular world, the light in the darkness.

00:34:30.420 How has his representation of Christianity worked out for us since COVID?

00:34:35.860 And really before that.

00:34:36.980 Right.

00:34:37.140 And I think that was so much of it.

00:34:38.860 That, for me, was the light bulb moment.

00:34:41.540 That was kind of the story that put me on the map.

00:34:43.640 You know, I didn't really set out to write about these evangelical issues.

00:34:47.940 I had worked for an evangelical magazine for many, many years, one for which you are an opinion contributor, World Magazine, and just experienced some of this going on in the church, in my workplace, with some coworkers who viewed these issues in some of the ways that you and I just discussed on the other side.

00:35:04.220 And then when COVID happened, it was sort of like all of the pretenses that we were kind of all on the same page just broke down.

00:35:12.740 And part of that was the elevation of Francis Collins.

00:35:16.860 And I, knowing what I did as a journalist about his record, was so shocked to see how so many of these church leaders who really up to that point, I thought, I may disagree, but I have a lot of respect.

00:35:30.760 I trust them.

00:35:33.760 I would certainly not question the motivations of what they're saying to me until the Francis Collins issue.

00:35:40.620 And that was so glaring.

00:35:41.940 So for those who don't know, he was the National Institutes of Health director.

00:35:45.260 I think he is still one of Biden's top science advisors.

00:35:49.800 He was Anthony Fauci's boss.

00:35:51.260 And he was presented as someone who is a really strong, faithful Christian brother.

00:35:58.140 And then you looked at his record.

00:35:59.780 And he was very much a proponent of funding research on aborted baby tissue, on aborted fetal remains.

00:36:10.260 He fought for that when the Trump administration was actually trying to shut a lot of that down.

00:36:14.740 He went on record saying, we argued for it.

00:36:17.140 But he also did things like fund awful chimeric experiments at the University of Pittsburgh, things like grafting infant scalps onto lab rats.

00:36:27.280 And we have to keep in mind that that kind of demand.

00:36:30.060 Those images.

00:36:30.920 I remember those images are stuck in my heart and mind.

00:36:35.020 And I didn't know at the time that Francis Collins, professing Christian, was helping push those experiments. 0.75

00:36:41.420 I mean, you literally saw, just to give people a picture, because they're experimenting on these aborted babies, taking the scalps, putting them on rats to do whatever experiments they need.

00:36:52.180 And you literally saw these rats with, like, human baby hair on them from a human who should have been alive.

00:36:59.500 And who knows what incentive structure is there with the local Planned Parenthood?

00:37:04.380 What profit incentive is there to make sure that those aborted babies are used for experimentation? 1.00

00:37:11.540 We don't know.

00:37:12.580 I don't think.

00:37:13.280 We know that relationship.

00:37:13.900 We saw a little bit of it from David Daleiden's leaked videos that have been suppressed.

00:37:17.280 But we saw Planned Parenthood staffers and doctors saying that, well, we want to try to grab here and get, you know, this organ because this organ fetches a lot of money.

00:37:31.280 And we want to try to get this organ because there's a high demand for it.

00:37:34.320 So we try not to damage that when we're performing the abortion.

00:37:37.100 So, yes, we do know that there is an incentive structure for this.

00:37:40.680 And Francis Collins was a part of that.

00:37:42.660 Right. And again, I just want to say it's not like it was something that was just going on under his watch at the National Institutes of Health.

00:37:50.400 He explicitly said, I am arguing for this, that I think that this is a moral position that we can take to utilize these parts.

00:38:00.400 But it goes a lot further than that.

00:38:02.220 And I also knew that Francis Collins had declared himself an LGBTQ ally and initiated a program.

00:38:12.680 Yes.

00:38:13.200 I forgot about this.

00:38:14.640 Yes.

00:38:15.100 And so he initiated this program that it funded transgender research on children, including giving them cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, mastectomies to girls as young as 12. 0.52

00:38:29.760 And it also included a study that traced the homosexual activity of teenage boys and didn't inform their parents.

00:38:39.540 Yes.

00:38:39.860 And so this was not just something that happened under Francis Collins' watch.

00:38:44.380 This was something that he spearheaded and highlighted as one of his great accomplishments as director of the NIH.

00:38:51.160 None of this information was provided when Christianity Today and the Billy Graham Center and Tim Keller and Rick Warren and so many of these other trusted voices were bringing Francis Collins on and literally saying, this is a man you can trust.

