The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Truth Behind The SBC & The Guidepost Report ｜ Megan Basham

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00:00:18.020 Hi, welcome to Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin,

00:00:21.240 and today I am very, very privileged to have Megan Basham from The Daily Wire as my special guest,

00:00:26.760 And we are discussing her recent bombshell article where she discusses the guidepost

00:00:33.280 findings, their research and data about the SBC Southern Baptist Convention and all of

00:00:40.000 the alleged abuse, sexual abuse that's taken place there and all the ways that those in

00:00:45.440 positions of power, institutional power within the Southern Baptist Convention tried to cover

00:00:50.420 it up. Megan Basham does a wonderful job exposing a lot of those things that have been hyperbole,

00:00:59.540 exaggerated, and some of them just downright false. And so we discuss the all things SBC,

00:01:06.920 why the SBC is so intent, or at least some leaders in the SBC are so intent in saying that the SBC

00:01:14.480 is corrupt and therefore needs to believe all women and that it's sexually abusive and trying

00:01:21.240 to cover up scandals. What are the facts? What do we know with certainty? And then towards the end 0.88

00:01:28.060 of the episode, Megan and I speculate a little bit about what do we think are the motives?

00:01:33.340 Why are there people trying to paint the SBC in this light? What's the end goal? This is a

00:01:40.560 fantastic episode. And I think we are the first to have Megan Basham address her article in detail

00:01:47.980 and provide even some more behind the scenes information. You're in for a real treat. Buckle

00:01:53.260 up. Here we go. Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:02:04.820 Welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right

00:02:08.700 Response Ministries. And today in our episode, I'm very privileged to have as a special guest,

00:02:14.040 Megan Basham from The Daily Wire. Megan, welcome to the show.

00:02:17.780 Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

00:02:19.520 Great. All right. Go ahead and introduce yourself for some of our listeners who may

00:02:22.860 not be familiar with you and what you do. So I'm Megan Basham. I am a reporter with

00:02:28.340 The Daily Wire. I actually started out as a culture reporter, but when I moved over there,

00:02:32.920 I kind of let them know, look, I have a very special interest in evangelical coverage and

00:02:37.360 evangelical issues. And, um, I, I made a deal. I'm like, I, you know, I, I definitely want to

00:02:42.660 cover entertainment, but if you will allow me to cover this area that I have such a strong interest

00:02:49.400 in, I'm your girl. And so we kind of made that deal. And, uh, before daily wire, I was world

00:02:54.480 magazine, which if you're not familiar with it is, um, a Christian news organization that, you know,

00:03:01.160 it's, it's, it's evangelical, but you know, a lot of presby's over there, Baptist non-denominational,

00:03:06.280 um some anglican so it's kind of a grab bag and i spent a lot of years there covering culture

00:03:13.000 um i worked on their podcast as well they have actually have a great daily news podcast if you

00:03:18.000 haven't heard it the world and everything in it and um so those are kind of the two places that

00:03:23.100 i am most known for uh working in news great well we're glad to have you and really what we want to

00:03:28.400 talk about in this episode is your one of your most recent articles dealing with the sbc the

00:03:34.200 Southern Baptist Convention, also known as the hashtag Me Too movement goes evangelical. So

00:03:40.940 what are some of your thoughts on this? You just wrote this article. You did, I think,

00:03:45.640 a wonderful job in just explaining some of the things that are concerning. What is your sense,

00:03:51.320 right? We just had the convention. Tom Askell was my pick. I think he was your pick as well

00:03:55.660 for SBC president, and he lost by a lot. It wasn't really even close. What are some of your

00:04:01.620 thoughts on the SBC right now? Well, you know what I can tell you with this article that I wrote is

00:04:10.260 it was really long. It was like 3,500 words. And I didn't even really feel like in that movement

00:04:16.200 because it's complicated. You know, you go, there were real stories of abuse, but majority of what

00:04:23.760 is covered in this report that the task force put in motion was already known. A lot of it had been

00:04:31.240 dealt with already, even people had been ousted. Um, so there were things in it that I really

00:04:39.800 wished I could cover. And if I get a chance, I'd love to do a part two about how the task force

00:04:44.360 came about because my perception after talking to a lot of people was that, um, well, I believe that

