Have Evangelicals Been Betrayed on Immigration？ ｜ Guest： Megan Basham ｜ 5⧸20⧸24
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, The Daily Wire's Meghan Bashman joins me to discuss why evangelicals are so often out of step with the rest of the country on immigration and other issues, and why the leadership in the church seems to be even less so.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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I am Oren McIntyre, and I've got a stream with a great guest
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So a lot of people have noticed that no matter how much
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I think the average church asks for immigration to stop,
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it seems like the church leadership is often out of step.
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And of course, evangelical leaders often also seem obsessed with the idea of facilitating
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open borders, even though their church members are often opposed to it.
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I wanted to dive a little bit into the politics and the infrastructure that is often used to
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facilitate illegal immigration and other left-wing priorities, even though the majority of Christians
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So joining me to do that today is The Daily Wire's Megan Bashman.
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You're actually writing a larger book about this, which we'll talk about at a later time.
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But I wanted to have you on because I know that you delve into much of this.
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And I'm somebody, obviously, who's paying attention to politics at a pretty regular basis.
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But it can be a lot to focus on what's going on with the church and the different organizations,
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the NGOs, everything, all the moving pieces involved with that.
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Because at this point, these massive denominations and organizations have in many ways become
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And it can be difficult to tell what kind of movements and who's pushing back against
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who and what direction kind of the zeitgeist is taking it.
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But I think the good place to start before we kind of get into anything else is why does
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it feel like there's this disconnect between leadership and the average churchgoer, especially
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I think most evangelicals are compassionate towards illegal immigrants.
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They understand why they would come across the border.
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They don't want them to be hurt or anything like that.
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But they also feel a sense of this is my country.
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And at the end of the day, while these might be Christians and brothers and sisters, that
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doesn't entitle them to come into my home and have access to the services that are paid
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Why does there seem to be a disconnect between them and the leadership?
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Because there is a massive disconnect between them and the leadership.
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And a lot of that was very deliberately orchestrated.
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So, you know, I mean, I think we can talk about to a certain degree that it's kind of the
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respectable establishment position to take to be pro pathways to citizenship and things
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I mean, obviously, we know that's chamber of commerce, elite republicanism.
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So I think there's certainly a certain level of wanting to align with that when you are
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upwardly aspirational and you want to be seen as being a part of that white glove crowd.
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But then there's also a very deliberate effort that happened here.
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And I always kind of want to start these conversations by telling people who aren't religious or who
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are kind of nominally Christian, but maybe they're not very involved in a church.
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Because it's important to know why you care about the evangelicals, even if you're not
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one of them or, you know, you don't are particularly active in your church.
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And it's because they are around 32 percent of the electorate and they are well known as
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The Atlantic has rightly called them America's most powerful voting bloc.
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So I would say that, you know, in decades past, there was something of a really strong
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oppositional position that the left took towards evangelicals.
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And that shifted around 10 years ago when you started to see some of these big left wing
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foundations say, OK, instead of opposing them, how do we start to co-opt them?
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And I mean, you can see in organizations like George Soros's Open Society Foundation, his director
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of U.S. programs at that time, a guy named Bill Vandenberg, actually writes in a memo to
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other principals in that organization for U.S. programs, hey, we're not going to move our
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legislative priorities down the field if we don't find a way to engage religious Americans.
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So we really have to rethink our tactics about how we approach them.
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So I would say that was where you really started to see this was right around 2012, 2013 with
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And at that point, you saw major left wing secular foundations like Open Society, like
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the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Tides Foundation, all start kind of pouring money
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into organizations that were working with what I would call evangelical front groups.
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So the National Immigration Forum is one of the largest and best known.
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But what they specifically did was create a front group called the Evangelical Immigration
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And they brought in a whole bunch of religious leaders to affect essentially trickle down
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So, hey, if all of our big religious leaders are for this, then that's the Christian thing
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We better get on board with that position as well.
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Yeah, I definitely want to get into this subversion, subversive aspect, because it's very clear,
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like you said, that that these people still hate Christians like the left is very clear
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about, you know, that that the white evangelical Christian is the worst thing they could possibly
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It's that, you know, it's it is Satan incarnate for them or whatever the atheist version of
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And so, like, these are people that clearly hate, but they also have gone out of their way
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to slowly infiltrate these organizations and sway opinion.
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And I want to talk about that shift and how they're playing both sides of that.
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And before we dive right back into it, guys, I do want to remind you that we are coming
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So, Megan, you were talking about the subversive aspect, right?
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A lot of evangelicals, I think, instinctually understand, again, that compassion towards
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the immigrant, but also understand that there has to be rule of law.
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There has to be a way to go ahead and limit and vet who's coming in for the safety, security,
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But it does feel like there has been a very concerted effort.
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And as you laid out there at the beginning, there are these front groups that have been
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It also, it seems that there have been a large number of NGOs that are being used.
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So it's not just that they're influencing church leadership, you know, and they're not
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just, okay, we're going to gather these people together.
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We're going to kind of give them this credential and use that to influence the opinion of the
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But there's also these large organizations that are funneling the time effort, the ministry
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dollars of evangelical Christians, and they're directly going to undermine border security and
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make sure that illegal immigrants make the trip across.
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And I think it's important also to note that this is all kind of incestuous.
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So if you take a group like World Relief, one of their vice presidents of communications
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also sits on the board, I think, of evangelical immigration table.
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He's like their national director, this guy, Matthew Sorens.
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So you see them sitting on the one side, okay, we're working for this NGO, which is getting
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tens of millions of dollars from the federal government to help facilitate illegal immigration.
