Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 560 ｜ How Tim Keller & Russell Moore Became Mouthpieces for Masks & Vaccines

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Trying out that cold open because I got some good

00:00:04.500 feedback. Today's episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Get some better than organic

00:00:09.900 chicken and Kraft beef shipped right to your front door by going to goodranchers.com slash Allie.

00:00:16.680 Okay guys, today we are talking to Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham. We are talking about this

00:00:33.560 bombshell article that came out last week, I believe, about evangelicalism and the evangelicals

00:00:42.140 that were basically used by the former NIH director, the retiring NIH director, Francis

00:00:49.780 Collins to push vaccines and masks and a virtual meeting during the height of COVID. It is a very

00:00:59.820 fascinating article and I just want to talk to her about how she got this information about some of

00:01:05.200 the top and most influential evangelical leaders and why they are so influenced by Francis Collins.

00:01:12.140 We're going to talk a little bit about who Francis Collins is and why it's really puzzling that some

00:01:17.940 of the most respectable Christian leaders like Tim Keller are praising him publicly and are basically

00:01:24.920 using him as a vessel or using themselves as a vessel to preach whatever Francis Collins wants

00:01:32.300 them to preach to their congregants. We're also going to talk about this New York Times opinion piece

00:01:38.160 by David Brooks, the dissenters trying to save evangelicalism from itself, talking about how

00:01:46.740 basically conservative evangelicals are a huge problem. Surprise, surprise, and even mentions

00:01:52.760 World Magazine. I am an opinion writer for World Magazine, so I took a special interest in this story.

00:01:59.840 So we're going to talk about that in a little bit more. It's a really fascinating conversation.

00:02:04.460 You guys might know over the past 24 hours, I traveled to Tallahassee. I got to speak to a group

00:02:11.140 there at Florida State University. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to do that and I got to meet

00:02:19.200 a few of you there, several of you there. Thank you all to those of you who came out. Also, over the

00:02:25.520 weekend, I got to meet so many relatable listeners. I went to a Nate Bergazzi show. I don't know if you

00:02:31.300 guys know who Nate Bergazzi is. He's a very popular comedian. If you guys have Netflix, definitely go

00:02:38.660 watch his specials. He's totally clean. He doesn't cuss. It's not raunchy. He's not necessarily an

00:02:44.880 explicitly Christian comedian. He's just a clean comedian, super dry, super sarcastic, hilarious.

00:02:50.960 And my husband and I got to go to that show over the weekend and there was a huge crossover between

00:02:57.780 Nate Bergazzi fans and relatable listeners. Outside of a conference that I'm actually the speaker for,

00:03:05.500 I don't think I've ever met that many relatable listeners in one place. I could not even walk a

00:03:11.140 few feet without one of you coming up to me and saying, oh my gosh, I listen to relatable. So thank

00:03:16.520 you for those of you who did come up to me. I also got a couple messages from you saying that you didn't

00:03:21.060 know if you could, you know, should come up to me and take a picture or whatever. And also I noticed

00:03:26.140 that a lot of you who took a picture with me, you're like embarrassed to ask or you don't know

00:03:31.160 if you should ask. Just ask to take the picture. It's not embarrassing at all. It's not weird. I love

00:03:36.580 to meet listeners of Relatable. I love to take a picture with you and talk to you. So thank you

00:03:42.680 so much to everyone who came up to me. I love getting to meet you guys. It's just a great reminder,

00:03:48.520 even though every day I love doing what I do. It's a great reminder when I meet you guys and

00:03:52.920 when I hear firsthand face to face what this show really means to you and the impact that it's had

00:03:59.040 by the grace of God on your life. It just, it keeps me going. It gives me the energy to talk about

00:04:04.880 these things day after day. So thank you guys so much for your encouragement. It's super fun to meet

00:04:11.360 you guys. Another thing that I wanted to say that happened over the weekend that I wanted to use just

00:04:16.500 as encouragement to you guys. And I talked about this also in my speech in Tallahassee,

00:04:21.240 but over the weekend, before I went to the comedy event, I also, I volunteer at this pro-life pregnancy

00:04:28.420 center in the area. And I was there over the weekend and I got to talk to a lot of moms who are

00:04:35.660 in need. They were there getting supplies, getting baby clothes, getting free cribs and things that people

00:04:41.680 had donated, which by the way, we're going to do a big donation through Amazon in just a couple

00:04:48.440 weeks, actually next week, because next week is my 30th birthday. So we're going to do like a big

00:04:52.540 donation thing in honor of my birthday to this pregnancy center. But anyway, I was there talking

00:04:57.460 to these women and it just reminded me of all the things that we talk about, the importance of speaking

00:05:04.180 up when it's unpopular, the importance of fighting for that, which is good and right and true,

00:05:09.860 speaking up especially when it comes to abortion and protection of unborn lives, when you're face

00:05:15.180 to face with people, when you're face to face with the people that you're talking about, you realize

00:05:19.540 that this is not an especially political situation. Yes, it is a political issue in some sense, but

00:05:28.960 when you are actually in the thick of it and loving the people that you are, loving the people who are

00:05:36.920 actually at the center of the political issues that you're talking about day to day, you realize that

00:05:42.600 these are just people, they're human beings. You realize why politics matter because people really

00:05:47.920 do matter, but it just reminds you the importance of boldness, of courage, of advocating for the things

00:05:55.720 that you believe in. The women that I met who are choosing life for their children who are in need,

00:06:02.940 really what they need more than anything else. Yes, our political advocacy, like I said, matters,

00:06:09.500 but really what these people need more than anything else is love. They needed to hear that

00:06:13.880 God loves them, that God is taking care of them, and that we are there for them. And that just

00:06:18.960 reminded me of the importance of that approach when it comes to all of the political issues that we

00:06:24.480 talk about, especially when it comes to abortion, that we put our money where our mouth is, that we walk

00:06:28.640 the walk. We don't just talk the talk. Because at the end of the day, what we're talking about,

00:06:33.100 they're not political primarily issues. They're not primarily culture war issues. These are people

00:06:39.700 issues. These are human issues. These are issues of theological proportions. And what it comes down to

00:06:45.420 is how we best love people. And at the end of the day, these are people who are made in the image of

00:06:50.680 God, who need to hear that God loves them. And then when we go further out, how do we do that? Not just

00:06:55.860 personally, most importantly, how do we do that financially? How do we do that politically?

00:06:59.860 How do we create a culture in which the people who are at the center of these issues can thrive?

00:07:06.540 And so those are just some things. I just wanted to get those thoughts out. Those have been percolating

00:07:10.300 in my mind for the past few days. And I didn't have a new episode yesterday because I was traveling.

00:07:14.980 So I wanted to get all of that out as a reminder. So I hope there's some encouragement in there

00:07:20.420 for all of you in this kind of a little bit of a rambling introduction to the conversation that we

00:07:27.980 are about to have. Thank you guys for being here and bearing with me through that beginning monologue.

00:07:36.380 Megan, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:07:41.420 Hi, I'm Megan Basham. I am a reporter with The Daily Wire. I cover a lot of entertainment and

00:07:47.800 culture stories. But personally, as a Christian, as an evangelical, I just have a lot of interest in

00:07:53.920 church stories, stories that encompass what we all believe in, what we're doing every week,

00:08:01.380 what our purpose and our mission is here. So they give me a lot of leeway to cover those stories,

00:08:06.140 which is nice because sometimes people go, why is the entertainment reporter always writing about

00:08:10.720 church? But it's just because I'm really passionate about the church. And I super appreciate The Daily

00:08:15.820 Wire giving me so much freedom to cover those stories. Yeah. And it's a niche. I think maybe

00:08:20.660 the general audience might wonder, is there enough content to even cover in that kind of subculture?

00:08:26.780 But there absolutely is. Both you and I know that there's a lot that goes on just within conservative

00:08:33.120 or what's considered conservative evangelicalism and what is sometimes referred to as Big Eva,

00:08:39.700 the establishment evangelicalism. There's a lot to talk about there. And it's super interesting to

00:08:45.760 me, obviously. We talk about that. And that is why I wanted to talk to you about this recent story

00:08:50.940 that came out called How the Federal Government Used Evangelical Leaders to Spread COVID Propaganda

00:08:57.160 to Churches. I saw you tweet about it, but a lot of people sent it to me saying you have to talk about

00:09:02.060 this on your show. So that's why I wanted to have you on. There's probably several people listening

00:09:06.820 who haven't read it and maybe they haven't even heard about this story. So can you first just kind of

00:09:12.360 give us a rundown? Why did you decide to write this? How did this come about?