00:04:51.020 abuse is a real issue and a real issue that needs to be dealt with. I also don't believe it was

00:04:57.420 probably the main motivating factor for some of the people who put the wheels in motion there

00:05:02.460 it felt like you had people looking to sort of settle some scores and using it as a way to rest

00:05:10.260 some political control of the denomination and introduce some other reforms that they wanted

00:05:16.260 regarding complementarianism women's roles and even just we want to be seen differently by the 1.00

00:05:23.540 world. So to get down kind of into the granular of what I did end up that didn't end up on the

00:05:29.880 cutting room floor was, so if you're not familiar, there was some leaked letters in 2021 from Russell

00:05:36.920 Moore. And those letters brought up the fact that he felt that the executive committee did not do

00:05:42.600 enough to address abuse allegations. And based on those leaked letters, and this is all very

00:05:48.760 political. These are political maneuvers. Those leak letters were used as impetus to say,

00:05:53.660 let's launch this investigation into the executive committee. Of course, it was convenient that those

00:05:59.820 also happened to be Russell Moore's sort of enemies, you might say opponents, let's say

00:06:04.160 opponents within the church. So at that point, someone I would say who was very closely aligned

00:06:12.620 with Russell Moore, Rachel Denhollander, they're very well known for doing some conference

00:06:17.180 stuff together for doing podcasts together um she was appointed as the person who would be

00:06:25.940 advising this task force on who they would hire and how it would go about its business of

00:06:30.480 investigating the executive committee so um they hired a firm called guidepost and guidepost

00:06:36.740 started investigating and guidepost is distinctly christian right um i i can't at all no guidepost

00:06:43.200 In fact, as everyone knows, a lot of people probably know by now, they put out a post that was, you know, pride waving flag, the rainbow flag for pride and their allies and affirming.

00:06:56.140 So just to confirm, so Guidepost doesn't know what a woman is and they also don't know what a baby is, but they know that they know what sexual abuse is according to God's standards and the SBC is going to go to them.

00:07:06.620 Okay.

00:07:07.440 Continue.

00:07:07.920 Yeah. And I think and part of what I get into and the reason I'm sort of laying all the groundwork here, one, because it is complex how it came about, but also because Rachel Denhollander played a really significant role in how all of this unfolded.

00:07:21.280 So I think that her relationship with Russell Moore is fairly important and her relationship with some of the other major players who were driving this investigation is also very important.

00:07:34.320 So Guidepost spends about eight months doing an investigation, and then they put out their report.

00:07:41.540 Some of the things in that report, well, really most of the things in that report were already known.

00:07:47.640 Other things were very questionable.

00:07:48.920 And I kind of tried to drill down, okay, what is the main case that they're putting forward to say that there was just egregious, rampant dismissal of abuse victims?

00:08:00.080 and the number one story they had, there are other stories in it, but the key one was a woman named

00:08:06.060 Jennifer Lyle and David Sills. Well, when I started looking into that case in particular,

00:08:13.060 which guidepost directly says this is a case of a sexual abuser and a victim, there were a lot of

00:08:18.280 problems with it. Just the bare outlines of it, you're talking about a 26-year-old woman

00:08:23.940 who was a master of divinity student on the campus of Southern Seminary said she began

00:08:32.900 some sort of interaction, let's put it that way, with a professor who was about 23 years older

00:08:39.540 than her and that he was married. He had a family. She became very close with the family as well.

00:08:46.740 Whatever relationship she had with him and with the family continued for another 12 years. She

00:08:53.020 was only on the campus at Southern Seminary for two of those years. So from 26 to Moody Publishers

00:09:02.500 in Chicago, she works for Lifeway in Nashville, and she's contracting with books with him. So

00:09:10.360 she's asking him, you come work with me, I'm going to publish your books, things that you might say

00:09:15.880 even put her in power over him in some ways. So this goes on for 12 years, there is a break,

00:09:22.060 this is where the stories diverge. She says she was abused and got away from that. I'll say I

00:09:30.320 talked to a lot of people and he relayed a lot to me through third parties. My sense is that David

00:09:34.740 Sills is extremely leery of talking to anyone in the media and he hasn't really told his side of

00:09:40.400 it. What his friends have informed me is that he is afraid of one, making the situation worse,