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I would say, you know, what they do is they sort of help people claim asylee status.
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And we know that that's become a cute little game that if you can just get across the border,
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And at that point, they argue, well, you're not an illegal immigrant because you may have
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crossed the border illegally, but you claimed asylum.
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So now you're here legally because you're waiting to be processed.
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So at the same time that these guys get, you know, huge contracts and grants from the
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federal government, they're also sitting on the boards of these organizations that, and
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I do want to be specific because you brought this up, that it's not just about ministering
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to illegal immigrants or any immigrants who happen to come here.
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So you don't see them releasing curriculum into churches to say, you know, here's how to
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help people on the ground who may need a job or, you know, may need clothing or food or
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What they do is try to teach church members how to lobby for legislation.
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So what they do, and then you're seeing them on both sides of the border.
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And I think it's also important to know that they don't always know, I think, some of the
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heads of these organizations, like it was interesting to look at Samaritan's Purse and
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And I watched him give an interview, I think it was on News Nation, where he said, hey,
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we don't have anything to do with this UN program that is passing out debit cards to
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people on their way from like Venezuela across the Darien Gap.
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And I actually asked some experts, hey, listen, is it possible that Franklin Graham didn't
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know that his organization was involved with that because it has so many tentacles into
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And I was told, yeah, it's absolutely possible.
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A lot of times people really don't know how deep the tentacles go, and they don't always
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know all the ways that they're partnering, either with the federal government or with the
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UN or with some of these left-wing foundations.
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Yeah, I think it's really important for people to understand that, like you said, there are plenty
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of people who are probably acting in good faith who do want to help people out, and they simply
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don't understand the extent or how complicit they're being in different steps of this process.
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The need of our ruling class to just continuously move people into the United States, it seems
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And they are more than willing to involve well-meaning organizations that otherwise would be used
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to go ahead and better people here in the United States care to administer to the people
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here in order to go ahead and subvert the laws of the United States.
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And I think that a lot of the guys, you know, I've seen church ministries have been around
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You know, people, oh, okay, we're packing lunches, we're preparing, you know, to help
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And then they find out halfway through the process, well, half of this is going to natural disaster
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But the other half is going to people who have been brought across the border by coyotes.
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And yeah, those people, you know, obviously they're in a need, but you're actively facilitating
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a process of human trafficking by delivering, you know, material to these people.
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A lot of the, this is like in Africa where the foreign aid goes there, right?
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No, you're actually just facilitating a dictatorship.
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None of this is going to the people that this is just allowing the guys who otherwise might
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have to feed their people, might have to take care of them to take all of the money that
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they would otherwise use to take, to care for the starving people and recirculate it
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back into their dictatorship, buy more arms, buy, you know, whatever, sell the medicine
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And this is the kind of thing that happens with a lot of these organizations.
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They're trying to take care of people who otherwise might be starving or, you know, but
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wouldn't, would might not have a meal or medical care.
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And what they end up doing is actually just being a substitution.
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They're just subsidizing the care for these people who otherwise would probably not come
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across the border or not be able to because they have access to that care once they're
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And let's be clear that in a lot of times, it's not that they're in any particular danger
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or that they would not be able to pursue a good life in somewhere like South America.
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So if I can get to the United States, I would rather do that.
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So, I mean, I think there's this perception that we're talking about people who are in
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I mean, it's important to look at what is the return on investment here.
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And you can, I think the estimate has been something like you can help 10 times as many
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people on the ground in those countries as you can bringing someone here.
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So it would actually be a lot more effective as far as altruism goes to say, let's minister
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to and help those people in their countries rather than trying to get them across the
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But I also don't want to be like too charitable to some of these groups because at one time,
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But over time, when those big government grants keep coming, your purpose becomes to continue
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And so now you're just sort of a lobbying arm for ensuring that you have a reason to
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And so they are importing, you know, new voters, new workers.
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I mean, this is very much chamber of commerce policy.
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The National Immigration Forum is pretty open about the fact that we are here to help create
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We know that it's not good for a lot of our neighbors.
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And yet it's all brought in under the rubric of Christians have to support this to love
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your neighbor, even though in so many cases, it's actually harmful to their actual neighbors
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Because this is something I hear all the time from people is like, well, you know, I heard
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And so therefore, I can't prefer the people close to me like I can't like I have to treat,
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you know, an illegal immigrant exactly the same way and prioritize them at the same way
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And I think that's a really, really dangerous understanding of Christian teaching.
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I don't think that's the indication at all of the implication at all.
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And when you do this, not only are I think you, you know, subverting the teachings of Christ,
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you're also opening yourself up to be taken advantage of by some of the worst people in
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You have to understand, like you said, that the commission is first to your own nation
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It's to you take care of your neighbor and then you take care of others.
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You don't skip over the people next to you and their well-being in the hope of caring
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for someone who has been brought in illegally, violating your laws in a very dangerous
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You know, there was a character in, I can't remember which Charles Dickens novel it is
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off the top of my head, but it's a mother who has a whole bunch of children and she entirely
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neglects her children in order to do all this missions work that makes her feel really good
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And the joke that Dickens makes throughout it is this woman views herself as so charitable
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because she's involved in all this church missions work and yet her children are struggling
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And I think that's what we see right now from our government.
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And it's also really important to go, okay, Christ's command to love your neighbor or
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to act as the good Samaritan was not a government policy.
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It's not saying this is how the government, the federal government needs to employ its immigration
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And so when we see that, that's kind of why I like to emphasize for people, when you dive
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into these organizations like the evangelical immigration table, you need to know that that's
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They're not just seeing someone suffering on the side of the road and saying, hey, we should
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Because I think any Christian sees that and goes, yeah, I agree with that.