00:09:16.980 Well, you know, like everybody else, as someone who's going to church every week, who's very involved

00:09:22.360 in our church life, and we have small group, we have a lot of friends, we were all sifting through

00:09:27.480 all of this information on COVID, on masks, on vaccinations, on lockdown policies, just everything

00:09:35.200 you could think of going, how does the Bible speak to this? How is our church talking about this? So it

00:09:41.900 really started there just as a personal issue. My kids are at a small Christian school, there was a

00:09:47.380 lot of debate about masks there. So like everyone else, it was just a major topic. And when I would go

00:09:53.620 to a lot of the resources that I would typically use, a lot of major pastors, podcasts, things like

00:09:59.540 that, one man just kept turning up again and again. And that was NIH director, the National

00:10:06.680 Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins. And he was presented in all of these interviews as

00:10:12.720 someone who is a man of integrity, a Bible believing Christian himself, someone who believes in the

00:10:19.120 sanctity of human life. And I'll just be very transparent that for me, part of the frustration of

00:10:25.220 all of those interviews and podcasts and webinars was that his word was kind of treated as medically

00:10:32.360 authoritative. And any questioning of what he was saying regarding things like children being in masks

00:10:40.260 at school, whether churches should gather, issues like who should be vaccinated, if there's ever a good

00:10:47.780 reason maybe to forego vaccination or delay vaccination. It felt like there was really only one message

00:10:54.320 coming from all major pastors and all major Christian media. And on top of that, as a reporter, there

00:11:02.300 were some things that Collins was saying that just a little alarm bell went off in my ear. When he was

00:11:09.000 talking about the lab leak theory being a conspiracy, and you started to see a lot of these big evangelical

00:11:15.580 outlets, like Christianity Today, treating it as almost sinful to talk about. Whereas I knew as a reporter, no,

00:11:23.660 that's actually a pretty reasonable hypothesis, if you look at the facts on the ground. And since

00:11:28.540 then, of course, it has come out that there may have been some some personal motivation with Francis

00:11:33.680 Collins and his subordinate, Anthony Fauci, to treat that as kind of a crazy conspiracy theory when it

00:11:39.420 turns out, no, actually, that was that was a pretty reasonable notion.

00:11:43.740 Yeah. And, you know, as you alluded to, Francis Collins has been someone who has been praised by

00:11:50.880 evangelicals for a while when it was announced that he was retiring. Later last year, you had

00:11:57.360 several Christians, public Christians, influential Christians come out and talk about how wonderful

00:12:03.440 Francis Collins is. David French, of course, called him a national treasure. Russell Moore said,

00:12:08.900 I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis

00:12:13.720 Collins. I cannot wait to see how God uses him next. Tim Keller, as good as NIH director is at his

00:12:21.280 craft, he's an even better friend. And so he has really good street cred. And yet, his views that are

00:12:30.880 pro-life views that are held by the majority of Christians are not necessarily shared by Francis

00:12:37.780 Collins. There's also been some other problematic things about the things he's espoused and the

00:12:42.500 things he's funded at the NIH, right? Right. And that was, you know, when I started digging into the

00:12:47.880 story, first, I looked at what is everyone saying and being troubled by the fact that it was pretty much

00:12:52.880 a uniform reaction. There wasn't much room for discussion or debate. There were no other medical

00:12:58.680 opinions, other medical experts offered. But then I started looking at Francis Collins

00:13:02.720 specifically. And as the director of the NIH, you know, he was not just platformed as a faithful

00:13:08.540 brother. He was specifically, I can give you an example, Rick Warren called him a man of integrity,

00:13:14.380 a man you can trust. And Christianity today presented him as a man who believes in the sanctity of human

00:13:21.240 life. Well, if you're a pro-lifer and you look at his views, they are not probably going to align with

00:13:27.020 your idea of valuing the sanctity of human life. So what Francis Collins in his work at the NIH

00:13:34.020 has funded a lot of research that involves fetal tissue. It involves harvesting organs from at times

00:13:41.740 full-term infants, full-term born babies. I don't know the accuracy of these charges, but some medical

00:13:50.100 doctors, there's been reporting, they've come forward saying some of these organs, kidneys,

00:13:54.840 ureters could only have been taken from still live infants. So that's something I'm still looking

00:14:00.780 into. But we do know that he approved grants for research at the University of Pittsburgh that

00:14:06.560 involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats. And so that's one issue. And then you turn to

00:14:13.640 another initiative that Francis Collins very personally and boldly advanced. And that was a

00:14:20.000 four-year initiative for what they're calling sexual and gender minorities to give money and

00:14:26.280 research grants to specifically advance their health. That's how they're framing it. And some

00:14:32.280 of that research has involved grants to a doctor in California who has given opposite sex hormones to

00:14:40.520 children as young as eight. Another reporter friend of mine who's been doing a lot of great work on this,

00:14:46.180 Brandon Showalter at the Christian Post, discovered that some of these children were foster kids. They

00:14:51.660 had no one really looking out for them. And they're being given these kind of hormones that could be

00:14:56.500 life-altering permanently. And along with that research, there were also girls who were given

00:15:01.940 mastectomies as young as 13. So some really, frankly, just appalling research going on there.

00:15:08.460 And that's the kind of thing that I go, when you platform this man as a medical authority,

00:15:13.080 I think that's something that a lot of Christians would want to know about his background.

00:15:17.380 Yes. And I could see some people saying, well, he is the head of the NIH, but maybe he doesn't

00:15:23.160 direct all of the funding for all of the different projects, which may be to some degree some kind of

00:15:29.140 excuse. But he has actually explicitly come out in favor of the so-called sexual revolution,

00:15:37.260 the LGBTQ revolution, and what he would call sexual minorities. He at least rhetorically

00:15:44.040 is completely supportive of the idea that a man can become a woman and can identify as the opposite

00:15:49.960 sex. And this is someone, again, that Tim Keller, that Russell Moore, that David French, all of these

00:15:54.760 people who consider themselves conservative theologically, at least, Christians, are all praising

00:16:01.440 and saying that he is a wonderful representative of Christianity when he apparently is starkly opposed

00:16:07.340 to the biblical definition of sex, the biblical definition of gender. And certainly when life

00:16:14.060 begins, as you mentioned, there's a 2010 New Yorker article in which he's quoted saying that he doesn't

00:16:19.980 actually know when life begins, which is exactly why he approved of these grants to do, you know,

00:16:27.080 the stem cell research. And of course, as you mentioned, the grotesque experimentation on babies,

00:16:34.980 aborted babies through the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere. So knowing his explicit views on all

00:16:41.700 of that, I'm wondering how he gained such a reputation for a man of integrity, as Rick Warren said,

00:16:51.260 among the evangelical community. How did that happen?

00:16:56.560 Well, you know, I think you have to look at the fact that he is an incredibly accomplished scientist.

00:17:00.600 He mapped the human genome. He, you know, was one of the leading researchers on that project. He's

00:17:06.460 somebody who is at the very pinnacle of government power. He, you know, he's running the NIH. It doesn't

00:17:12.320 get much more bureaucratically powerful than that. So I think that certainly played a role. And I'll be

00:17:18.520 honest, as you dug into how people say they met him, um, you know, I have to say there seem to be

00:17:25.040 a certain elitist circles going on. Um, you know, Rick Warren mentioned that they met at Davos in

00:17:30.660 Switzerland at the world economic forum. Yeah. Which if you're not familiar, that that is the

00:17:35.760 gathering of the world's billionaires and heads of state. And so I think there was a sense, um, maybe

00:17:42.300 just being sort of starry eyed at having access to somebody who travels in those, you know, very

00:17:48.820 sort of Tony elite circles. Um, you know, so I'm not trying to impugn people's motives, but as you

00:17:54.300 looked into Francis Collins, it was kind of funny, the places that he kept popping up again and again.