00:09:50.060 of bringing more attention on himself i think that's kind of unmerited just because there's

00:09:55.700 already so much attention there but um so along with that he also indicated that he feels like

00:10:04.200 a lot of this negative press a lot of this labeling of him as an abuser is part of the

00:10:10.020 consequences for what he did part of the consequences for having a relationship he would

00:10:15.960 say an inappropriate relationship with jennifer sills i'm excuse me with jennifer lyle so he has

00:10:23.800 never though confessed to abuse and really what you do have is a very classic she has a story of

00:10:30.840 he was violent and threatening and coercive with me for these 12 years he has a story that is no

00:10:37.720 this was consensual and sinful but consensual right so this is the main case um that guidepost

00:10:45.540 put forward that's that's the main one in their report it is yes it is the most prominent so

00:10:51.260 there's the most mentions of jennifer lyle she takes up the most pages about 35 pages

00:10:56.420 okay so that was really why i focused on that particular case um and there were some other

00:11:02.640 issues with some other you know incidents that they brought up but that was the key one well

00:11:08.020 that's important to mention so you you highlighted that case in your article not because you thought

00:11:12.360 this is the weakest case and i can poke it apart and and make guideposts you know look like a sham

00:11:17.440 but no this this is the one that guideposts themselves chose to highlight this was this was

00:11:22.040 the tip of the spear for them so i'm dealing with what they're presenting as their strongest proof

00:11:27.720 of the sbc being this dungeon of sexual abuse you know whatever and and it's flimsy

00:11:34.640 it could be true but it's it's flimsy right and i was very careful in my reporting to go i don't

00:11:40.700 know but here's what i'm sure guidepost doesn't know either i know for sure that um lyle's attorney

00:11:47.480 rachel den hullander doesn't know either so what happened at that point is that um jennifer lyle

00:11:54.140 told her story to her boss at Lifeway, who called up Dr. Albert Moeller, president of Southern

00:12:00.540 Seminary, and they had a meeting. She relayed that this was abuse, and this was two years after

00:12:06.440 contact had ended. So, this is in 2018. They stopped talking in 2016. And Moeller fired David

00:12:14.560 Sills and said, I believe her that this was abuse. She told me this was abuse. This was a case of

00:12:20.660 abuse. So at that point, Baptist Press was going to run some sort of story. And it sounds like

00:12:27.940 Eric Geiger, her boss at Lifeway, suggested you should do a story with Baptist Press. And so there

00:12:34.640 was sort of a first person thing in play, and they didn't end up doing that. And they were going to

00:12:38.420 do a report. And the original draft of that story characterized it as abuse. Then the executive

00:12:47.300 committee which is over the baptist press got a look at it and said we're uncomfortable saying

00:12:53.700 that this is a very clear-cut case of abuse we're uncomfortable using that language and it actually

00:12:57.700 makes a lot of sense to me because i they could have handled it better and communicating with

00:13:02.420 her i think but the decision not and if it were me i just wouldn't run the story i don't think

00:13:06.900 they should run the story but what they did was change the description within the story not her

00:13:14.740 quotes but the description within the story of what that relationship was they called it a morally

00:13:19.460 inappropriate relationship um so that was the key sticking point that everyone said this was how

00:13:26.980 the executive committee was cruel and callous and dismissive to survivors so rachel den hollander

00:13:35.700 then at a conference mentions this story that the infamous 2019 caring well conference with russell

00:13:42.740 Moore, she mentions this story that brings a lot of negative press to the executive committee.

00:13:49.140 At that point, she represents Jennifer Lyle in a threat. They never did actually file a suit,

00:13:57.600 but in a threat of a defamation suit against the executive committee, that threat is successful.