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If I see someone who crosses my path that is suffering, I'm going to help them.
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But it doesn't mean that we now create a mechanism for suffering in my path.
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And it also doesn't mean that I am obligated to hurt other neighbors to help that neighbor.
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And when they do that, they're not actually giving food to that person there either, because
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Their explicit purpose is to lobby for legislation.
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And that's very different than just ministering.
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And it's also very different than spreading the gospel, because let's be very clear, when
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you have a group like, say, World Relief or any of these other religious NGOs, they sometimes
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very carefully in their language kind of suggest to the people who are getting involved with
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this work or who are giving money to their work, we're spreading the gospel of Christ.
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So when they're bringing people in at the border and helping them get resettled, they're
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not telling them about Jesus because they're not allowed to do that.
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I like the phrase, the mechanism of bringing suffering into my path.
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I think that's an important one for people to keep in mind as they're thinking about these
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So you talked about how the government grants necessarily shift the way these institutions
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structure themselves and their incentive structure.
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This is, I don't know if you're familiar with conquest laws, but that absolutely deftails
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into that natural leftward pull of organizations.
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I wonder then, a lot of people have been talking about, of course, Christian nationalism, and
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I'm sympathetic to many of the aims of Christian nationalism, though I have some problems with
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philosophically and just rhetorically with the title.
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But I wonder if they don't understand maybe the consequences then of a structuring where the
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government is working as hand in hand with these organizations.
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Is that a cautionary tale or is it simply the orientation of the government where if the
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government was already operating under the understanding of the good of the people and the true Christian
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good, would they just be a helpful partner to Christian organizations or should we be very
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careful about the way that we kind of pair government funding with Christian organizations
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Well, I think any time that you're tying government funding to a religious organization, the religious
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organization needs to watch its back for what's going to be required of it eventually, because
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we have seen this right with religious schools is suddenly, you know, you accept some type of even
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government loans for students who attend your schools, it now thinks it gets a right to say
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who you can admit and who you hire and what Title VII, Title IX, all other kinds of regulations
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So there's no, the federal government doesn't give you money and then just back away and say,
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do your thing, you know, we're just here to fund you a little bit.
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And so, yes, one, I do think that that is always a danger if you're going to take money
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There is the fact that when you take that money, your mission is by nature going to drift.
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But for some reason, that's a Christian nationalism, if you want to call it that, that they're okay
00:21:40.300
So we're okay with saying these religious organizations are going to lobby for policy specifically.
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Let's take something like the Southern Baptist Convention, which I think represents by some
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estimates up to 5% of the population, they have a lobbying arm that at the same time that
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it's out saying, hey, Christian nationalism is really dangerous and you need to look out
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for these people who are saying, how do we bring our morals to bear on questions like,
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But when it's things like what we do about immigration, then we have a biblical mandate
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So there, I mean, there's an obvious hypocrisy there.
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And I don't quite understand how they get around that.
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And I don't understand how I see guys like former ERLC head Russell Moore, who's now the
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I don't get how he appears in a Rob Reiner movie warning about Christian nationalism, but
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at the same time takes a leadership role in organizations like the Evangelical Immigration
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Table saying, because of our Christian morals, we have to lobby our legislators to pass this
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And it's on issues that are not nearly as clear, right?
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Something like how do we handle our border policies is very biblically debatable.
00:23:09.060
It's almost like his application of when Christians should care about politics is just aligned
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with power and has nothing to do with, you know, with the understanding of what the Bible
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actually says about a biblical nation in the way that it would be influenced when making
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So, uh, the Pope recently came out, uh, and, uh, said, and every time I say something,
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the Pope says, uh, I will eventually have a bunch of Catholics screaming, like the media
00:23:38.280
That's not what he said, but I'm pretty sure this is what he said, guys.
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So I'm just going to go ahead and broach this topic.
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Uh, you know, he, he said that, uh, the closing the border was terrible that you could, you can't
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He said, once they're here, you can decide whether or not they, they should be here and
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But he said to, to, to close the border to, to illegal immigrants was, was inhumane.
00:24:00.640
And I wonder if this is not a, a constant trick that we play.
00:24:07.560
I don't know if Pope Francis understands the mechanical problem that he's, he's kind of
00:24:18.720
Uh, and, and when you have a, uh, you know, someone, as you already said, when they, after
00:24:23.840
they cross in, once they're in the system, sending them back becomes a thousand times
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The, the physical crossing of the border, once that's done, 90% of the work is done because
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they know that they're going to be able to apply for asylum.
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There's going to be a million people there to subvert the system.
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Is it that Christians generally, or, or missing Christian leaders just don't understand the
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manipulation of the procedural outcomes that ensures this process will eventually move
00:24:50.460
in the favor of illegal immigration, or are they actually counting on that and just selling
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it to their constituents or their, their parishioners as he, you know, Oh, it's, it's not a big
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You know, once, once they get here, we can just turn them around.
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Um, I mean, I don't think, I don't buy into the idea that anyone's so naive.
00:25:08.540
I don't really even think the Pope is that naive that, Oh, you know, it's just let them
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in and then we can sort it out once they're here.
00:25:14.500
I mean, everyone knows it doesn't work that way.
00:25:16.340
Essentially what we eventually have is that, you know, the Reagan deal that we made.
00:25:21.460
Well, okay, we're just going to legalize them just this one more time.
00:25:23.960
And then 10, 20, 30 years down the road, we're getting, Hey, can we just gang of eight
00:25:29.700
And we get the Lankford bill 10 years down the road, one more time.