00:17:58.680 And in a time magazine story, they, they named him one of the Christian intelligentsia and mentioned

00:18:04.300 this very sort of elite book club that he attends with people like the New York times, David Brooks,

00:18:10.800 and Pete Wenner at the Atlantic. And so you just kept getting the sense that these are people who

00:18:16.500 travel in very rare circles and that maybe, um, that was part of the appeal was sort of having

00:18:22.920 access to somebody who operates at such a high level in the world. I mean, not many of us are

00:18:28.260 getting invited to Davos. Right. And I'm wondering how he got connected and how he decided or who tapped

00:18:36.360 him to be kind of the publicist for masking for vaccines, even, um, uh, just meeting virtually

00:18:45.260 as churches. That was something that he was advocating for, um, last year and in 2020. Do

00:18:51.740 you know what the process was in Francis Collins kind of reaching out to Russell Moore, Ed Stetzer,

00:18:57.480 you know, Rick Warren, these people that he was kind of, uh, being a messenger to and through,

00:19:03.080 like, how did that happen? How did the messaging get formulated? Is there something like official

00:19:08.760 systematic that was happening behind the scenes? Or if you know, was it kind of more organic? Like

00:19:13.720 they were already friends and Francis Collins just called them up and said, Hey, I know you've

00:19:16.820 got big congregations. Like, let me come and talk to you guys about vaccines. Well, I mean,

00:19:22.580 what I can tell you is one, I wasn't able to get a whole lot of hard details on that because,

00:19:27.340 um, all of the men in this report that I wrote would not speak to me. They didn't want to talk

00:19:32.560 about Francis Collins. So, I mean, I can tell you that I did call Ed Stetzer. I called Russell

00:19:37.080 Moore, David French, Rick Warren, Tim Keller. I did reach out to all of these people. Um,

00:19:43.060 and so none of them responded. Uh, I did hear back from Rick Warren's assistant who said,

00:19:49.300 I'll let you know if he would like to say something. And I never heard back. I heard back

00:19:53.340 from Russell Moore's assistant saying he has COVID. Um, so he's not available to speak right

00:19:58.260 now, but beyond that, I never heard anything. So I was never able to get

00:20:02.260 hard details from them as to how that happened. But what I can tell you is that, you know,

00:20:07.200 as I was doing the research and kind of gathering facts for my story, one thing I was able to figure

00:20:12.700 out is that, um, this was very intentional that that was not hidden, that, that they weren't shy

00:20:17.760 about being very clear about that. In some of that time magazine reporting, they specifically

00:20:22.820 referenced that while Anthony Fauci had been sort of sent out to speak to the secular media

00:20:29.100 because he was perceived as, um, a very strong evangelical Christian. They specifically sent

00:20:37.220 Francis Collins out to use those connections in the evangelical world to spread, uh, really

00:20:44.380 what the government wanted spread as far as these are the lockdown policies we believe in. These are

00:20:49.620 the mask policies. And as you listen to all of these interviews, all of these webinars in totality,

00:20:56.900 um, it was fairly dismissive. Even I have to say it was even sneering. There was one interview

00:21:02.680 with N.T. Wright, famous theologian N.T. Wright, where they sort of made a joke about, um, these,

00:21:09.880 these churches who think Jesus is my vaccine or Satan can't get into my church. So they don't lock

00:21:15.440 down because, and it was just very dismissive and it was sort of surprising to go, you know,

00:21:19.460 we should be having a discussion about this as believers. We should be having an open discussion

00:21:24.540 about this. And instead it was, you know, take this man's word. And I think that that was very

00:21:29.660 deliberate. As you go through and listen to the podcast, as you listen to the interviews,

00:21:34.760 he was really clear in saying, pastors, I exhort you, please use your platforms to explain to your

00:21:42.600 people that, um, this is the right method of addressing COVID and not just the right method medically,

00:21:49.460 but that this is a gospel issue. This is loving your neighbor. Um, it is following Jesus to wear

00:21:56.200 your mask. And so really a lot of things that moved into the range of legalism. And so you kind

00:22:01.980 of went, we're not just talking about a man's medical opinion. And so he was very much leveraging

00:22:07.080 that. And he was very clear that I am here because you have a captive audience in your churches. And I

00:22:13.500 am asking you to spread this message to your captive audience. We're talking about Ed Stetzer. We're

00:22:19.580 talking about the Billy Graham center, talking about the gospel coalition Christianity today. Um,

00:22:25.420 Russell Moore, uh, those are the people in T right. Those are some of the people that interviewed him.

00:22:32.020 Um, Tim Keller had the joint interview. And as you said, that's what struck me, um, last year when I was

00:22:40.680 listening to some of these interviews is just the condescension that was expressed, which doesn't

00:22:45.520 really surprise me because actually when I've heard Russell Moore talk to other people, uh, I think

00:22:50.440 it was an interview with David French, maybe sometime last year, maybe it was even in 2020 talking about

00:22:55.220 critical race theory. It was once again, it was kind of presented as this boogeyman, this, this thing

00:23:00.920 that doesn't really exist. And just these fear mongering evangelicals, they have no idea what they're

00:23:05.360 talking about those rubes and we can just kind of dismiss them by laughing at them. And that's the exact

00:23:10.200 same impression that I got in at least parts of these interviews with Francis Collins, as you said,

00:23:16.240 kind of dismissing any Christian who said, you know, I think we have an obligation to meet in

00:23:21.640 person as some kind of conspiracy theorist who didn't believe in COVID or believe that Jesus was

00:23:28.120 their vaccine when that's, you know, that's a straw man. That's not actually what pastors like

00:23:34.740 John MacArthur, uh, was saying when he insisted that his church continue to meet in person or any

00:23:40.580 church that I know. But that's kind of how I think not just Francis Collins and these pastors kind of

00:23:47.240 effectively persuaded people onto their side and into their perspective of everything going on.

00:23:53.220 But really we've seen the CDC kind of do the same thing. We've seen the liberal secular media do the

00:23:58.360 same thing rather than present to you the data showing, Hey, this is why we believe that masks

00:24:04.200 work or whatever it is just kind of making you feel stupid and making you feel crazy. And like a

00:24:11.040 conspiracy theorist, if you don't agree with them. And yet in one of these interviews, Francis Collins,

00:24:16.260 he held up his cloth mask and he said, this is a life-saving device. This is not an infringement

00:24:23.540 upon your liberty. Both of those things are incorrect. Like now we actually have that approving.

00:24:29.680 And I mean, what we've kind of always known through common sense and even what Dr. Fauci said in the

00:24:33.820 very beginning of all of this, that those cloth masks are not doing anything. And yet Francis

00:24:38.560 Collins made everyone listening who didn't agree with him feel stupid for not, for not buying this

00:24:44.940 line. I mean, it's crazy. Well, you know, getting at sort of that steering, it was really kind of hard

00:24:50.720 to be honest with you going through some of this material and going, um, one of the, you brought

00:24:55.300 up John MacArthur, the moments that really struck me was when uniformly Tim Keller and Francis Collins

00:25:01.420 agreed that John MacArthur's church, they didn't specifically name John MacArthur, but it was at the

00:25:06.700 time that he was really in a high profile fight with, uh, Governor Gavin Newsom of California. And they

00:25:14.220 said that churches that are, uh, were not shutting down, were refusing to obey lockdown orders and

00:25:19.780 continuing to meet as directed in Hebrews were, um, the represented the bad and the ugly of good,

00:25:27.360 bad and ugly responses to COVID. And that just kind of blew me away that I went, wow. So it wasn't even

00:25:33.080 like, let's have an open conversation. We, we prayed through it. We feel led to do something

00:25:37.700 different. It was very specifically there in the wrong here. I mean, the subtext is they're sinning

00:25:43.500 by doing this. So that kind of blew my mind, to be honest with you. Um, and you know, as you look

00:25:49.860 at it, you go from a reporterly fashion, you go, you kind of dug in and went, there were also some

00:25:55.660 really strong personal motivations as it turns out, as we're seeing in the massive news cycle now

00:26:00.940 for Francis Collins to dismiss, for example, the Wuhan lab leak theory as conspiracy. And they did,

00:26:08.100 I mean, he specifically said in the Christianity today webinar, this was human made mother nature

00:26:14.820 did not make this one. Well, it turns out that, you know, um, the NIH may have been funding some

00:26:21.880 gain of function research there in Wuhan. And it now looks like we don't know for sure, but not only

00:26:27.420 did the Corona virus, um, very possibly come from a lab, it looks likely that it came from a lab.

00:26:34.340 So you go, you guys may have helped him cover up something that the American public needs to know

00:26:40.680 about. Yes. In one of his, um, in, in one of, I don't have it actually in my notes, but in

00:26:47.800 one of the speeches that he gave or interviews that he gave, he again, kind of laughed at this idea

00:26:54.360 that this could have leaked from a lab. He called this a conspiracy theory. And he said, this definitely

00:26:59.240 has natural origins. And like you said, it's probably not true that it has natural origins. And

00:27:03.860 Francis Collins was also one of the people when we saw a lot of those emails come out,

00:27:09.480 his emails, Dr. Fauci's emails, who said that, you know, we, they quickly have to take down this

00:27:14.980 group of fringe, what he called fringe epidemiologists in the Barrington, Great Barrington

00:27:19.440 Declaration, um, that gave a different scientific perspective of COVID and the mitigation measures

00:27:26.260 that were being put in place from, uh, because of COVID. Francis Collins came out, you know,

00:27:31.220 basically said that was propaganda wanted to push back at that when really he has been a purveyor

00:27:35.920 of misinformation. Has there been any apology, any correction, any clarification from the people

00:27:43.640 who the Christians who did platform Francis Collins, um, now that it's come out that he actually was

00:27:49.260 spreading misinformation about things like masks. Have they, have they said anything about that to

00:27:53.580 correct the record? No. And I, you know, I'm going to tell you, that's been one of the really

00:27:58.400 frustrating parts of covering this again. They, they would specifically would not talk to me,

00:28:03.000 but they're not addressing it at all. And I want to point out something that happened in regards to

00:28:07.240 how they were addressing this. Once some of this information came out and we learned that Francis

00:28:12.200 Collins was, you know, potentially just wrong or possibly lying about some of these things.