00:14:03.920 The insurance company agrees to pay Jennifer Lyle. I'm hearing about a million dollars,

00:14:09.780 and they think that will be the end of it and then this story comes up and i look into it and

00:14:14.840 guidepost represents it as abuse and you know callous disregard of survivors and then you start

00:14:21.500 to look into the story and you go as i said so much of this doesn't really make sense and then

00:14:28.360 i looked at the fact that jennifer lyle said that she um filed a police report with the louisville

00:14:34.420 pd in 2018 when it happened so i called the louisville pd they have no record of her i then

00:14:41.380 obtained another interview that she gave where she said not only that she called the police but

00:14:46.940 that al moeller called the police they have no record of any of that either um then i spoke with

00:14:52.200 her and she said no no i made a mistake it was this other uh police department it was jefferson

00:14:57.760 town i called jefferson town jefferson town had no record of this so what you have really is

00:15:04.100 something that illustrates the entire problem with what Guideposts did and what the recommendations

00:15:10.640 are. And that is not just Guideposts, but Rachel Denhollander, lots of people on social media,

00:15:19.180 the Religion News Service, numerous other reports in Washington Post. I don't want to name the

00:15:25.280 others because I'm not positive, but there was a lot of reporting labeling this guy an abuser, 0.85

00:15:31.680 someone who's violent someone who um really hurt this woman and i think you can always say that

00:15:38.040 when there's sin involved you're hurting people you're hurting each other but this was different

00:15:42.480 they were saying he was a violent sexual abuser those were rachel then hollander's words these

00:15:47.480 were the words that were in that guidepost report so and nobody really looked into it so really all

00:15:54.720 of these people were operating on the fact that we just believe her um and based on that also the

00:16:00.740 Guidepost report said her story was corroborated. Well, when I looked into what they meant by her

00:16:05.200 story was corroborated, that was what they meant, just that these people believed her.

00:16:10.160 Well, that's not due process. And based on all of that, you would have to go. So a firm like

00:16:15.420 Guidepost, who is putting itself forward to create this public database of abusers for the SBC,

00:16:23.340 Rachel Denhollander, who is demanding this public database, both of them clearly would be very

00:16:28.000 comfortable adding david sill's name to that list even though we have no concrete evidence that he

00:16:35.100 is an abuser he's never admitted to being abused an abuser and there are no public records that

00:16:40.660 document the fact that he's an abuser there's no witnesses that say he's an abuser all we have is

00:16:47.520 jennifer lyle's word and her claims that are somewhat undercut by the public record so there

00:16:53.980 you go there's a long spiel on what the story was about no that's really helpful thank you for um

00:16:59.580 just taking the time and doing so much work to investigate all that to follow through that's

00:17:03.360 what we need we we need accountability for the alleged accountability that we we need someone

00:17:09.820 to be able to address these things not to say that there's nothing true but to um to investigate and

00:17:13.740 see is this actually true and is it true according to god's standards so real quick i want to take

00:17:18.260 what you said that was so helpful and just kind of maybe just investigated in light of some

00:17:24.900 scripture. So one, and I know that you're aware of this, you know, even in our case law system

00:17:30.360 that we have in the United States of America that was built off of a lot of biblical principles,

00:17:35.840 the Bible is very clear that we need to have two or three independent lines of testimony.

00:17:40.440 And so a lot of times people will say, you know, well, as a pastor, I get this, you know, well,

00:17:44.640 by God's grace, I haven't in a while, but I used to get this a lot. You know, somebody would come

00:17:48.000 with a concern. Concern is a euphemism for criticism. And they would voice their criticism

00:17:52.940 and they would always, you know, preface it by saying a lot of people are saying, right? A lot

00:17:58.040 of people, right? Because you want to give weight to your opinion. You want to give weight to your

00:18:03.920 perspective. And so a lot of people are saying, and then you would have to kind of press on that

00:18:07.940 and say, well, okay, so what is a lot of people and who are these people? And could they come to

00:18:11.680 me also? And let's meet with them. And a lot of times what you discover when somebody has some

00:18:16.320 kind of discrepancy, some kind of frustration, is that the lot of people usually aren't quite

00:18:22.260 as many as you thought. And even if it is, let's say it's 10 people, 20 people, 200 people,

00:18:27.360 the question is, are these 200 independent lines of witness, 200 people that saw the same event,

00:18:34.280 or is there only one actual eyewitness and then 199 other people that that eyewitness told and

00:18:41.760 And then they told some, there's a difference between eyewitnesses that the Bible says in

00:18:45.880 our laws based on versus hearsay.

00:18:47.840 And a lot of Christians, they need to be refreshed on this and understand the distinction between

00:18:52.400 hearsay and an actual witnessable testimony.

