More on Shepherds for Sale

Basham’s new book deserves careful reading:

One of the most important books of the year is Shepherds for Sale by Megan Basham. Yesterday I did an 1800-word review of this very much needed volume. What I said in my write-up briefly lays out what is found in it, and why it is such a significant book for Christians to be aware of: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/08/16/a-review-of-shepherds-for-sale-by-megan-basham/  

But one can only do so much in a short review. So I need another article or two to properly do the book real justice. Here I can get to some of the areas/chapters that I was not able to cover in my previous piece. As already stated, this book primarily focuses on American evangelicalism and how so many leaders, pastors, organisations and denominations have been selling out to radical leftist agendas and ideologies.

Thus the subtitle of her book: “How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.” In yesterday’s piece I mentioned other books that have done similar sorts of things. But this one may be the best so far in offering a wealth of detail and documentation: fifty pages of endnotes in small print is an indication of this.

Chapter Five of the book is on the Covid wars and how the government used pastors and churches to spread its message and methods, including the need for total lockdowns, mandatory medicine, forced vaccinations, and highly questionable science.

The chapter especially zeros in on Francis Collins, the National Institutes of Health director. A quick look at the index reveals that she spends more time on this individual than any other person in the book. And there is very good reason for this.

She actually had a chance to interview him for the book, but oddly enough the interview was dropped at the last moment. Hmm. She was keen to ask him some tough questions, something the mainstream media had refused to do with him and Fauci.

She explains in great detail how Collins almost single-handedly did the bidding of the State as he readily and fully pushed the party line. She writes: “In late August 2020, BioLogos, a faith and science organization Collins founded that merges Darwinian evolution and Scripture, released a public statement titled ‘Love Your Neighbor, Get the Shot’ in favor of vaccines, masks, and lockdown orders.”

Many well-known evangelicals were happy to be signatories to this, including N. T. Wright, Philip Yancey, David French, Timothy Dalyrmple of Christianity Today and Walter Kim of Baker Publishing. These folks took a pledge ‘because of their faith in Jesus Christ’ to do the following, and more:

-“Wear Masks” because “Mask rules are not experts taking away our freedom, but an opportunity to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 6:31).

-“Get vaccinated” because “Vaccination is a provision from God.”

-“Correct misinformation and conspiracy theories when we encounter them in our social media and communities.” Because “Christians are called to love the truth, we should not be swayed by falsehoods (1 Corinthains 13:6).”

 

…Elsewhere the document got a lot more specific, and it suggested that the signers were agreeing to treat medical opinions that didn’t align with those of Collins and Fauci as conspiracy theories as well. (p. 95)

In this regard they worked overtime to demonise experts who dared to hold a contrary point of view, including Stanford professor of medicine and health policy Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Says Basham:

Bhattacharya and some of his “non-consensus” colleagues – like biostatistician and Harvard professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff and Oxford infectious disease epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta – opposed pandemic policies like lockdowns, and they questioned conventional scientific wisdom about the severity of the virus. They were beginning to advocate publicly for different approach, one that didn’t require everyone to isolate and social-distance but instead focused on protecting vulnerable populations, like the elderly and the immunocompromised. This non-consensus group would eventually release their public proposal for herd immunity as the Great Barrington Declaration, and tens of thousands of epidemiologists and public health scientists, including a Nobel Prize winner would sign it. As the pandemic progressed, they also spoke out against mask and vaccine mandates and called for more serious consideration of vaccine injuries and risk. (p. 96)

When that first came out I wrote it up and quoted from it. It is still a vitally important document: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/10/10/the-great-barrington-declaration/

But Collins and Co wanted nothing to do with it:

In private emails in October 2020, Collins deemed the Great Barrington authors “fringe epidemiologists” and worried that they were “getting out of control, and getting too much traction.” He urged Fauci to make sure the work of the Great Barrington doctors faced a “quick and devastating takedown.” This didn’t mean seriously engaging with the scientific arguments presented in the Great Barrington Declaration – neither Collins nor Fauci ever did that. It meant relying on media connections to ensure the declaration was dismissed as quackery. (pp. 96-97)

Other chapters in the book focus on things like climate alarmism, the MeToo movement, and Critical Race theory. I have already spent time on the homosexualisation of the churches in my previous piece, but given its overwhelming importance, let me return to that discussion (Chapter 8 of her book).

She spends a fair amount of time looking at homosexual activists who are seeking to overturn the biblical truth on these matters – people such as Matthew Vines. Sadly their influence has been quite substantial and far too many churches and church leaders have fallen for their siren sounds.