00:28:17.880 Uh, Christianity today ran an essay from Ed Stetzer saying that it is a conspiracy theory to spread

00:28:24.780 things like the Wuhan lab leak. Well, instead of doing the journalistically ethical thing,

00:28:30.180 the thing that I would certainly be required to do here at the daily wire, which is acknowledge,

00:28:34.240 uh, this was misleading. We made a mistake. Here's an editor's note. They just took the article down.

00:28:39.580 The article disappeared. The only reason I was able to read it was because it was still available

00:28:44.620 on the web archive on the way back machine. So you couldn't disappear it entirely, but you go that

00:28:50.320 it's pretty bad when the secular journalism world has higher ethics than the Christian media.

00:28:56.960 And by that same token, none of them have been willing to talk to me. And as far as I know,

00:29:03.320 no other reporters are asking them. So they're not talking to anyone about it. Um, I, you know,

00:29:08.200 at the risk of hubris, what I've kind of been getting all week since the story broke is I've seen a lot of,

00:29:14.020 um, establishment types writing tweets and essays and social media posts about divisiveness and tone

00:29:22.380 and how we can't let this disagreement divide us. Now, is this about me? Is this about this story?

00:29:27.160 I don't know because they don't say specifically, but, um, this has been the only response. And it's

00:29:32.460 frustrating to me because I go, this issue is not about divisiveness. This issue is not about

00:29:37.720 disagreement. There are some serious charges here, either of a lack of wisdom or,

00:29:43.720 or potentially colluding to let the federal government spread inaccurate information or

00:29:49.520 cover their trail on some things that, uh, they shouldn't have been doing. So for me, it's,

00:29:54.700 it's kind of stunning that I'm like, are we just all going to move on from this? And nobody

00:29:58.680 has to answer any tough questions because nobody in Christian media is asking and, uh, me working

00:30:04.900 for a secular media outlet. They're not talking to me.

00:30:11.880 It's so interesting how the accusations of divisiveness always seem to be,

00:30:17.640 always seem to be from the same kind of people going the same direction. If you are pro BLM, pro CRT,

00:30:25.180 uh, if you are, uh, pro whatever CNN CDC talking point is out there about COVID, you are never

00:30:33.960 accused of being divisive. Heck, if you say that John or imply the John MacArthur's church is part

00:30:39.360 of the bad and the ugly of the response to COVID that's not seen as divisive. That's seen as,

00:30:44.780 I don't know, speaking the truth and love or just being compassionate and calling out what you think

00:30:50.480 is dangerous and deadly, whatever it is. But the accusations of divisiveness only rise up when

00:30:56.600 it's coming from the conservative side, when it's coming from the conservative end saying, Hey, you

00:31:02.380 know what? I don't think the organization of black lives matters really standing for things that

00:31:06.600 evangelicals should stand for. Hey, I think that this racially divisive rhetoric probably isn't good

00:31:11.260 or Hey, let's kind of question some of the narratives about, about COVID, or maybe we should question

00:31:17.260 this idea that in order to love our neighbor, we have to get a vaccine that doesn't stop infection

00:31:22.380 or transmission. Like, let's talk about that. That apparently is being divisive. Um, and you know,

00:31:29.260 I get that a lot to the accusations of, of not getting like, of not having the right tone or only ever

00:31:36.240 applied to people on the right side of the aisle. But if you have some sassy social justice warrior who

00:31:42.220 professes to be a Christian on the left side of the aisle who wants to, you know, speak truth to

00:31:47.240 power, well then, you know, they should be applauded and they're courageous, even though

00:31:53.240 they're really just repeating mainstream secular talking points about things. Um, so it's really

00:31:58.380 interesting. What else has the response been to this? Has, has there been a positive response from

00:32:03.340 people? Anyone who has said, wow, I didn't, I didn't know this. And this is really enlightening.

00:32:08.520 Yeah. So I have gotten from, from your average people, I've gotten a lot of messages. I've gotten a

00:32:13.240 lot of encouraging notes saying we so felt this and we kind of knew this was going on and we so

00:32:18.380 appreciate that someone's talking about it, but you know, I kind of just want to circle back for

00:32:22.480 one second, as far as the negative response and go, I had an interview scheduled coincidentally

00:32:28.780 with Francis Collins, um, that was not related to this piece. But right after the piece came out,

00:32:34.580 I happened to get a message from a PR company that I've worked with before and said,

00:32:38.060 Francis Collins is working on this educational project with curriculum. Would you like a type

00:32:42.780 slot to interview him? And I said, absolutely. I would like that. Yes, please. So, uh, I said,

00:32:48.980 yes, I scheduled it. And, um, I, I showed up for the zoom interview and I sat there and

00:32:55.460 time of the interview went by and I kind of went, okay. And I messaged the, the, the PR people and

00:33:01.300 they said, Oh, we're just running late, you know, hang on, hang tight. A few more minutes went by

00:33:05.560 ultimately about 15 minutes went by and, um, suddenly the, the zoom camera clicked off and

00:33:11.720 it said the meeting has been canceled. And it took me a little time to get ahold of someone and sort

00:33:16.420 it out. But they told me that, uh, Francis Collins felt that you would not stick to the topics at hand,

00:33:24.080 which I would just like to say, it's not true. I am a professional. I very much, I read through all

00:33:30.100 the press materials they said. Okay. Yes. I was going to ask them tough questions, but my point of all

00:33:35.300 that being that he ran away from the interview that we had already scheduled and was over time

00:33:40.780 and none of the Christian media has said, gosh, he needs to answer some questions. You know,

00:33:46.580 they all kind of pretended like that didn't happen with one exception. And, uh, the reason I bring this

00:33:51.720 up is Eric Erickson, conservative host who I like very much. Um, he said he was bothered that Francis

00:33:58.400 Collins did not go ahead with our interview. And, but he wrote an essay and said, I, yes. And he said,

00:34:06.820 I have since called some of these people because I was troubled by Megan's reporting, which is fine. I'm

00:34:13.160 glad he did that. But what troubled me was that once again, he does not specify who he talked to,

00:34:20.680 what their specific defense was. It kind of said,

00:34:23.820 Francis Collins may not have known about some of this funding, even though he's the head of the NIH.

00:34:29.600 And we always say, right, the buck stops with the leader. He is the leader, but the implication was

00:34:34.320 he may not have known. And I spoke to some people and these are good guys. And I like Eric, but I'm

00:34:39.480 like, that is not an acceptable answer. It is not okay to just say maybe, um, they didn't know. Maybe

00:34:46.200 he didn't know. Well, we won't know because they won't talk. So somebody needs to be pressing them.

00:34:51.780 I'm like, I'm going to assume at this point, they're not going to talk to me, but I do kind

00:34:55.460 of want to rally other Christian media, other reporters to go ask them about this. So, um,

00:35:01.620 you know, beyond that average people in the pews, the response has been really wonderful.

00:35:06.660 Um, I've gotten just so many emails of people thanking me saying that it has brought up fruitful

00:35:11.640 discussions at their churches, that they showed it to their pastors and their pastors felt like their

00:35:16.160 eyes were open to some things. And, um, you know, so I just said, I just felt really humbled to be in a

00:35:21.060 position to open up some discussion when it's been so frustrating for all of us to go, where was this

00:35:27.840 debate and, um, this open inquiry before this? Yeah. And you know, one part of Eric's article

00:35:34.940 that I thought was interesting and you can respond to it however you want to, it's okay if you don't

00:35:38.980 necessarily have the answer to it, but I thought it was an interesting question. If a Christian is the

00:35:43.900 head of some kind of secular company, is it okay for a Christian to be the CEO of a secular company?