00:18:57.380 And so in this case, you only have one witness and, and, and we'll actually, you have two

00:19:02.460 witnesses, the man and the woman, um, and their testimony is contradictory.

00:19:08.040 And so that's, so you're at a standstill unless somebody else witnessed it.

00:19:11.900 And one of the verses that comes to mind, there's a lot that we could talk about, but

00:19:14.700 one, just briefly, this is Deuteronomy chapter 22, starting verse 23.

00:19:19.860 It says, if there is a betrothed virgin and a man meets her in the city and lies with

00:19:24.360 her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of the city and you shall stone them 0.85

00:19:30.140 to death with stones, the young woman, because she did not cry for help, though she was in 0.99

00:19:35.580 the city. The implication being, because of the context, the place where this occurred,

00:19:41.520 what's being implied is God's word is saying, if she was actually a victim,

00:19:47.860 somebody would have heard her. She was in a public setting in a city. And so if she had yelled for

00:19:53.260 help, somebody would have heard her. And so because no one heard her, the text is assuming

00:19:59.460 she did not cry for help, which means that it was consensual. So she was engaged in this

00:20:05.100 infidelity. And so you shall stone both of them with stones. The young woman, because 0.99

00:20:10.340 she was complicit. She was a part of this. She did not cry for help, though she was in the city,

00:20:15.120 a context publicly where she would have been heard. And the man, because he violated his

00:20:19.500 neighbor's wife. This is a woman who is betrothed. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 0.77

00:20:24.460 Then verse 25 says, but if in the open country, right? There's not a bunch of people around. It's

00:20:30.900 not a public setting. If in an open field or open country, a man meets a young woman who is betrothed

00:20:36.060 and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. He shall 0.92

00:20:42.280 be put to death, but you shall do nothing to the young woman. She has committed no offense punishable 0.99

00:20:47.400 by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor. Now, real

00:20:54.040 quick, the last thing I'll say on that is just in the private context of the open country or field

00:20:59.800 where there was no witnesses around, if a woman, right, they're found afterwards and there is

00:21:06.040 witnessable proof that infidelity happened and assumed in this is one of those proofs would be

00:21:11.180 her testimony, then the man shall be put to death. Now that testimony has to be collaborated. It has

00:21:17.940 to be proven, evidenced, but once proven, then the man would be put to death and she would go free

00:21:25.460 because there was no one around. So it's giving the benefit of the doubt that she actually did

00:21:29.500 cry for help. But even in that case scenario, it's not that this man is put to death on her

00:21:34.740 singular testimony alone. The reason why the man is put to death is because even if it was

00:21:42.640 consensual, the infidelity in this biblical context, according to God's law, the infidelity

00:21:48.520 was sufficient. Meaning the man doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a violent sexual abuse

00:21:55.140 case, just the sexual immorality itself with a betrothed woman, another man coming, that would 0.98

00:22:02.860 be enough to put him to death. So her independent testimony of saying, I yelled for help, but nobody

00:22:08.300 was around because I was in an open country, an open field. That's enough not to incriminate

00:22:13.680 her alleged perpetrator, but it is enough to save her life. So it's not enough to end his life,

00:22:20.200 but to save her life. His life is ended because even if she's lying, even if she's lying,

00:22:26.340 his infidelity, whether it was forced or not, regardless of whether it was consensual, 0.84

00:22:31.040 is enough to be incriminating for him, according to biblical law, with Israel to be put to death.

00:22:37.240 And so my point is, this is, you know, obviously this is, there's a lot of this that is unique

00:22:42.800 to Israel, but there is the general equity, which is the Westminster Confession and the 16th,

00:22:48.440 There is the general equity, the heart of this law, the spirit of the law that I believe is applicable and relevant for all people in all places in all times.

00:22:57.500 And the heart of this is if a woman is in a public setting where she can cry for help, but no one hears her cry, that's fishy.