00:39:07.620 This is a Christian brother.

00:39:09.160 And all of this should have been disqualifying to use him in that capacity.

00:39:15.040 Maybe if you wanted to have him as a science expert and then one more thing is that he used these platforms to lie about what was going on during the pandemic.

00:39:25.640 He claimed that the virus was definitely nature made, that it was a conspiracy theory to suggest that it might have leaked out of a lab.

00:39:35.000 And of course, now we know he knew at the time that there was a very good chance that it leaked out of a lab.

00:39:39.740 And we still don't know the full extent of what he was covering up with that lie.

00:39:45.860 Like we know, I guess we know what it was covering up, but we don't know everything about why, about why he was covering up the true source.

00:39:54.860 I mean, we know about the gain of function funding and the questions about were laws broken there.

00:39:59.520 And so that's ongoing investigation.

00:40:01.420 Exactly.

00:40:01.740 But it is a terrible thing to look at our Christian platforms, some of whom I would go, okay, maybe they didn't know the extent of some of his record.

00:40:10.480 Yeah.

00:40:10.700 But then there are other people who I did a report and someone gave me the leaked audio from a private meeting of Francis Collins, Russell Moore, and some students at the University of Chicago.

00:40:23.060 And Russell Moore was very clear that he did know Francis Collins' record and that he just felt that one could have a difference of opinion on these issues and still be a faithful Christian.

00:40:34.880 Okay.

00:40:35.440 Just to verify what you're saying, this is from Francis Collins celebrating in 2021.

00:40:42.520 This is his announcement as the director of the NIH celebrating Pride Month.

00:40:49.060 And so he says, I am proud to announce that the NIH recently funded a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study to review current measures and methodological issues related to measuring sex as a non-binary construct, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and surveys and research studies, blah, blah, blah.

00:41:09.880 Just a bunch of scientific jargon.

00:41:11.980 And it's a long letter basically saying that we need to support research and affirmation of gender as this kind of social construct of something that is very fluid.

00:41:25.600 And there are many different instances in his tenure of him supporting this very radical idea of the non-biological reality basically of male and female.

00:41:39.000 I mean, not only is that a Genesis 1 issue as a Christian, I mean, that's basic biology.

00:41:43.840 It's a little discrediting scientifically as well.

00:41:46.580 Right?

00:41:47.160 I mean, that's not just a shepherd for sale.

00:41:49.140 Like, that's a scientist for sale.

00:41:50.440 Right.

00:41:50.960 Which is really scary when you think about all the implications of that.

00:41:58.740 All right.

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00:42:49.840 All right.

00:42:50.540 You mentioned a couple other things.

00:42:52.560 You mentioned immigration.

00:42:53.660 When I think leftward immigration, which was huge during the Trump administration with his policies, I think of the ERLC and Russell Moore.

00:43:04.300 So tell us how evangelicals, at least that part of evangelicals, have kind of like moved on immigration.

00:43:10.860 How?

00:43:11.460 Why?

00:43:11.720 So part of what I trace in my book, and I use this example because everyone knows George Soros, but there are plenty of other billionaires in these books, in these instances that you don't know their names and you wouldn't recognize them.

00:43:24.180 But he would be one.

00:43:26.020 So his foundation started funding a secular left immigration NGO called the National Immigration Forum.

00:43:35.660 And around 2013, 2015, they realized that they needed to move the evangelical vote on this particular issue if they wanted to get some of these immigration reform policies, what I would call very lax border policies across the finish line.

00:43:52.640 Because for those who are not aware, evangelicals are roughly 30 percent of the electorate.

00:43:57.600 You have even the secular left media calling them America's most powerful voting bloc they are.

00:44:03.120 So they don't always win, but they are certainly incredibly influential at the ballot box.

00:44:08.900 So they started to look around and say, okay, what do we do to move that constituency?

00:44:14.380 And what they came up with was they partnered with the National Association of Evangelicals and some people from Sojourners and other groups.

00:44:23.400 And they launched this front group, I would say, sort of a shell group that is called the Evangelical Immigration Table.

00:44:31.040 And its purpose, to be very clear, is not to do things like spread the gospel to illegal immigrants.

00:44:39.660 It's not to feed and clothe people regardless of how they got there, because I think that's something all Christians could agree with. 0.93

00:44:45.380 It's specifically policy-focused.