00:35:50.780 I don't know, like Hulu or Netflix or something like that, where you know that some of the content

00:35:55.620 that is going out, a lot of the content that is going out and a lot of the money that is being

00:35:59.640 spent is not being spent. And the content that is being published is not being published in a way

00:36:04.880 that necessarily glorifies God. Like, is it possible for a Christian to be in that kind of position

00:36:10.340 and without completely endorsing everything that goes on in the company and still try to use their

00:36:17.900 platform to the glory of God? Because maybe that would be the defense of Francis Collins that

00:36:23.520 I'm not even, I'm not saying this is true because I don't believe this, but that he did the best that

00:36:28.140 he could with the platform and the position that he had. And there were things that went on at the

00:36:32.600 NIH that he didn't necessarily have direct control over, or he didn't necessarily agree with,

00:36:39.080 but that's just kind of how Christians have to interact with the public sphere. That's just kind

00:36:43.600 of how it goes. What would your response be to something like that? Because that was kind of what

00:36:47.960 Eric Erickson, I think, was getting at in his article. Well, you know, two things I want to say about

00:36:53.540 that. I can respect that as an argument, but the first thing to know is that that is something of a

00:36:58.820 dodge. Because at least when we talk about the fetal cell research, for instance, Francis Collins

00:37:06.240 is not someone who just had to sort of preside over it and say what he had to say to working

00:37:10.300 government. He has vocally supported fetal tissue research and he has directed record level spending

00:37:17.760 to it. He's the guy at the top of the food chain here. He did that. So I don't think it's possible to

00:37:22.620 say, gosh, you know, we kind of wish that it wasn't doing, you know, that our branch of the government

00:37:28.780 wasn't doing this. No, he has argued for it in a lot of interviews. He's very much on record for that.

00:37:34.260 In fact, he lamented when the Trump administration pulled back funding for some of that kind of

00:37:40.060 research. So I don't think that washes. The same thing goes with the trans research. When you look at

00:37:46.160 the documents that are available and I link to them in my article, he said quite clearly, I am an

00:37:51.880 advocate. I am an ally. I believe in allyship. Now we know that those words have meaning. So when you put

00:37:58.460 that to the initiative and you put your face saying, I am a trans ally, and then you grant funding to that

00:38:04.780 kind of research, I don't think you can hide from it and say, gosh, it's just something that was going

00:38:09.140 on. I didn't necessarily agree with it. Now, also that said, I very rarely use this analogy. And I

00:38:18.340 know that it is a bit dicey, but I don't think when we're talking about that kind of research

00:38:24.660 built on the bodies of aborted babies, that it is too far to say, would you have said that in the

00:38:31.360 Nazi era? Would you have said using the bodies of murdered people is okay if it furthers scientific

00:38:38.380 research? And I think we're all sort of, that takes you back, but that is what we're talking

00:38:42.400 about. We're talking about the bodies of murdered human beings that we're building a research complex

00:38:47.700 on. And is that something that we want as Christians to support and say, well, it's going to

00:38:52.980 happen anyway. I mean, this isn't Hulu. This isn't Coca-Cola putting out some material that, you know,

00:38:58.340 we just kind of want to shield our eyes from. We're talking about an industrial complex furthering

00:39:03.240 murder. Yeah. And I just want to support what you've reported on and what you're saying now.

00:39:07.840 We did an episode on Francis Collins several months ago and something that I found in the

00:39:12.260 Federalist. They reported that Collins's NIH provided nearly $3 million, which you mentioned

00:39:17.440 this earlier, in tax dollars to support a fetal organ harvesting operation by the University

00:39:22.080 of Pittsburgh using human fetal tissue ranging from six to 42 weeks gestation. So 42 weeks for

00:39:29.500 people who don't know, that is full term and then some. So fully formed, we're talking seven,

00:39:34.320 eight pound babies. And then, as you also said, he's not just kind of passively funding this

00:39:41.600 experimentation, human experimentation when it comes to trans research. He had a message,

00:39:49.180 an official message. This is not just the NIH. This is Francis Collins celebrating Pride Month last

00:39:55.600 year. He said, you know, celebrating Pride Month and recognizing the struggle stories and victories of

00:40:01.240 those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and others under the sexual and

00:40:06.040 gender minority umbrella. I applaud the courage and resilience it takes for individuals to live

00:40:10.720 openly and authentically, particularly considering the systemic challenges, discrimination, and even

00:40:15.880 violence that those in other underrepresented groups face all too often. As a white, cisgender,

00:40:22.160 and heterosexual man, this is evangelical hero Francis Collins. I have not had the same experiences,

00:40:28.180 but I am committed to listening. So this is just, I mean, this is queer theory and people know that

00:40:33.160 that's under the umbrella of critical theory. And I mean, okay, even if you said, well, he's a Christian

00:40:39.560 and he doesn't personally, he doesn't want to personally endorse necessarily lifestyles that the

00:40:45.160 Bible doesn't endorse, but he's just a part of this organization. That statement does not read that way

00:40:50.100 at all. That is a full throated endorsement. And on the NIH's website, they actually have a pronoun

00:40:56.980 guide that includes not just like she, her, but like Zay and Zier, all, I mean, the craziest,

00:41:03.320 most absurd stuff. And you would think that as a Christian and as a scientist, as a Christian

00:41:09.140 scientist, not in the, you know, religious sense, but you know what I mean, that you would speak up.

00:41:14.760 I mean, isn't that also what it means to be a Christian in the public sphere, that you speak up

00:41:19.940 against destructive ideologies that are literally and very tangibly hurting the most vulnerable among us?

00:41:26.080 I mean, that seems like that would be his responsibility. And he not only doesn't do that,

00:41:30.220 he fully endorses it. And yet we have Tim Keller and Russell Moore and David French saying that he is

00:41:35.780 a national treasure and a treasure to the church. I don't get it.

00:41:39.480 I don't either. And what's really bothers them to me is I go, and they somehow again and again,

00:41:45.940 don't have to answer for it. And that's what's so frustrating. I go, I don't know. I don't know

00:41:51.380 Russell Moore, for example, his heart motivations, but I know that these things were brought to his

00:41:56.240 attention before he made that statement on Twitter about faithful service. Francis Collins' great

00:42:02.100 faithful service and how God's going to use him next. These things were brought to his attention.

00:42:06.400 So it almost felt to me like a belligerent response, like, no, I'm going to go ahead and

00:42:11.020 praise him. And so these questions were never answered. How can you do that? They've never addressed

00:42:17.220 how, how do you praise someone who has so specifically undermined the biblical idea of

00:42:22.600 male and female and biblical sexual ethics? They have not done that. And again, when you look at

00:42:29.280 the actual initiative that he put out there, like you read from that pride statement, he has a letter

00:42:35.500 at the beginning of that initiative saying that we're announcing this new funding for sexual and

00:42:41.540 gender minorities, uh, that, that this is something that I am putting my face, my name, my signature

00:42:47.500 to as something I'm proud of. And to me, if you're going to platform that person in your pulpits, if

00:42:52.840 you're going to lend him your credibility and your integrity from the people who trust you, you should

00:42:58.160 have to explain how do you rationalize his public positions? Because I hear a lot about him as Daniel

00:43:04.360 in the halls of Babylon. And I'm like, I see a lot of Babylon there. I see no Daniel. I see no

00:43:10.540 refusing to, um, to eat the meat or to participate in their rituals. So I really can't understand it.

00:43:18.340 Yeah. And you know, you and I have talked about, and I've talked about on this show,

00:43:22.020 how much I have appreciated and learned from Tim Keller's work. Like I would say that some of his

00:43:28.720 books, like reason for God were so formative for me in the early years of my faith. And I'm very

00:43:36.900 thankful for that. I don't think that he is, um, obviously he is not a thoughtless person. He's

00:43:42.500 maybe one of the most thoughtful, publicly thoughtful Christians that we have. And so that

00:43:47.740 would be my question, kind of what you just articulated, because I've seen him a few times

00:43:51.940 kind of brush criticisms like this off to the side by saying, well, you can, you can praise people or

00:43:56.900 you can like people. You can be friends with people that you disagree with just because I don't agree

00:44:00.740 with Francis Collins on everything. I'm paraphrasing here. You know, I can still be proud of what he's

00:44:06.620 done at the NIH, but okay. Even if that's true, even if you just see these as slight disagreements,

00:44:12.500 which I would disagree about that these are just slight disagreements. Okay. Why don't you publicly

00:44:17.340 grapple with that for us? Like, why don't you talk about some of the stuff that you don't approve

00:44:22.140 of that your friend, Francis Collins worked in, funded in it and endorsed, and then talk about how

00:44:27.960 you've kind of worked in that friendship and how you've maybe tried to share the gospel and infuse

00:44:32.720 the gospel into the life of Francis Collins. Don't just brush it off to the side. And by the way,

00:44:38.300 you're going to passive aggressively say that John MacArthur is the bad and the ugly, possibly,

00:44:45.220 that's possibly what they were implying, probably. John MacArthur is the bad and the ugly of the COVID

00:44:51.300 response. But this person who endorses all of the anti-biblical things that we just talked about,

00:44:56.640 that is like the national treasure and the person that we should look to as a Christian exemplar.

00:45:02.200 It's crazy coming from Tim Keller, who I know knows better.