00:25:33.500
And I think people caught wise to that, which is why you have the evangelical base opposing
00:25:39.240
And that's why there's been this, something of an astroturf effort to try to convince them
00:25:47.120
Now it's a Christian mandate that you have to support this.
00:25:52.860
When I look at the guys who are the religious leaders of this, um, I think there's some who
00:25:58.640
just go with it because, Hey, all my pastor friends and, you know, big Christian book author
00:26:06.720
I do see that, but I think the guys who are leading these organizations who, you know,
00:26:12.180
sit on the boards, who are very well known to, to be the faces of this effort, someone
00:26:20.940
Now a guy named Brent Leatherwood, who's running the ERLC, um, Shirley Hoogstra of the council
00:26:28.260
They know, I really have a hard time after everything that I've seen, believing that they don't
00:26:32.500
understand what they're doing because they are so specifically pushing that legislation.
00:26:38.400
And then if you go back and you look at, okay, there is no legal separation between the left
00:26:44.540
wing national immigration forum and the evangelical immigration table.
00:26:48.740
As far as we can tell, they are legally the same entity.
00:26:54.260
And as I look into all of their corporate records, nothing seems to have changed.
00:26:58.380
So they seem to still be the same organization.
00:27:00.760
So they certainly know that they're a part of a left wing organization.
00:27:04.600
They certainly know what that organization's aims are and why the national immigration forum
00:27:13.400
I mean, they've been very clear that they partner with the chamber of commerce and some of these
00:27:19.760
So I don't believe that they're so naive that they don't know that.
00:27:22.740
And then there's also the fact that look, they know who supports them.
00:27:26.620
I mean, they know that they're taking money from La Raza, from Rockefeller, from Soros,
00:27:33.760
I mean, these are the organization that fund the national immigration forum.
00:27:38.020
So why would the evangelical table think that the national immigration forum has so much
00:27:43.880
interest in forming this body and getting their materials out to churches?
00:27:47.880
I mean, they, you know, they've created whole campaigns on welcoming the stranger and putting
00:27:53.120
out, uh, radio ads and church curriculum and things like that.
00:27:56.760
So, you know, the guys at the top of this, it's clearly very orchestrated and it's clearly
00:28:03.440
When I was a kid, uh, obviously the media has always been against Christians or at least
00:28:11.320
has been for, for my entire life and they made it very, it was very easy for them to, to kind
00:28:18.720
of show the religious right as this big, big bad guy, right.
00:28:21.640
That wielded all this power, had all this influence and they put out all these propaganda
00:28:26.760
films and TV shows and things about people fighting the censorship of the religious right.
00:28:32.880
And, you know, I think that over time, you know, it's been come very clearly that if anything,
00:28:37.320
the ridges for this, right, really undersold the danger of the slippery slope and where
00:28:43.120
So obviously on the issues of the religious right, uh, was, was correct pretty much a
00:28:48.120
thousand percent, um, if anything, probably too timid about that.
00:28:52.000
But the confusing thing is that what, you know, they were sold as this big cultural force
00:29:00.540
It's very clear that in the last like 10 years or so, like you said, the entire leadership has
00:29:08.640
It's, it feels like, and I wonder, do you feel like this was always a paper tiger?
00:29:13.160
Was the religious right ever really in opposition to the powers that be?
00:29:19.120
And if so, how did they so quickly get subverted and turned into this left-wing organization?
00:29:24.260
Because it feels like consistently what we see is that Christians are simply just not
00:29:28.920
able, especially conservative Christians are not able to maintain control of their own
00:29:33.900
They just are continuously subverted with very minimal effort.
00:29:38.080
And I just wonder if that was always the case and it was just held up as a paper tiger,
00:29:41.900
or if there was something that particularly, uh, kind of shook up the leadership that allowed
00:29:46.660
for this quick entryism into, uh, Christian organizations to turn them into the kind of
00:29:53.060
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00:30:22.920
Well, you know, I mean, I might disagree a little bit just as far as the rank and file
00:30:28.560
go, because they have been pretty effective at batting back immigration, um, legislation
00:30:33.740
and, and seeing those bills that, for example, the gang of eight, the Lankford bill.
00:30:38.400
I mean, when you look at what they were told, um, if you look at the legislators, like, I think
00:30:43.840
Lankford really thought like he had the backing because you have groups like the evangelical,
00:30:47.980
they put out polling, they're like, oh, we commissioned this polling.
00:30:51.180
And this polling shows all the evangelicals really want, um, this kind of reform.
00:30:58.120
So then you have a guy like Lankford who partners with Schumer and goes forward to try to put
00:31:02.240
this bill and he gets smacked right in the face with it and seems shocked that it happened.
00:31:06.140
And you saw the exact same thing happened 10 years ago with the McCain bill.
00:31:11.540
Like they all seemed really surprised because the evangelical leadership told them, no, no,
00:31:18.840
Christianity today runs headlines saying this evangelical immigration table commissioned a
00:31:24.140
poll shows that evangelicals want these policies, but they're the largest constituency of the GOP
00:31:32.880
And Lankford has to slink away, you know, having had his head handed to him.
00:31:37.780
And so I think on a certain level, they have been effective at that, at specific legislation.
00:31:44.380
So it feels like they lose a lot of cultural battles and then win some legislative battles.
00:31:49.080
And then the bureaucratic state finds a way to get around it anyway.
00:31:52.120
And that's kind of see again and again, um, as far as the leadership.
00:31:58.760
One, I think there is a perpetual, um, I'm trying to think how to charitably put it, but
00:32:04.840
there there's always sort of a chip on the evangelical shoulder that we are not the intellectuals and
00:32:09.740
the blue bloods that you see from this other kind of power base in Washington.