00:23:07.340 so if you're talking about a grown woman something starts when she's 26 years old a 12 year long

00:23:14.360 uh escapade uh and and you bring technology and cell phones you know at any point she could have

00:23:21.200 given a call sent an email said this said that and when that's in the scenario and you might say well

00:23:26.540 she did say it okay but how many how long did it take her to say something how many years did it

00:23:31.260 take her to say something um russell fuller you know who was a professor is seeing the two of them

00:23:36.060 smiling at the lunch table in the cafeteria at a seminary and laughing and these kinds of things

00:23:41.100 according to your reporting, your article. And so it's just like, yeah, that doesn't look like

00:23:46.300 a victim. So like you said so well, according to biblical standards, there's still sin

00:23:51.240 and sin is a big deal, but there's a difference between sins and crimes. And so we have to

00:23:56.920 understand that. And so, yeah, this is a problem. And if that's the leading proof in this guidepost

00:24:03.360 reports, then what, what are we talking about? And you go on in your article. So I want to ask

00:24:08.760 you this, you go on in your article and you said, I think it's only 400 something cases and only two

00:24:13.180 of them were current. Can you explain how many cases and show us some of our listeners, they

00:24:18.440 don't know how big the SBC is. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So I kind of opened with that because

00:24:24.940 you know, you always sort of have to do that. Listen, abuse is serious. I'm very much against

00:24:29.240 abuse because the initial immediate pushback you get is, oh, you're trying to minimize abuse.

00:24:35.100 Well, no, I'm not. But I am trying to be very specific because there was a torrent of media

00:24:40.180 coverage calling this bombshell, explosive, makes the SBC a diseased orchard. That was David French

00:24:48.160 or apocalypse from Russell Moore. So you want to drill down and go, okay, let's look at what

00:24:53.920 we're talking about. So, what we were talking about, this is what Guidepost found, 409 cases

00:25:01.060 over the course of 21 years in 47,000 churches. Now, I spoke to a demographer, somebody who was

00:25:08.640 an expert in these kinds of just looking at statistics and what we might infer from them,

00:25:13.040 and he tells me, okay, looking at that, I might roughly estimate about 100 to 150,000 workers

00:25:20.740 in SBC churches. And this guy was not SBC, by the way. You know, so he's just kind of looking at it

00:25:27.480 from his professional opinion, not from having any invested interest in protecting the SBC.

00:25:33.240 And he said, okay, if you're looking at 100 to 150,000 over that period of time, this is actually

00:25:39.760 really remarkably low, particularly as you're only talking about two current connected to

00:25:46.480 the SBC workers. It wasn't clear if they were staffers, if they were pastors or if they were

00:25:51.200 volunteers. It wasn't clear what they were, but two people still connected to the SBC church who

00:25:56.560 are right now accused. Yeah. And so the pushback from that was, well, Guidepost was only looking at

00:26:04.720 the investigative committee and they got those numbers from this list of published reports

00:26:11.880 of accused or convicted abusers or sex offenders that they had sort of assembled this list from

00:26:19.740 already published reports in the public domain. And that is true. But you have to look at the

00:26:26.240 Houston Chronicle also spent a year investigating as well. And their numbers were very similar.

00:26:32.520 So when you look at that, you go, maybe, maybe there is more abuse that if somebody were

00:26:37.160 investigating all of the SBC, they would find, but we have to deal with the numbers that we have.

00:26:41.760 I'm not going to make a hypothetical assumption that there is some apocalypse that we just don't know about.

00:26:47.260 Let's deal with the numbers that we have.

00:26:48.800 And those were the numbers that we had.

00:26:51.160 409, 21 years, 47,000 churches, 100 to 150,000 staffers.

00:26:58.280 And only two current individuals.

00:27:00.900 And only two current.

00:27:01.300 That is correct.

00:27:02.760 So the demographer said, looking at this, I am astonished that they found so little.

00:27:08.980 So I think that's an important key to look at. And then you look at, okay, so then why? Why is the media treating it like it's something so significant when, I mean, the numbers in, say, the public school system are so much.

00:27:25.280 I was going to say, I wish that same standard would be applied to public schools.

00:27:30.560 You know, like the reform that I keep, you know, praying for and working towards with public schools is the reform of shutting all of them down.

00:27:36.800 You know, that's if those standards were it's just it's such a double standard.

00:27:41.020 It's frustrating. Go ahead. Sorry.

00:27:43.080 And the point is, you go, look, we don't want abuse anywhere.

00:27:46.320 You know, it's funny because people go, oh, you're just dismissing abuse.

00:27:48.740 I'm not. I don't want abuse anywhere.

00:27:50.740 But I also recognize this, that we live in a fallen world.