00:44:47.180 So at that point, groups like the ERLC, as you mentioned, and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities has been heavily involved.

00:44:56.960 That includes 185 Christian schools, including Azusa, Biola.

00:45:02.400 So they all became involved with this group that is under the umbrella of a secular left immigration NGO that is taking funding from people like George Soros in this program that was specifically designed to target conservative voters, specifically evangelicals.

00:45:22.580 And what they did was bring in pastors that they, you know, some of the people that they hired were pastors that they called regional mobilizers.

00:45:30.620 And the regional mobilizers were then to set up meetings with local legislators, your state lawmakers, your national representation.

00:45:40.560 And the idea was to convince them that evangelicals want you to back, at that time, around 2013, it was the Gang of Eight bill, if you remember that.

00:45:49.100 And that would have legalized 11 million illegal immigrants for a pretty low bar, that the fine was going to be up to $1,000.

00:45:58.920 Yeah.

00:45:59.540 So then they further, more recently, have, you know, released open letters.

00:46:05.140 They asked Biden to end the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy.

00:46:10.860 Which is insane.

00:46:11.620 That's such, that's like such a low bar.

00:46:13.940 I mean, that's the most common sense policy.

00:46:16.180 That you should have to see if you can get residency in some other nation before you necessarily come to the United States.

00:46:24.660 Right.

00:46:25.040 Because if you're seeking asylum, you have to go to the closest safe country, which is not America, by the way, for most of these people.

00:46:35.220 So that has been the push.

00:46:37.400 And then more recently, I mean, just a few months ago, they were heavily backing the Lankford bill.

00:46:42.160 And all of this in the name of evangelicals.

00:46:45.700 And what we saw pretty quickly was that, oh, actually, evangelicals did not like that bill.

00:46:50.200 Yeah.

00:46:50.640 So, which was why it failed.

00:46:52.140 And in fact, Mitch McConnell didn't even bring it to a vote.

00:46:55.600 So.

00:46:56.140 Oh, my goodness.

00:46:57.760 That, you know, that's so strange.

00:46:59.220 The only thing that I really can think about when it comes to that.

00:47:02.440 Of course, there's people who have been manipulated into believing that that is that that's the righteous position to take that toxic empathy.

00:47:11.420 But then, I mean, I've got to think that there are the explicitly bad progressive actors who are, you know, taking funding from people like George Soros, like you said.

00:47:20.860 And who really just think that open borders, that chaos and the demise of Western civilization is a good thing.

00:47:27.440 I've got to think that some of those people exist in these institutions to push something as crazy as basically borderlessness.

00:47:33.900 Well, and to push it in a way that is so spiritually manipulative.

00:47:37.620 So what you also saw was them developing this Bible study curriculum called I Was a Stranger.

00:47:42.060 So what they do is they take something that is a command for Christians to welcome people, to be loving, to be hospitable, to be charitable.

00:47:52.480 And they're saying this has to be a national policy for your nation, which at that point, you are now hurting your citizens.

00:47:59.620 So how are you being loving to those neighbors?

00:48:02.660 And, you know, this is an issue that I go, I do think this is something that I'm perfectly willing to say we can all be believers and have this debate.

00:48:10.260 Our disagreements.

00:48:11.080 But we're not having this debate based on policy and based on the impact on our legislation, on our citizenry.

00:48:19.200 We're having these debates through that kind of legalistic spiritual manipulation suggesting you're not loving your neighbor, you're not welcoming strangers if you're not supporting these policies.

00:48:28.920 You know what?

00:48:29.540 That's such a good point that it's really those on the progressive side that are doing that that make something like immigration a gospel issue or a pro-life issue.

00:48:37.580 They expand the definition of pro-life so much to just mean like the death penalty, policing, immigration, but somehow not abortion, somehow not getting rid of abortion legally.

00:48:47.760 And they really do make it a, well, you don't follow Jesus, who was a refugee, a brown Palestinian. 1.00

00:48:54.460 Which is not true.

00:48:55.300 He wasn't a refugee.

00:48:56.440 Yes.

00:48:56.820 It's total manipulation and misconstruing of scripture.

00:49:00.320 And it's interesting, too, this dynamic because these are the very people that would say that you and I, because we allow the Bible to inform what we think about abortion or marriage or sexuality, for example, some of them might call that Christian nationalism.