00:32:14.860
And maybe there's just always, um, a real flattery offensive that they're just so grateful to be at
00:32:21.880
Like when you see Rick Warren running out touting that he got invited to Davos or, you know,
00:32:28.180
the, um, council of foreign relations has included him.
00:32:31.260
There always just seems to be this gratitude that they get to be at the table.
00:32:35.320
And so I think that that's part of it is that then you start to amass, um, you look at somebody
00:32:40.000
like Russell Moore, well, now he's a Trinity forum fellow.
00:32:44.480
And it is this very champagne ministry kind of thing where now they're rubbing shoulders.
00:32:49.120
You know, these are guys who, you know, come from red, red States and they've been called
00:32:55.460
And suddenly they're being seen as real intellectuals and they're being taken seriously.
00:32:58.820
And so I think that is a heady elixir for them.
00:33:01.480
Um, and then I also think that there are some transactional, explicitly transactional things
00:33:07.500
happening where, Hey, we're going to give you a job as the head of this organization.
00:33:11.780
And as you're moving up, you're going to reap some pretty big rewards, not just, you know,
00:33:16.420
a salary as the head of something, but also, um, book sales.
00:33:24.600
You've got new speaking and conference engagements that you didn't have before.
00:33:30.980
And it's just a way of capturing, uh, these individuals and look, this isn't a secret
00:33:36.300
This isn't like me saying, this is kind of my theory about what's going on here.
00:33:40.640
You can actually look at something like, um, new America, which is a think tank that is
00:33:46.300
partially Soros funded and all the other, um, usual suspects fund this group.
00:33:52.820
They are left-wing and they're like, how do we capture the evangelicals?
00:33:57.760
This is their approach that, Hey, we're going to sort of wine and dine and flatter them and
00:34:05.060
And they call it the rent and evangelical model built after the rent, a general model.
00:34:10.020
We're going to co-opt one of them and send them out onto all the TV shows.
00:34:14.000
And I don't even know, and I'll stop after this cause I don't want to ramble, but I don't
00:34:18.700
even know that the evangelical base is their ultimate audience.
00:34:23.520
I think they're just trying to convince in many cases, a Lankford or a Mike Johnson or
00:34:30.560
Hey, we're going to cover you and we're going to make sure you have the ground level support
00:34:37.100
Um, so, you know, to a certain extent, it's almost like if we can just get the ball that
00:34:42.220
far down the field, then we can maybe get close enough to kick this goal and keep the
00:34:46.740
fans in the stands from running down onto the field and tackling us.
00:34:54.720
And of course this, you know, immigration is our focus here, but this could just wildly
00:35:02.000
It seems like, you know, obviously we had a wasp aristocracy in the United States for
00:35:10.940
This is more or less how we ended up, uh, you know, kind of with the culture that we had
00:35:15.900
also informed many of our immigration policies and, and, and how we wanted America to be formed
00:35:21.580
for a long time, but kind of post the Ellis Island swing.
00:35:25.900
It feels like while the wasps waned in their power, in many ways, it felt like they handed
00:35:34.640
And evangelicals became probably the more, uh, energetic, um, uh, you know, kind of, uh,
00:35:44.540
They never captured the status-making institutions that went along with that shift.
00:35:50.380
And demographically we saw, you know, Catholicism and, and, and others really kind of come in
00:35:58.240
And so now the Supreme court, you know, try getting a, you know, evangelical Christian on
00:36:04.380
Uh, you don't, you don't see a lot of that anymore.
00:36:06.740
And just in general, you never see the evangelicals actually capture these institutions that confer
00:36:14.240
And so when you have an evangelical leader who wants to feel like they're plugged in,
00:36:19.600
wants to feel like they're on the ascent part of the ruling class, they have to come,
00:36:23.860
like you said, kind of begging hat in hand to someone else, uh, some other force, some
00:36:28.380
other cultural force in order to have those benefits conferred onto them.
00:36:33.680
The fact that, that evangelicals never ascended to the, those halls of power in the same way
00:36:38.880
as to why it was easy to shift the opinions of at least the leadership class inside the
00:36:46.700
I mean, I definitely think that is a part of it.
00:36:48.720
And I also think though, you do have that conquest law that they do establish institutions
00:36:54.040
that over time do become prestigious and well-recognized.
00:36:58.560
And then as soon as they start to make that turn, you just see the same old leftist capture
00:37:03.760
Um, they become attractive enough that the young intellectuals who, you know, maybe grew
00:37:08.820
up evangelical, but have something of a despising my church back home thing and wanting to distance
00:37:13.720
themselves from the rabble that they grew up with, um, start to take these organizations
00:37:19.040
I mean, if you look at something like, if you're familiar with the Trinity forum, which
00:37:22.360
has now become an explicitly never Trump think tank, but this think tank that is, you
00:37:28.980
know, now traveling in those blue blood circles did not start out that way.
00:37:33.440
Oz Guinness founded it, I think in the nineties and, you know, he is an intellectual, but he
00:37:40.420
was a true Christian intellectual that really did try to keep it separate from politics.
00:37:44.840
It was about higher things and he defines himself as evangelical.
00:37:49.760
And now you look at what Trinity forum has become since Oz Guinness stepped down.
00:37:54.620
It was like immediately, um, the former, I think she was the speech writer to Laura Bush
00:37:59.200
came in or chief of staff to Laura Bush came in and it became sort of an extension of this
00:38:07.540
And that entire organization was entirely co-opted and you see something very similar with Christianity
00:38:14.180
So yes, I think there is a desire to be in those organizations to say, if we can get a seat at
00:38:21.920
those tables, then we also are prestigious and elite and respected, but they also sort
00:38:26.940
of serve up the organizations that we already have.