00:27:53.920 um we live in just a sin cursed world and there is no organization that is going to be able to

00:28:00.840 perfectly keep every predator out who will try to come in to get at victims so you try to act

00:28:08.040 as quickly as possible you put up as many guardrails as you can that are reasonable but you

00:28:14.600 also recognize that these things they are going to happen and we have to deal with them clear-eyed

00:28:19.840 And you have to, amen. And you have to also present them truthfully because there are different forms of abuse. Sexual abuse is abuse. Bearing false witness against someone is also abuse.

00:28:32.720 And we live in a current Me Too culture where the first person who runs into the room is established as the victim, and immediately it's believed, their testimony, without having necessarily two or three independent lines of witness.

00:28:52.200 And the person that they're talking about is the perpetrator, without any shadow of it.

00:28:58.180 But, but biblically speaking, you know, I mean, biblically speaking, the standard is

00:29:03.380 that if you bear false witness about someone else and it's proven that your testimony was

00:29:08.340 false, whatever the penalty would have been, had your testimony been true for them, that

00:29:13.100 penalty now comes on your head.

00:29:15.000 So if you were accusing them of something that is punishable by death, then you would 0.65

00:29:20.140 be put to death.

00:29:22.040 Bearing false witness, the Bible says that that's one of the things that the Lord hates, 0.97

00:29:25.920 that he detests a false witness, one who spews out lies. And so the point is that number one,

00:29:35.460 we have to be truthful. We can't just say this happened without a shadow of a doubt. According

00:29:40.420 to biblical standards, their leading case with this individual, this man, their leading case

00:29:46.660 cannot be proven, or at least has not yet been proven by biblical standards. And yet a denomination,

00:29:54.220 the SBC that claims to say that the Bible is the final arbiter for the final standard for what we

00:29:59.880 abide by is not abiding by that standard. So we want to be truthful. And so yes, there have been

00:30:08.200 cases of abuse and these kinds of things, but the way it's being presented is though like the SBC 0.97

00:30:12.980 is just the most corrupt, sexually abusive, you know, denomination of all time. And that's just 0.96

00:30:19.360 not true. So the last thing that I want to ask you is, you know, you've done great reporting.

00:30:24.220 But I'd love to hear some of your speculating, if you're willing to do so.

00:30:28.660 Why are there, you know, you mentioned there are some people in the SBC, right, that really

00:30:33.680 wanted this story to get out.

00:30:35.240 And they want to portray the SBC as being the harbors of sexual perpetrators.

00:30:44.600 What do you, why?

00:30:45.920 Why are there people in the SBC that want this report to be true, that want to make

00:30:50.000 this big push of the SBC's corruption with covering up sexual abuse scandals? Who are some

00:30:55.880 of those people, the ones that you could name that has been proven? But what, if you could

00:31:02.680 speculate for a moment, what do you think is their motive? What are they after?

00:31:06.980 Well, you know, obviously I can look at Russell Moore for sure, because just factually what we

00:31:11.960 know is that Russell Moore had this sort of notorious apocalypse essay out within 30 minutes

00:31:18.820 of the guideposts report hitting the web so you go he could not have read 288 pages he writes in

00:31:27.440 this essay i was even more and i'm paraphrasing so this is not a verbatim quote but something

00:31:33.580 in effect of i was even more shocked by what was in this report and i'm like you read 288 pages

00:31:40.800 and 30 minutes to be shocked by what was in that part so it seemed very clear and it was notable

00:31:45.980 that this essay that he published contained no specifics about this in particular shocked me or

00:31:51.760 when I read about this, I was really astonished. He didn't give any specifics. He just said it was

00:31:55.880 so much worse than I thought. And so I think if you look at someone like Russell Moore, you go,

00:32:00.200 there was a personal motive. He sort of had written before about how they were trying to

00:32:06.720 psychologically terrorize me. And I go, he really likes really hyperbolic language. But so I think

00:32:14.140 in that case there were definitely some personal vendettas it felt like it was being used in that

00:32:18.180 way um at the same time i go i think there is a wing that is looking to do away with the

00:32:25.280 complementarian convictions within the sbc because the other thing you saw was in a lot of this

00:32:31.340 reporting that immediately hit they talked about the fact that this cultural atmosphere within the

00:32:37.500 sbc where women are dismissed and women's voices aren't heard and that's key women's voices aren't

00:32:43.740 heard. That gave rise to this culture of abuse that allowed it to fester. And so I think that 1.00

00:32:51.600 that is a big part of what it's being used for is to say, we need to have more women in leadership

00:32:57.460 in order to make sure that women aren't abused and they feel free to come forward.