00:49:13.660 They might say that that is theocracy, and yet when they use a verse from the Old Testament about welcoming the foreigner, completely decontextualizing it, ignoring that Israel had very strict regulations and high bar for foreigners coming in and they had to assimilate and follow the law, that's not Christian nationalism.

00:49:33.080 So they can misconstrue scripture and say, well, this scripture should be national policy, and it means open borders.

00:49:39.500 But if we say, well, you know, God tells us that murder is wrong, so I'm against abortion and legal abortion, that's scary Christian nationalism. 0.97

00:49:47.980 It's interesting how that works.

00:49:49.360 It is funny, isn't it?

00:49:50.540 And what's interesting to me is to see even how some people who don't profess to be Christians could not be the furthest thing from Christians.

00:49:58.080 Someone like Gavin Newsom, who picks up on this, you saw him putting up billboards saying, if you're in Texas, come to California, get an abortion because here we love our neighbors, which was an appalling abuse of scripture.

00:50:12.320 And you just see that it became something that even people who have no connection to these evangelical groups or to even evangelical or Christian understanding figured out, oh, here's how you willed this manipulative tool.

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00:51:30.100 Donate whatever you can by going to preborn.com slash Allie.

00:51:35.180 If you can donate $5, great.

00:51:36.880 If you can donate $28, that is the cost of an ultrasound.

00:51:40.500 That's preborn.com slash Allie. 0.81

00:51:48.220 Okay, climate change.

00:51:50.280 How have we seen that?

00:51:51.660 Because it's not really something that I see as much of, at least among, like, center-right evangelicals.

00:52:00.040 And so tell me how you've seen that kind of seep into the church.

00:52:03.600 Yeah, it's kind of, it retreated for a little bit.

00:52:06.720 It was really big in the early to mid-2000s.

00:52:10.660 And then it retreated because I think it was very clear that most of the rank and file weren't really buying into that issue.

00:52:16.040 And now it's coming back.

00:52:17.500 So part of what happened is very similar to what I just described with immigration.

00:52:23.200 There was a large ecumenical group that, I'm trying, I'm struggling to remember the acronym, but it was an ecumenical of Jewish, Catholic, mainline, Christians, people of other religious faiths, who were very much on the political left, who were working to get a cap-and-trade policy, fracking limited, all of those kind of things.

00:52:46.820 But again, they were running into that firewall of evangelicals.

00:52:50.440 So the question became, how do we get around them?

00:52:53.620 And what was really great for the book is one of these left-wing secular think tanks actually published a report on, here's why they failed before in the early 2000s, and here's what we need to do going forward.

00:53:06.100 And it was this great sort of autopsy that laid out all of this information about how they went about trying to infiltrate churches and ministries.

00:53:13.780 And it was a goldmine for me to go through this report, but essentially what you had is a lot of large organizations like the Clinton Foundation, like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, all very left-wing, all very supportive of abortion as a measure of population control.

00:53:30.300 And so what they did was they started this group called the Evangelical Environmental Network, and it quickly recruited people like Christianity Today, again, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities got on board, the National Association of Evangelicals also got on board.

00:53:49.740 They met in kind of early 2000s when it started to come back and said, we are making a covenant to help see this cap-and-trade policy passed, to make a statement and get this legislation passed.

00:54:04.480 And so this group is, again, very much one of these shell groups, and what you have seen is their influence go out and start to bring this into what we trust as conservative seminaries from conservative voices.

00:54:20.920 I spend a lot of time going into how Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Raleigh has brought in climate change activist speakers, the same people that you see with Leonardo DiCaprio and Obama.

00:54:35.280 They are coming in to speak at that seminary, arguing that Christians need to take up the issue of climate change activism under the moniker of creation care.

00:54:45.980 And again, it was being peddled at that school as a gospel issue.

00:54:50.240 To be faithful to the gospel, we have to take up the issue of climate care.

00:54:55.820 And what's been interesting, and a little bit of the controversy with my book, because some people have been, I think, deliberately literal, saying, well, anyone you mention, you're saying is for sale.

00:55:05.020 And, you know, some of those early people were very much for sale, but I think you can also see the influence and the success of those groups, as we have seen other lesser known pastors, but who are still influential.

00:55:17.680 A younger pastor who is a theology YouTuber, Gavin Ortlund, I spent some time dissecting a video where he said Christians really need to take up this issue of climate change, that it is important for us, for our voice to be heard on this issue.