00:38:29.540
So when we do start to build one, they kind of give them away when they get the chance.
00:38:36.480
I don't think anybody looks at Billy Graham as a particular elitist.
00:38:40.100
And yet you look at what's happened to that magazine today.
00:38:42.740
It is the voice of, um, it's almost mainline now in its voice, right?
00:38:48.240
So it's almost like when you see the things that they write about and the preoccupations,
00:38:52.720
they keep a very, very almost like lip service tone as far as sexual morality, but they write
00:39:03.800
They certainly don't get involved on the ground level.
00:39:06.720
Um, red state bills, some of the executive power that's being wielded, they find that icky.
00:39:11.840
So they write a lot of articles about pluralism and things of that nature.
00:39:16.400
And it's almost like when we do have a successful organization, those guys come in and they give
00:39:21.960
So I want to ask you this and I, to be fair, I have an opinion because I wrote a book on
00:39:26.380
it, but I want to float this to you since this is relevant to our current question.
00:39:30.380
My theory is that the enemy is scale and that actually you cannot organize meaningfully, uh,
00:39:37.580
certain types of organizations beyond a particular point without them being
00:39:41.820
subverted and becoming institutionally left wing.
00:39:44.780
And I think this is why, especially when it comes to Christianity, we've seen this huge
00:39:50.060
You can't go to a church beyond a couple hundred members and not notice that all of a sudden
00:39:55.320
the people in charge, uh, look a lot more like CEOs than they do ministers that everybody
00:40:02.760
And, you know, their, their focus from, uh, the preaching of God's word and the application
00:40:07.460
of it practically to individual people into like figuring out, you know, what kind of,
00:40:13.080
uh, spreadsheet will best, uh, explain the amount of even, uh, evangelism we're doing,
00:40:18.620
the numbers we can pump up, the way we can break down the metrics and apply all these
00:40:23.420
But once you start moving into bureaucratic, uh, systematic thinking, once you start, uh, kind
00:40:28.260
of approaching people in this way, you necessarily will shift in a particular direction.
00:40:32.880
And I wonder what you think about the possibility of the fact that many of our Christian organizations
00:40:38.140
have attempted to scale up in this way and centralize, um, necessarily makes them a victim
00:40:44.760
to this mentality of, they will eventually basically adopt the attitudes of the managerial
00:40:49.860
And those managerial attitudes and understandings of how to handle people, approach people and
00:40:54.860
acquire status will eventually pull their organization in a, in a left-wing direction.
00:41:03.520
I mean, you go even all the way back to like Machen, you, you don't really see those institutions.
00:41:08.720
They had to go, he had to go found something new and now that thing has gone left-wing.
00:41:13.600
So you don't ever really see them come back except for there are a couple of outstanding
00:41:19.660
examples and Southern Baptist convention was famously one of them for its conservative resurgence
00:41:26.860
Why that happened in that case is something that I think needs to be studied a lot more.
00:41:31.140
Like how were they able to pull that back from the brink when it's so very unusual?
00:41:36.160
Um, and I think what we're seeing right now is COVID arrested some of that in the church,
00:41:42.120
you know, shocking way that I don't think we would have seen without COVID.
00:41:45.560
Like, I think COVID pulled the mask away of what you're describing in such a way that suddenly
00:41:49.580
a lot of people sat up shocked and said there was such widespread failure that we are shocked
00:41:55.760
to find out how we are not represented by, um, our religious leadership.
00:42:00.380
So there's a revolt happening right now that wouldn't have happened without COVID.
00:42:05.420
And if COVID doesn't happen, does everyone still respect these publications like the gospel
00:42:11.100
coalition or something who are leaning into the very cycle that you're describing?
00:42:18.300
And I think that, um, someone, someone described it to me as it's almost like they have an assembly
00:42:25.960
And these are the only people who are respected and it's, it is such an elitist pose.
00:42:31.700
And I'm trying to think, what do you do about it?
00:42:34.260
In a fallen world, how do you keep that from happening?
00:42:37.280
Um, and I, I honestly don't know that I have an answer to it other than it's almost like
00:42:45.040
we have to embrace that Martin Luther spirit of combativeness, but at the same time, we're
00:42:52.640
We want to, you know, not bring disunity, but I think that the, um, the default is always
00:43:00.880
And the default is always, you know, don't stir up division.
00:43:04.520
And yet this keeps happening because the division isn't stirred.
00:43:08.500
And so maybe there just needs to be, you know, a greater theology of when is division necessary
00:43:19.260
Um, I think there's so much about how to be kind, how to be unified, that there's just
00:43:24.260
really not enough talk about, okay, so when is it worth it to just boldly confront people
00:43:29.020
to their face, because when that happens, you see, like, you're already seeing it in
00:43:33.400
Like it has been weird to me in the last two years going, all of these guys who have
00:43:37.780
been very squishy for a long time are suddenly posting like super based content.
00:43:49.660
Cause I'm like, okay, so y'all sense that a new wind is blowing and you're trying to get
00:43:53.800
out ahead of it, but I'm also kind of going without COVID.
00:43:59.020
There is a, an uncomfortable truth that I think that a lot of people need to embrace,
00:44:04.100
which is the fact that like people, most people, even though they're sincere, perhaps,
00:44:10.740
you know, will ultimately follow where the wind takes them.
00:44:16.580
And so it really matters who's in control of that zeitgeist.