00:45:05.820 Well, and what's really bizarre about it to me is that it wasn't just, you know,

00:45:09.280 I don't know that I could rationalize, be like, maybe I could rationalize a little bit of Twitter

00:45:13.740 praise or, you know, good going friend on your retirement. But it wasn't just that. That was kind

00:45:19.920 of the point of the article that they then had him on all of their platforms that they,

00:45:25.860 like I said, lent their credibility and integrity to him and brought him out and introduced him as

00:45:30.960 someone, not just my friend. This isn't my friend, Francis Collins, with whom I have a few disagreements,

00:45:35.560 but as the man you should be listening to in this uniquely troubling time, in this, you know,

00:45:40.980 very confusing time. This is the man with the answers. So that was, you know, sort of the most

00:45:46.660 stunning thing to me is I go, if you're going to present him as that, then you have to be able

00:45:51.600 to defend his record or at least explain why you're willing to listen to him, despite him having

00:45:57.320 such divergent views from almost any normal Bible believer that you would talk to any, any person who

00:46:04.880 is just going to church on Sunday, who's trying to figure out how do I get through this? Well,

00:46:09.600 almost all of them, if you look at polling, if you look at research, you go, they have a very

00:46:13.980 different idea of ethics than Francis Collins. And that has to be addressed.

00:46:18.220 Yeah, I agree with you. And I mean, it just comes down to a question that you ask in your article,

00:46:23.440 because one of the things that Francis Collins said in these interviews into these congregations was

00:46:27.980 that you just have to trust the science and that it's a pastor's job to help their congregants trust

00:46:33.380 the science. But is that a pastor's job? And what does that even mean? I mean, that in itself is a

00:46:38.080 quasi-religious statement. It's a very dogmatic statement that we're just to trust the science.

00:46:42.700 Okay, does trusting the science mean trusting what Francis Collins says about the origins of COVID,

00:46:48.120 about a cloth mask being a life-saving device? Because if we trusted the science, and if that

00:46:53.900 is synonymous with trusting the NIH and the CDC and Dr. Fauci, then that means we've believed a lot

00:47:00.760 of misinformation over the past two years. So why are we to trust the science? And is that even a

00:47:06.000 biblical directive that pastors should be holding onto? To me, that sounds a lot like spiritual

00:47:11.260 manipulation. Well, you know, that was, and as I said, that was kind of what started me down this

00:47:16.860 whole road was the frustration of feeling that, going that everybody has to be on the same page,

00:47:22.680 or you are somehow out of God's will for the church. That was appalling to me. I went,

00:47:28.500 I do have questions. I do have some hesitations. And knowing that I was talking to Christian doctors,

00:47:34.100 pediatric cardiologists on other subjects going, no, this information is not correct. We are also

00:47:40.940 very credentialed. We are also very educated, intelligent scientists, and we don't believe

00:47:47.940 that this is the science. So you're right. That is such a dogmatic statement to say, trust the science

00:47:53.700 because science is not infallible. God is infallible. And so that is why on these issues,

00:47:59.240 you go, where was the Christian liberty? Where was there the moment to say, I don't know,

00:48:04.080 this might be sort of a food sacrifice to idols moment. Can we eat? Can we not eat? Let everybody

00:48:09.640 be convinced in their own mind on this. And let you want to talk about being divisive. Let's not

00:48:14.340 divide over this. Let's let people answer their own master on this. And, and we will continue each of

00:48:20.780 us in our spirits to do what we think is best through prayer, through our own Bible study. And yes,

00:48:25.440 through counsel, but through a multitude of counselors. The problem here was that there

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00:49:59.980 And wow, I just think about, it just makes me so angry when I think about, even if they're not

00:50:07.600 explicitly talking about John MacArthur when they're kind of talking about the bad responses

00:50:14.080 to COVID, the lack of public support from the people that we're talking about, especially when

00:50:21.820 they won in court. And so you can't even argue that they were defying the law because they won.

00:50:28.460 The court said that they were in the right, that they had the right, the John MacArthur's church had

00:50:33.140 the right to continue meeting together and that Gavin Newsom's government was actually wrong in

00:50:37.420 coming after them and trying to punish them for meeting. And the lack of public support for him

00:50:45.040 and encouragement for what he was doing, simply being faithful, even if they disagreed, you know,

00:50:49.860 that's really disappointing. You can say what you want about if you disagree with John MacArthur,

00:50:55.420 I don't, but on a variety of things. But again, I think it comes down to, it seems like for these

00:51:01.640 people that he's not in our club. He's not repeating the same points that we are. We don't like his tone.

00:51:07.420 He's a little bit too rude when he talks about things and he's not as metropolitan,

00:51:11.980 even though he's had a church in LA, a very diverse church, by the way, very ethically and racially

00:51:17.540 diverse church for the past 50 plus years in LA. He's not considered a part of the club. So what he

00:51:25.280 did, it just wasn't posh. It wasn't sophisticated. He didn't have Francis Collins, you know, sitting on

00:51:31.800 stage with him. And to me, it really does seem to come down to that. Like the Davos type elite people

00:51:38.180 who just want control, just like they do in every segment of society. We can talk about the Great

00:51:43.860 Reset and all that, but we won't get into that. It's crazy. Okay. So I want to quickly talk about,

00:51:49.460 I don't want to keep you for too much longer, although I could, we could talk for like,

00:51:53.280 you know, several more hours, I'm sure. But I sent you this article that I'm sure that you've read,

00:51:58.100 this New York Times article called the dissenters trying to save evangelical from evangelicalism from

00:52:06.640 itself by David Brooks, who I don't believe is actually a Christian or a conservative,

00:52:12.220 which is always interesting. You read this article, correct? I did. Yes, of course.

00:52:17.480 Yes. And so let me just sum it up a little bit for people, and then I want to get your take on it. So

00:52:22.640 he says in this article, there have been three big issues that have profoundly divided evangelicals

00:52:28.060 the white evangelical embrace of Donald Trump, sex abuse scandals in evangelical churches and

00:52:32.860 parachurch organizations and attitudes about race relations, especially after the killing of George

00:52:37.280 Floyd. I would actually agree. I would agree that those are three big things that have really divided

00:52:42.800 the church. Of course, where he falls on this is basically the people who are pro-Black Lives Matter

00:52:49.840 and the left wing idea of systemic racism and democratic so-called solutions to systemic racism and the people

00:52:58.460 who are against Donald Trump are really the people who are on the right side of evangelicalism, the right side of

00:53:05.180 history. Again, to me, it comes across as these are the more sophisticated, intelligent, knowledgeable,

00:53:11.420 acceptable people. And Russell Moore is in there, some writers from the Gospel Coalition.

00:53:18.540 And he talks about Kristen Dume, who wrote Jesus and John Wayne, basically talking about the history of

00:53:25.940 white patriarchy and tough guys and how it's marred Christianity. And then on the other side of it,

00:53:32.260 he talks about how terrible people like Albert Moeller and World Magazine are. I write for World Opinions.

00:53:40.600 And so I can see why someone like David Brooks in the New York Times, they don't like it because it's

00:53:46.220 very explicitly conservative Christian. And so that's basically what it is. Like we are the

00:53:53.100 conservative Christians. We're the rubes over here. We don't know anything. We're not really Christian,

00:53:57.260 says the non-Christian from the New York Times. And then these kind of sophisticated intellectuals,

00:54:03.500 the Russell Moores of evangelicalism are on the right side of it. So tell me what you thought about

00:54:07.620 this article. Well, my first reaction, well, you know, it came out about a week after my article,

00:54:14.680 no one would talk to me. And then half the people that I cited in my reporting were cited in this.

00:54:19.740 And, you know, my husband and I were kind of joking. Did I just get subtweeted in the New York

00:54:23.700 Times? Yeah. Because, you know, they didn't address anything I brought up, but it was sort of hailing

00:54:28.500 all the people that I had mentioned and, you know, some very concrete reporting. And I actually

00:54:34.740 happened to have come from World before I went to the Daily Wire. I was the entertainment at World

00:54:40.020 for a number of years and I worked on the daily news podcast at World. So I knew a lot about the

00:54:46.040 ins and outs of what was going on there. And what made me laugh so much reading this article is I went,

00:54:51.420 once again, there is just sort of a broad statement made for which there is no actual specific detail.