00:55:36.860 And here's why I think it needs to be something that we take up.

00:55:40.380 And, you know, once again, I would just say this is an issue that we can debate and disagree scientifically, and there's a lot of reason to have a lot of skepticism.

00:55:48.620 The problem is when we say because of creation care, Christians need to take up this issue.

00:55:55.120 Yeah, I just saw, we were just talking about a children's Bible yesterday called Peace Table Storybook Bible, and one of the pages on there was like, how do we basically reconcile with creation?

00:56:07.100 And so basically casting humans as the exploiters of creation, well, we use less water, we don't drive our cars.

00:56:14.220 This is like a kid's Bible, so it starts really young.

00:56:17.060 But I want to talk about Gavin Ortlund, because I want to talk about some of the critiques that you've gotten and you've dealt with over the past few days, because he made a video that responded to what you wrote about him in your book.

00:56:32.280 And I watched the video, and basically, he accuses you of slander.

00:56:39.580 I'm not sure if he uses that exact word, but he says that you misrepresented him worse than he's ever been misrepresented.

00:56:45.860 He says that you accused him of making this a gospel issue, and he says he does not make it a gospel issue.

00:56:53.620 He said it's fine to disagree, but we just need to talk about climate change.

00:56:57.920 So how would you respond to what Gavin said?

00:57:01.060 Well, you know, when I watched that video, I was surprised to see that so many of the things I said as general summary at the end of the chapter that were not specifically about him,

00:57:11.040 that were, in fact, about a speaker at Southeastern Seminary who directly said that to be faithful to the gospel, we need to take up the issue of creation care, which means taking up the issue of climate change.

00:57:23.020 And it came in the very last paragraph.

00:57:25.300 It was clearly not referring to him.

00:57:27.440 And he was saying, well, she says I do this.

00:57:30.440 And it wasn't about him.

00:57:31.820 And he said, well, she said I'm a shepherd for sale.

00:57:34.060 And I mean, I think I think a little bit that this is a tactic to be deliberately over literal to say every single person in this she is saying is bought by George Soros.

00:57:46.340 And that's not what you're saying.

00:57:47.700 No, not at all.

00:57:48.200 And in fact, in the very first introduction chapter, I say that is not what we're talking about.

00:57:54.580 Some people may be bought in the sense that they're looking for media adulation.

00:58:01.720 And I have some figures like that.

00:58:02.740 And some people are simply influenced by the culture around them.

00:58:06.420 And that was part of what I was illustrating was that these left-wing foundations have been promoting climate change in churches, in seminaries.

00:58:15.000 And that has an impact on how we talk about it within the church.

00:58:17.920 And it made it a priority.

00:58:20.080 And you don't always know how you're being influenced sometimes by some of this dark money that's coming in.

00:58:25.720 So that was an illustration of this is how some of that impact is happening, that people much, much further down who are just in these environments of these seminaries are then, they are taking up the charge just as those foundations, as they wrote about in that report, wanted.

00:58:41.220 Yeah.

00:58:42.200 Oh, my goodness.

00:58:43.060 So what is your message?

00:58:47.380 What is your message for people who are listening to this, watching this, and they're like, oh, my goodness, I want to know if the people who are influencing me, the people in my life, in my church, if they're headed this direction.

00:58:58.860 And they don't want to be in a constant state of, like, anxiety or paranoia about that.

00:59:06.220 They just want to be discerning, and they want to be peaceful about it, and they want to follow what Scripture says to, as far as it depends on us, be at peace with everyone.

00:59:15.400 That doesn't mean, though, that we don't call people out when they are not telling the truth or when they have been bought and paid for.

00:59:22.720 But at the same time, we have to be kind about it.

00:59:26.200 We have to go about it the right way.

00:59:27.480 So, like, what is your message for people who want to be as discerning about this stuff as you have been?

00:59:32.840 Well, I think that's a big part of it is that the anger about bringing it up, we have to sort of confront that, that, look, a lot of these things have flourished because we didn't talk about it openly.

00:59:43.500 And there was this 11th commandment where to mention it at all is somehow unloving.

00:59:50.880 And that allowed a lot of things to fester for a long time so that now that we are talking about it, you get that kind of pushback that's very angry and defensive.