00:44:20.020
And if you, if you want to hold people accountable, you, you really ultimately need to be able to
00:44:25.900
be in control of, of kind of where that is moving.
00:44:29.060
And, uh, that, that doesn't mean that every individual who kind of follows that path is,
00:44:37.120
It's just how people are, you know, and, and, and you need to become more comfortable with the
00:44:41.500
fact that kind of elite opinion and, and power tend to lead people in the directions that
00:44:46.740
And so if people feel like power in the SBC is heading a particular direction, then they
00:44:53.960
Uh, and that, you know, maybe that doesn't make everyone terrible.
00:44:58.080
Um, but before we get to the questions of the people, which are starting to stack up here,
00:45:03.960
David French obviously was invited, uh, to the Presbyterians, uh, I believe it's the PCA,
00:45:10.740
uh, their, uh, their, uh, meeting, uh, he was going to be a speaker and, and I believe
00:45:16.320
one of these panels, uh, and there was such a backlash that he was disinvited.
00:45:23.020
Does that give you some hope that, that, that, that the subversion isn't always complete,
00:45:26.820
like you said, you, you could have pushback and things like, uh, the Southern Baptist
00:45:30.100
where you, where you see guys like this, who, uh, otherwise would have been able to pass
00:45:33.660
themselves off as, you know, one of the good Christians and, uh, you know, just, just
00:45:37.640
moving on everyone towards hope and unity when they're actually just
00:45:42.400
Do you think that, that, that, uh, response because, because of kind of the backlash is,
00:45:46.940
is heartening, uh, in the direction that some of these denominations could be taking?
00:45:52.420
And I'll tell you, it wasn't even so much about David French.
00:45:54.680
It was about seeing that that particular argument of, Hey, let's be kind, let's be
00:46:01.540
Cause you did see that you saw them pushing like, Hey, it's just, I mean, you saw people
00:46:05.480
just, it's rude to not let this really divisive polarizing figure.
00:46:10.120
Come to our church gathering and lecture us about divisiveness.
00:46:15.020
And it was another one of those sort of managerial class moments where I think those who were in
00:46:21.520
the leadership of the PCA, and I'm not a Presbyterian, so I don't know it in depth, but my sense of
00:46:25.500
it, knowing a lot of them and talking to a lot of them was that, um, the stated clerk who
00:46:30.620
was running this thing was shocked himself to see the backlash that he got.
00:46:36.140
Because I think that, you know, pre COVID and pre COVID David French, the assumption
00:46:40.860
was a lot of people might've disagreed with him, but it would have been unseemly to speak
00:46:48.900
And so I think they didn't realize, Hey, um, we're in a new moment and people were much
00:46:53.240
more willing to speak up and say, no, we don't want to hear from that guy anymore.
00:46:58.640
And I'll be honest with you, if Tim Keller was, we're still alive, this might've played
00:47:03.540
Um, I think he was a major figure for saying that, um, we, we have to reach the cities.
00:47:14.020
I, I very curious what might have happened if Tim Keller had still been with us to maybe
00:47:19.880
rally the, um, managerial class troops and tamp down on some of the backlash.
00:47:25.200
But, um, yeah, between that and COVID, I think people were just done.
00:47:31.600
Well guys, we're going to switch over to the questions of the people here real quick, the
00:47:35.160
super chats before we do, Megan, can you tell people, I know you've got a book coming out
00:47:39.700
soon, so you can tell them about that and where to find the rest of your work.
00:47:43.580
So, um, new book is shepherds for sale, how, uh, evangelical leaders traded the truth for
00:47:50.420
And I go into a lot of this in a lot more depth and on a number of subjects, um, from
00:47:55.240
immigration to me too, to climate change, to all kinds of hijinks that a lot of, um,
00:48:00.700
left-wing leaders have been getting up to in the church.
00:48:03.440
Uh, and you can always find me, I'm on Twitter and Instagram, I guess X now I'm on X, but
00:48:09.320
And that's where, um, I tend to fritter away and waste most of my time and procrastinate and
00:48:21.820
I can correct it as many times as they want them.
00:48:26.300
So Florida Henry says, uh, is this another case of managerialism corrupting the church?
00:48:32.360
I've dealt with Americans, uh, dealt with Americans with NGOs overseas and they hate the U.S.
00:48:39.340
I totally believe that American NGOs hate the U.S.
00:48:42.760
That would, that would be, uh, a pretty, pretty easy thing to believe.
00:48:46.120
But yeah, I think we over, we kind of already touched on it some, but, uh, definitely a case
00:48:50.160
of managerialism in the, uh, in the church, Megan.
00:48:54.520
And here's the good, I mean, well, it's bad news, but it's also like, look, this isn't
00:49:03.620
Not, not, not the first time I've heard the story of the, the structure of, uh, organized,
00:49:08.180
uh, you know, church overruling and, or trying to overtake something that God's trying to
00:49:15.920
Gregory says, uh, Christ took, uh, took it for granted that people would love themselves
00:49:21.900
Modern self-loathing is at best an extreme overreaction to Christ's command to love enemies,
00:49:30.620
I think people have a hard, you know, because of kind of the way that that's been repeated
00:49:35.980
Like the reason that that commandment has force is that Christ is assuming the normal human
00:49:41.020
reaction that you will care about yourself and your family and your neighbor, and then
00:49:47.980
But if you don't care about your family, as you said, when you're, you're Dickens, uh,
00:49:52.460
response, then, uh, that, that commandment kind of loses all meaning when you, uh, use
00:49:56.760
it as an excuse to not love the people around you and, uh, just folk, you know, throw, throw
00:50:01.000
your money in symbiotically away while hating everyone, uh, right next to you.