00:33:02.740 I think you're absolutely right. And I don't think it's a coincidence that with the convention

00:33:06.700 that just took place, those are the two things that you see hand in glove that are happening

00:33:12.020 is, uh, here's all the sexual abuse cases and how we've hurt women as a denomination.

00:33:18.420 And, uh, we've uniquely hurt women, right? Cause we live in a fallen world and this happens

00:33:22.500 everywhere, but man, it really happened here. It happened worse here where the data just doesn't

00:33:27.440 prove that, you know, uh, but it really happened here. Oh, and by the way, on a unrelated note,

00:33:33.700 um, maybe women can be pastors. What, what, what is a pastor, right? We got Matt Walsh with what 0.63

00:33:39.820 is a woman and the SBC, we're going to do a documentary. What is a pastor? You know? And

00:33:44.960 yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence. I think that they're just, they're going left.

00:33:50.840 Yeah. And I think, you know, it was really interesting too. I posted kind of,

00:33:55.840 fairly astonishing, this story in Vox. If you're not familiar with Vox, it's very popular

00:34:00.760 among maybe younger demographics. And they drew a hard line between abuse and complementarianism.

00:34:08.620 Like there wasn't even there are other stories that kind of couched it a little bit, sort of, well, we're just drawing.

00:34:13.700 But this was very clear. And this was something that I did not have time for in my story.

00:34:19.200 So you're getting it exclusively, but it killed me that it ended up on the cutting room floor.

00:34:23.020 And that was the fact that if you looked at the guidepost report on Christianity Today, they talked about that they didn't necessarily find a lot of abuse at Christianity Today.

00:34:35.980 but what they did find was this sort of male dominated culture and again i'm paraphrasing

00:34:41.860 but you can go read that report it's not nearly as long and find it and they talked about um you

00:34:47.220 had a culture where men would speak over women and men were not listening to women and um these

00:34:54.080 men in leadership were not promoting women to be in leadership and you went so that's where

00:35:00.060 guideposts that's their worldview where they were coming from from as they put together this report

00:35:05.260 that's very important all right well thank you so much for all your hard work on this and thanks

00:35:12.480 for sharing with our listeners some of the the behind the scenes um details i really really

00:35:18.000 appreciate any final thoughts that you want to add no just this look we have to start being

00:35:23.940 unafraid to be discerning and look at the hard details and they're going to say oh you don't

00:35:28.800 care about abuse or oh you don't care about victims and i kind of shared on social media

00:35:32.520 this week. Look, I'm a victim myself. So I do care, but I also care about due process. And

00:35:38.200 more than that, I want this message to get out to these young women. Don't make your identity 1.00

00:35:44.460 victim. Don't even make your identity survivor. I'm a victor in Christ. I don't feel like somebody

00:35:51.120 who is just surviving life. I feel victorious. I feel loved. I feel powerful in Christ. And so

00:35:58.820 i really hate this movement that is teaching young women to um just live in that identity of victim

00:36:05.380 amen well said and we care about truth and wherever truth is absent um there's a another

00:36:12.340 kind of victim so because we we do want to protect victims of all kinds um women contrary to popular

00:36:20.180 opinion do not have a monopoly on victimhood minority ethnicities do not have a monopoly 1.00

00:36:25.620 on victimhood. Anyone by biblical standards can be a victim when they are physically sexually

00:36:31.020 abused or just physically abused or when they are lied about. And so we care about the truth

00:36:36.180 because we love all kinds of victims. We don't want anybody to be mistreated or oppressed.

00:36:42.000 So thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it, Megan.

00:36:45.440 Thanks for having me.

00:36:46.580 Thanks so much for listening. But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor,

00:36:50.820 take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly

00:36:56.160 the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content

00:37:00.300 to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - June 21, 2022

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Truth Behind The SBC & The Guidepost Report ｜ Megan Basham

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