00:59:59.920 And I think just because someone brings it up and says, hey, I think this is a problem, doesn't mean you're not, you're saying you're not a Christian or you're not a believer.

01:00:08.240 But it is saying, look, we have a problem with legalism.

01:00:10.880 It didn't mean that Peter wasn't a Christian when Paul confronted him and said, you are bringing, adding things to the gospel that are not a part of it and that this needs to be addressed.

01:00:20.980 And so, you know, for those who are kind of sitting on the sidelines going, well, how do we deal with it?

01:00:26.760 I think one is don't be afraid to have those uncomfortable conversations with your pastors, with your ministry leaders, with your seminary administrators when you see it happening.

01:00:39.080 And I think you can do that respectfully and graciously, but we have to acknowledge when it's being done in a way that it is politicizing the gospel.

01:00:48.940 And then I hate to say this, but I do think we live in an era where you have to do your homework on all of this curriculum and all of the people that you're listening to.

01:00:58.160 And when those little alarm bells go off, you know, don't be suspicious, don't have a spirit of suspicion, but you do need to sort of follow them because that is the Berean way.

01:01:07.140 And check the scriptures, check your Bible and see, is there justification for what I'm feeling or do I need to consider what this person is bringing up regarding, you know, some issue on immigration or climate change?

01:01:19.160 I think that's the answer is that we just, we go back to the Berean model.

01:01:23.920 Yeah, absolutely.

01:01:25.060 I think that's a really good point is that, you know, we're not asking, Megan's not asking, hey, compare what your pastor is saying to what Megan says or what Megan wrote or what I say or anything.

01:01:35.420 I don't care at all if you read my book or listen to my podcast.

01:01:39.920 I want you to compare what your pastor is saying to the word of God.

01:01:44.700 And that's really, that's really important too.

01:01:46.760 That's really all we're asking.

01:01:48.380 And a lot of these issues, as you said, even though that word nuanced is so overused, it's used as an excuse to be confused sometimes.

01:01:56.160 Some of these issues are, it's not necessarily a black and white.

01:02:01.280 And that's kind of the point.

01:02:03.460 Now, some of them are abortion, gender, marriage.

01:02:06.360 Those are black and white because they're Genesis one issues, but immigration policy, even somewhat gun policy.

01:02:12.540 And your point is that these cannot from the progressive side or either side, but in this case, the progressive side become salvation issues for these people that you're beating over your congregation's heads with.

01:02:25.780 And if they're flip-flopping the issues, if suddenly, you know, something that scripture is crystal clear on, like homosexuality, like transgenderism, if that's being labeled a political issue, where these other things that I'm talking about, the debatable things like immigration and climate change, those are becoming the gospel issues.

01:02:43.860 And I think you should know you have a problem at your church.

01:02:46.820 Yeah, absolutely.

01:02:47.660 And I do want to say, like, those things are debatable to a certain extent.

01:02:51.420 I think it's clear, for example, that, like, borders were God's idea.

01:02:55.480 But when it comes to the nitty-gritty of immigration policy, I don't think any of us has all the answers.

01:03:00.080 Right.

01:03:00.340 And so you're absolutely right.

01:03:01.820 Well, thank you so much.

01:03:02.840 And thanks for taking the hits because it's not easy calling prominent people out.

01:03:07.340 And I don't like to say calling out because I know that's not what you're trying to do.

01:03:10.140 You're just trying to say, hey, this is going on.

01:03:13.000 And if I can say, I would say, read the book, you know, don't, all these little viral things and little sort of social media.

01:03:20.540 Yeah, just check it out for yourself and see if you think that it is strident in tone or unfair.

01:03:28.320 Yeah, yeah, definitely.

01:03:29.860 I encourage you to do that.

01:03:31.000 You can get Shepherds for Sale wherever books are sold.

01:03:34.660 And it's climbing the charts on Amazon.

01:03:36.460 I know we don't love what Amazon supports, but if there is any way to kind of, like, fight back against the craziness of Amazon, it's to buy a Christian book like this, Shepherds for Sale.

01:03:49.360 Megan, thank you so much.

01:03:50.780 I really appreciate it.

01:03:52.020 Thanks for having me.

01:03:52.660 It's so fun to be in your studio.

01:03:53.860 Yes, thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 01, 2024

Ep 1044 ｜ Andy Stanley, Francis Collins & the Plot to End Evangelicalism ｜ Guest： Megan Basham

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