00:54:58.980 He said in there that young reporters learned not to pitch stories to Trumpist editors or something to

00:55:06.100 that effect. And look, I worked there. There were no Trump, not one, not one single editor that I would

00:55:12.220 go, oh, that person was very MAGA. That World Magazine. Yeah, not one. Yeah, there may be a couple

00:55:18.680 of the Daily Wire. But yeah, World Magazine, there were none, literally not one. So I read that and my mind

00:55:28.420 just kind of exploded because I went, this is, it's a lie. I don't know how else to put it other than David

00:55:35.280 Brooks is being outright dishonest. Either he doesn't know and he's making an assumption based on something he was

00:55:40.780 told or he's lying. So either way, the information is incorrect and it has now been spread

00:55:47.660 in the New York Times. You want to talk about misinformation. And then I watched these so-called

00:55:53.760 dissenters who are saving evangelicalism post this story all over their social media platforms. And I

00:56:00.980 went, you are right now slandering a news organization with incorrect information. Is anyone going to ask

00:56:07.580 about that? Yeah, because that actually is wrong. That was the wrong thing to do. That is a wrong way to

00:56:14.160 use your platform. And you all just did it. So that was really frustrating to me. And I'm sitting

00:56:18.780 here watching it going, this is one, not a defense of what happened with Francis Collins to say that

00:56:25.300 we're not Trumpists. And that is the frustrating thing that I go, gosh, he's been out of office for

00:56:30.440 over a year. Can we now really talk about the issues we have without referencing Donald Trump?

00:56:36.860 Yeah, no, it doesn't seem like they're able to, but he does talk about that. Okay,

00:56:41.080 it's not essentially Trump. It's something much deeper that's dividing evangelicalism. And that's

00:56:46.540 probably true. Unfortunately, I do think it comes down to progressivism versus conservatism,

00:56:53.280 at least in a way, not completely left versus right or Republican versus Democrat. I don't think it's so

00:56:58.840 simple to categorize our disagreements within evangelical Christianity as that. But it is

00:57:06.760 somewhat. It is whether you take a more progressive, democratic stance on racial issues in the

00:57:13.160 country, or whether you take a more conservative stance on that, of course, from my perspective,

00:57:18.160 a biblical stance on that. Right, right. Or it really does kind of come down to, in my opinion,

00:57:23.040 when it comes to like journalists for the New York Times, who they see as good and bad within

00:57:26.920 Christianity, is whether or not that person votes Democrat. That seems to be what it comes down to,

00:57:32.180 right? Well, and that was my point about saying they make everything about Trump that I go, yeah,

00:57:36.620 he admitted that there were deeper issues, except that in order to sort of slime World Magazine, he

00:57:42.640 boldly lied and said, they're Trumpist editors, that's how you know you can dismiss them. And there

00:57:48.880 aren't, so you can't. So let's go ahead and talk about those deeper issues. And it's very weird to me

00:57:55.580 to read that story and go, we are being told if you are more theologically conservative, if you have

00:58:02.900 more orthodox views on gender roles and sexuality, you are the one who's political. You are the one

00:58:10.060 who's being political. And I go, you're appealing to the New York Times as a defense. Who's being

00:58:17.820 political here? Yeah. Oh my gosh, this is one of my peeves and something that I talk about,

00:58:22.420 talk about a lot. Of course, I mean, I do talk about politics. I'm open about that. That is what

00:58:26.800 this, you know, this is a huge part of what this podcast is about. But if I post something or one

00:58:34.620 of my followers post something about something that Joe Biden does or something about abortion,

00:58:38.640 they're accused of being overly political, of putting the gospel to the side and putting politics

00:58:44.140 first, which of course, that's not what it is. But if someone on the other side posts a story,

00:58:50.680 say they posted that story that turned out to be a false narrative that the Border Patrol agent was

00:58:56.440 whipping migrants. Of course, that wasn't true. If someone reposts that, well, that's not being

00:59:01.100 political. That's not being divisive. That's just standing for what's true. Or certainly you repeat

00:59:05.960 talking points about race and the police in this country, then that's not being divisive. That's not

00:59:11.380 being political. That's just being biblical. Again, all of the accusations of divisiveness and tone

00:59:17.860 always are leveled towards people on the right. Whereas leftism, especially within Christianity,

00:59:24.200 is almost just seen as quirky or is seen as neutral.

00:59:30.320 The defaults. Yeah. Yeah. And I've even noticed among people, and I don't want to name too many

00:59:34.960 names, but people who identify as conservative Christians themselves, they are much more willing

00:59:40.160 to invite more liberal, progressive Christians to on their podcast to do interviews with them to speak

00:59:50.000 at their conferences than they would a Christian who is outspokenly pro-Trump or something like that.

00:59:57.080 Because again, especially I think when it comes to these social justice, racial justice issues,

01:00:02.320 being liberal on those is seen as much more acceptable than being conservative on those.

01:00:08.140 And then an article like this basically just dismisses the other side of the arguments

01:00:12.740 as not Christian, as, you know, whatever it is, unintellectual, unintelligent. Again,

01:00:20.020 just like Francis Collins did, not actually trying to grapple with, well, what is the anti-CRT,

01:00:26.020 anti-social justice side really trying to say? Where are we coming from when we are talking about

01:00:32.140 gender roles, the importance of gender or race or whatever it is, these so-called divisive

01:00:36.540 subjects? Like, what is our actual argument? It seems that too many, including David Brooks,

01:00:42.900 they don't want to grapple with that. There's a lot of really good opinions in world opinion.

01:00:47.320 And like, we are edited very strictly and we have to, we have to support everything we say with

01:00:52.980 research, with, you know, biblical references. If we're making a theological argument, we're not

01:00:58.400 just putting things out there. I would love to see David Brooks and all the people who say that

01:01:01.860 they are grieved over evangelicalism in this article. Well, why don't you grapple with some

01:01:07.400 of the arguments that we're putting forth and let's see, let's see which argument wins. They

01:01:11.820 don't seem to be willing to do that. Yeah. And I can tell you that if that David Brooks editorial

01:01:17.260 went through the editorial process at World, he would have been required to do that. He would have

01:01:21.980 been required to go, okay, who are these Trumpist editors? What is the evidence that they're

01:01:26.220 Trumpist? You need to talk a little bit about Kristen Dumez's views that fall outside of

01:01:31.940 mainstream evangelicalism. And so none of that happens evidently at the New York Times,

01:01:36.880 which I would not expect it to. But, and you know, part of what's frustrating is that

01:01:41.120 not only do they not answer these conservative figures, these theologically conservative,

01:01:46.720 very biblical people who have been sort of defined by politics when I don't think they're

01:01:51.000 political at all. They, they, they just adhere closely to biblical standard, like a John MacArthur

01:01:56.960 are being sidelined. They're being treated as though they're fringe. And that's been really

01:02:01.980 frustrating to me watching a John MacArthur or a Bodie Bauckham or an Owen Strand or people like that.

01:02:07.780 Suddenly they're not respectable to talk about or reference anymore, despite decades in John MacArthur's

01:02:15.240 case, something like 50, 60 years of faithful service. And suddenly he's quarantined over here.

01:02:21.280 He's somebody that, that is not respectable to reference or talk about or engage with his ideas.

01:02:26.960 Um, so that's probably one of the most alarming things to me is going, we're going to treat this

01:02:32.560 person who has, you want to talk about faithful service, forget Francis Collins, look at John

01:02:37.280 MacArthur, that is decades of faithful service. We're not going to engage with his ideas. We're just

01:02:41.640 going to act like we're a little bit embarrassed of him. Well, you know, Megan, if there's anything

01:02:46.240 our society needs more of it's people who are willing to be brave enough to criticize conservative

01:02:51.620 Christians, there just aren't enough people doing that. So we really should applaud people like David

01:02:58.620 Brooks and all of the people that he includes in this article who are just so heroically saving you

01:03:04.560 and I from ourselves. Um, because we, you know, we just don't have any idea what's going on. And so

01:03:09.840 thank you so much to Russell Moore and, and David Brooks for pointing out where we are wrong. We

01:03:17.380 just, we need more people with that kind of courage and gumption that are willing to criticize right

01:03:23.020 wing Christians. We just don't get it enough. Cause there's such a huge cost to pay, right? If you do

01:03:28.940 that, you get praised in the New York times, you get new deals with the Atlantic, you get a plum

01:03:34.940 seats at CNN and, uh, I'm hearing NBC. And so suddenly, yeah, there's, there's a huge cost to

01:03:41.720 pay. And maybe it is a cost. You have to now engage with, um, a lot of establishment media and

01:03:47.220 they love it though. They love it. I wouldn't want to pay that cost. No, I wouldn't. But that's,

01:03:51.840 I feel like that's just the club that they, I, again, I don't know their hearts. It just seems like

01:03:56.320 this is a, an elitist club. And basically my husband and I talk about this a lot that this group

01:04:02.060 kind of that we're talking about really, they're, they're embarrassed. They're embarrassed

01:04:06.360 that people who call themselves Christians aren't as worldly when it comes to, well, I don't want to

01:04:14.420 say that in everything because I know they would argue that, you know, supporting Trump is worldly,