00:50:06.160
It's almost like there's a verse that if you're not caring for your own family, you're worse
00:50:11.120
So it feels like that verse should have some application as well.
00:50:14.540
It's just like, you need like a whole context for the Bible and not just a couple choice
00:50:19.280
words whenever you want to use them to further your political agenda.
00:50:24.800
Uh, I think glow in the dark here, you might've, uh, super chatted one of your responses to
00:50:34.300
He says, uh, Christians got lazy and took, uh, for granted.
00:50:39.200
Uh, they, uh, got drunk on success, uh, in the big, getting drunk on success is the big
00:50:47.840
Yes, flattery dulls the mind given, uh, uh, given liberally evangelicals did that too
00:50:54.240
Uh, just getting to the table is the beginning.
00:51:00.100
Do you think that a lot of what happened was that Christians are just kind of assumed that
00:51:05.940
we would continue to have this background radiation of Christian culture that we would
00:51:10.920
all have always have this cultural Christianity.
00:51:13.200
And so therefore they didn't need to stay in charge of certain institutions or for their
00:51:18.860
beliefs inside certain organizations, because ultimately they would just, they kind of got
00:51:23.980
lazy assuming that that would just always be there for them.
00:51:26.500
And they didn't continue that to their patrimony.
00:51:29.560
Well, actually, you know, what's funny is you've actually had some of them like Russell Moore
00:51:33.680
and, um, I'm trying to remember his first name, but an Ortland, one of the Ortland, there's
00:51:39.200
One of them was out arguing that cultural Christianity is bad.
00:51:43.160
If we let cultural Christianity die, it's easier to then be a greater light, uh, in the
00:51:49.380
And that will make it, um, more, more profitable for profitable in the sense of the kingdom to
00:51:57.740
And it was a really convoluted argument, but it was like, they were saying, look, if we go
00:52:02.240
ahead and let everything that is moral and just be corrupted, then it will be easier for
00:52:10.200
I didn't understand it, but they've gone so far as, you know, just saying, well, let's
00:52:18.100
That's always a, uh, super entitled thing to hear from people.
00:52:22.400
Well, I grew up with a Christian culture and I benefited from, you know, thousands of years
00:52:27.820
of Christendom, you know, shaping a superior way of life.
00:52:34.140
It's better off if all of your kids have to pick through the ashes of Christian civilization,
00:52:38.700
uh, cause ultimately it'll get rid of all the guys who were only going on church to Sunday
00:52:44.380
And, and owning none of why cultural Christianity has died.
00:52:49.180
I'm like, if, if the church is being, you know, complete, that only happens if the church
00:52:53.620
is silent and not salty and not spreading any light.
00:53:01.720
It seems, it seems like a lot of excuses for failed battles, ultimately just saying at
00:53:06.360
the end of the day, well, you know, just deal with the fact that we've, we've led you
00:53:11.320
Uh, Cripper Weirder says, okay, so do we need to bring in the Freemasons?
00:53:16.380
Of course we have a lot of Freemasonry symbolism in our founding, but I don't know if that's,
00:53:24.000
Uh, let's see a little more from glow in the dark here.
00:53:28.260
That's what everyone, uh, that's what everyone struggles with going down.
00:53:31.500
The authority path is needed, which creates a gnashing of teeth.
00:53:34.840
I think that definitely pushes back against the, the being or push goes along with what
00:53:38.640
you're saying about pushing back and not always being nice.
00:53:41.240
Uh, for sure here, uh, the problem with joining the elite is becoming one of them.
00:53:46.040
Don't attempt to join them, attempt to change them or lead them on the right path.
00:53:50.480
I think ultimately that is actually a good point.
00:53:52.500
Uh, I think we do need a more parallel elitism.
00:53:56.520
Uh, I think that's what a lot of people are starting to realize that sending one or two
00:54:00.400
evangelicals into elite circles, turns them into part of the managerial elite, not in the
00:54:07.340
More and more what we need to see are alternative institutions that build up, uh, prestige and
00:54:13.940
power inside, perhaps a Christian community that can then use that to reach out rather than
00:54:19.600
trying to shove individual Christians into positions of power and expecting them to hold
00:54:26.120
And it does seem like, I mean, I know it sounds a little Sisyphean, but we may just have to
00:54:30.580
accept that this is going to be part of the process till, you know, the kingdom comes is that
00:54:35.240
we will continually build institutions and they will grow because they're ministering to people
00:54:39.740
and speaking truth and then they will be co-opted.
00:54:41.920
And then we have to go and build new institutions.
00:54:46.140
And I think that's really important because people will get, people get really down on
00:54:50.980
They really get, uh, very pessimistic because the, you know, the thing they built doesn't
00:54:55.800
It's like, well, you were kind of warned that actually none of this will last forever until
00:55:00.480
So you should probably take that under advisement.
00:55:02.580
And yeah, like, you know, empires will rise, empires will fall, you know, organizations
00:55:08.520
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be doing good and you shouldn't be caring and you shouldn't
00:55:12.560
be taking care of your community and passing it on to your children in the meantime.
00:55:15.980
Don't, don't become a black pillar just because, uh, you know, one particular thing didn't last
00:55:23.100
And you don't know what's going to succeed and what isn't.
00:55:25.340
So I still fight for these institutions that seem salvageable, you know?
00:55:30.580
Laura Henry says, apologies on the manager girl question.
00:55:38.080
Well, I want to thank Megan, of course, for coming on.
00:55:40.560
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00:55:45.460
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00:56:02.500
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00:56:06.560
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00:56:13.240
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