01:04:18.300 but it seems like they're just embarrassed that we can't get on board with some left wing

01:04:23.580 arguments about race and social justice and maybe even gender. Although I would say most of them would

01:04:30.640 call themselves conservative on that. They're really just embarrassed by us. They're embarrassed

01:04:34.860 that we maybe in their mind don't have the same credentials as they do, don't have the same

01:04:40.500 background as they do, aren't writing for the Atlantic and aren't parroting the talking points

01:04:45.520 of the New York times. And they would really rather associate themselves with atheist, anti-Christian

01:04:54.400 writers at the New York times, it seems than fellow Christians who happen to have a different

01:04:58.580 perspective than them on politics. Yeah. And you know, I, you don't want to be just continually

01:05:05.400 critical, but there is a moment when you go, you know, a small thing that happened this week with

01:05:09.540 Tim Keller praising, uh, Stephen Colbert, late night host. Um, you know, he's very crass. He's, um,

01:05:17.200 very left wing. He has been very critical of Christians. And I think it was just hard for a lot of

01:05:23.840 people to understand, okay, Tim Keller, you, you don't ever praise anyone coming from the, um,

01:05:30.980 right side of the political spectrum. And then you hold up and praise Stephen Colbert. So I don't

01:05:36.880 think that the reaction to that moment was so much about him praising Stephen Colbert in that moment.

01:05:43.060 If people felt like over time in recent years that Tim Keller had been open-minded and, um, and,

01:05:50.880 and willing to engage with ideas coming from the more theological conservative, more politically

01:05:57.480 conservative wing, then I think people would not have reacted to that the way that they did. And there

01:06:02.560 was some negative criticism, but I really think it's just because they go, gosh, the punching always

01:06:07.800 comes, um, towards the right. It always goes in that direction. And I, you know, you go, look, it's going

01:06:13.940 to get more embarrassing. It's not going to get less embarrassing to be a believer. So I kind of am in the,

01:06:19.280 sorry to interrupt you. Let me, let me just play that clip of Stephen Colbert. So people can know

01:06:24.240 what we're talking about. And yes, there were a lot of people that we are right now talking about

01:06:28.340 who praise this clip and I'll get your reaction to it. I was wondering, is there any, you know,

01:06:36.540 does your faith in your comedy ever overlap? And does one ever win out?

01:06:43.560 I think ultimately us all being mortal, the faith will win out at the end, but I certainly hope when

01:06:52.020 I get to heaven, Jesus has a sense of humor. So I, a lot of people were praising him for kind of being

01:06:59.800 sophisticated in this answer, which I'm not saying it was bad. I'm not saying I, you know, expected

01:07:04.320 him to lay out the Roman road right there. I don't believe you have to present the entire gospel

01:07:09.220 message when someone asks you about your faith. So, you know, some things that he was saying,

01:07:14.680 he was saying I get, but I was immediately a little skeptical because of the people that I saw

01:07:19.560 praising him, specifically someone like Glennon Doyle. I was like, oh, uh, well, you know, I just,

01:07:27.620 if people like that are saying that this was a great gospel moment, I'm just not so sure that this is

01:07:34.900 something that we want to elevate because honestly there wasn't very much gospel in it. It might,

01:07:39.620 it was an interesting point, but it, maybe it sounded kind of eloquent, but I don't know. I'm

01:07:47.260 not sure if I walked away from that understanding anymore about the gospel or what Stephen Colbert

01:07:51.440 thinks about the gospel. Right. And I think that was kind of part of it. And, you know, it's been a

01:07:56.260 couple of days since I saw it, but he said something about, you know, death doesn't win or, you know,

01:08:00.420 something about death. And it was fine. I mean, you know, you go, take that isolated moment for

01:08:05.380 what it was. It was fine, but it didn't make me go, oh, Stephen Colbert is this deep intellectual

01:08:11.760 Christian thinker that we should all look to. It was more Stephen Colbert is a, um, left-wing

01:08:20.060 entertainment elite. And so we're looking for an opportunity to praise him for something.

01:08:25.480 And I went, why are we doing that? Why do we look for an opportunity to praise someone

01:08:30.060 who everything else about their public persona does not affirm biblical ideology, biblical sexual

01:08:38.960 ethics, biblical outlook on just about anything. So it just seemed like this sort of odd desperation

01:08:44.620 to go, is there some, oh, there's a moment, there's a moment with a left-wing personality that we can

01:08:49.080 praise. And I guess I just wonder, what is that impulse? Why do you feel the need to do that?

01:08:53.660 And again, I think if it were coming from a place where, you know, maybe Tim Keller goes through and

01:09:00.080 praises all sorts of public figures for all sorts of statements about the gospel, I, people might've

01:09:07.060 responded differently, but it feels like how often does Tim Keller cite a celebrity and would he praise,

01:09:14.400 say, I don't know, um, a Matt Walsh or a Ben Shapiro? I would love to see that.

01:09:20.000 Yeah, me too. And yeah, I, I don't want to put like, I don't want to hold Stephen Colbert to too

01:09:27.280 high of a standard and say that no one can agree with or praise, um, what he said. But again, I think

01:09:33.220 it's the disparity in who is lifted up by someone like Tim Keller and who is not. And what counts as,

01:09:43.900 what does count as like a, uh, a good witness in secular society as a Christian? Is it Stephen

01:09:50.860 Colbert? Like, is he the person who is consistently, you know, coming out and representing Christ and

01:09:58.100 the gospel? I, not even just because he's on the left, I would simply say no. I mean, did he,

01:10:03.840 and I'm not saying that he should have, but did Tim Keller or any of these people say,

01:10:07.660 wow, you know, Kanye West coming out with this gospel album. That's just like, so this is how you

01:10:13.180 become a Christian witness in society. No. And maybe you could say that the left and the right

01:10:18.220 both do this. Like maybe the right shouldn't have elevated Kanye West the way that they did.

01:10:22.100 Although I think at, you know, one point we thought this is real repentance and regeneration and all of

01:10:26.560 that. But I do think that on the right and the left, we do both have a tendency to be like,

01:10:31.740 oh, this person that we like, we want them to be a Christian so badly. And if they say one thing,

01:10:36.520 they were like, oh, yes, yes, yes. They know the gospel when, you know, maybe they don't. So to me,

01:10:40.960 this was an example of that happening on the left side. I'm sure it happens on the right as well. So

01:10:46.180 maybe just something that we all need to be careful of. All right. That's all I have. Do you

01:10:51.020 have any more thoughts? Any more thoughts to add to any of this? And where can people find you and

01:10:55.880 read and share your story and all that good stuff? Well, you actually did have one more thought

01:11:00.420 on the Stephen Colbert thing. And it was more that Tim Keller and everyone kind of in pushing back

01:11:05.000 against the reaction. We're going, well, look at how Paul was at Mars Hill. Look at him speaking to

01:11:10.600 the Athenians. And I'm like, yeah, but Stephen Colbert does not have the track record as a Paul

01:11:16.360 where you go now look at everything else he's saying. Because in this instant, you'd have to go,

01:11:22.300 okay, don't look at anything else he's saying. Only look at that one thing. So I was a little like,

01:11:27.180 okay, let's not pretend like Stephen Colbert is Paul. So anyway.

01:11:31.640 Not many people are, to be fair. Not many people are. But again, it's a part of this club. It's a

01:11:36.700 part of this elitist club, it seems like, that that kind of gives you some points. Unfortunately,

01:11:42.840 I think it gives you some points in Big Eva, too. And that's a shame. And I'm just very thankful for

01:11:48.860 your reporting. I know that this is kind of niche, but there are a lot of people out there who care

01:11:53.980 about this. There's a lot of evangelicals who are interested in this. And despite what David Brooks

01:11:58.640 says, people will continue to read you, people will continue to read world opinions,

01:12:02.520 because there's a need, there's a desire for that, there's demand for it. And we're going to keep

01:12:08.960 trying to meet that demand. So thank you for doing your part in that. Where can people find you?

01:12:14.520 Absolutely. Well, you can find me at The Daily Wire. I've got some more reporting coming up. And

01:12:19.800 we also have a great, very different from Allie Beth's podcast, a daily news podcast called Morning Wire.

01:12:25.920 And I do a couple segments on there a week. So if you haven't subscribed to Morning Wire, it's quick,

01:12:31.520 15 minutes, in and out, news you need to know. So find me there.

01:12:35.540 Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.

01:12:39.720 Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you elevating the story and talking about it,

01:12:43.460 because we need to be talking about it.

01:12:45.840 Yes, for sure. Thank you so much.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 08, 2022

Ep 560 ｜ How Tim Keller & Russell Moore Became Mouthpieces for Masks & Vaccines ｜ Guest： Megan Basham

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