But she also reminds us of what Scripture teaches on this, including 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and she gives a shout out to those who have not bowed the knee to the rainbow gods:

Author Rosaria Butterfield left a life of lesbianism when she became a Christian. She has described her process of dying to self to live for Christ in several books, but in her latest, Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, she offers a haunting rebuke to anyone peddling false peace in these matters: “How sad indeed for someone who is already weighed down by sin to be denied the true remedy for the problem. That is what gay Christianity does. It denies the sexual sinner repentance.” Without repentance, there is no salvation. Without salvation, Hell is not just possible, it is inevitable. (p. 209)

See my review of that vital volume here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/10/05/a-review-of-five-lies-of-our-anti-christian-age-by-rosaria-butterfield/

Well-known evangelical leaders like Andy Stanley, Tim Keller and Rick Warren are examined in some detail by Basham. She then says this:

Here’s the truth – the examples I have laid out in this chapter barely scratch the surface of the countless tentacles of gay and transgender ideology that have invaded evangelical institutions. To even begin to cover it would take a very lengthy book of its own. These are presented as representative examples.

 

Though public outcry later forced it to reverse, in 2014 the humanitarian charity World Vision announced that it would start hiring married gay Christians as a symbol of unity. No amount of fierce criticism was enough to stop Bethany Christian Services, the largest Protestant adoption institution of its kind, from deciding in 2021 to begin placing children with same-sex couples, even though heterosexual married couples already often have to spend years on waiting lists before they are given a child. It would be much faster to list the formerly faithful Christian colleges and universities who have not capitulated to LGBTQ demands than to try to cover those who have, but Baylor, Azusa Pacific, Wheaton, and Calvin University are just a few who offer some level of accommodation, including allowing LGBTQ clubs and same-sex student romances and retaining faculty who reject orthodoxy on this issue. (p. 225)

She looks at others who have caved big time, including Beth Moore, and goes on to say this:

The reason for so much compromise is obvious. Today, this is the point of pain where orthodoxy falls away for those who are not truly committed to picking up their cross. For the most part, our current culture will not fault you, as liberals did in J. Gresham Machen or Francis Schaeffer’s day, for having orthodox beliefs about the resurrection or the inerrancy of scripture. They will often not even fault you for saying Jesus is the only way to Heaven, but simply brush the belief off as an antiquated oddity. The thing that could shut you out of careers, cost you social standing, and even land you in a years-long legal struggle – as happened with the Colorado baker Jack Phillips – is a refusal to capitulate on what the Bible says about sex, sexuality, and marriage. (p. 226)

And what she says about true and false shepherds must be heard and affirmed:

Many pastors, doctrinally sound but unaware of the boot camp efforts that have been under way for years, have, out of a desire not to appear judgmental or overly focused on one sin to the exclusion of others, been successfully shamed into barely mentioning homosexuality, transgenderism, or the rest of the LGBTQ array. When they do mention it, it is only briefly and in the vaguest terms, so as not to be accused of being unwelcoming or unloving. Given this imbalance in commitment to our respective beliefs, faithful Christians can hardly wonder at the fact that the LGBTQ movement is chewing up ground and claiming new converts as quickly as evangelical churches are meekly ceding the field. 

 

These shepherds should recall the warning of John Calvin: ‘Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics.’ Well, the heretics are here. They are all around us, and their numbers are growing. Pastors need to remember that while evangelism is important, it’s not their first responsibility. Their first responsibility is to feed the sheep, to equip the saints. For too many pastors, concern for showing compassion to the lost means they’re not protecting the sheep from false teaching. They are, in fact, starving the sheep to appease goats. John 10:12–13 has a word for them: “The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” (p. 228)

The book’s final four concluding paragraphs are well worth sharing here:

No one, least of all Christians, should welcome civil war in the Church. But too many Church leaders have grown arrogant due to the rank and file’s reluctance to seem unpleasant or uncharitable by confronting their deceit and manipulation, and a unity based on acceptance of false teaching is a unity of the damned. As Aragorn says to Theoden, king of Rohan, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, open war is upon us whether we would risk it or not. Or, as Moses says to the Gadites and Reubenites in Numbers 32, “Should your fellow Israelites go to war while you sit here?”

 

That is where we are. Open war is upon us and has been for a number of years. But we possess a power that no other in the world can rival. Listen to the progressive strategists as they complain that evangelicals have been the toughest nut to crack despite the tens of millions of dollars they have spent promoting elite church influencers who voice their preferred views.

 

Why is that so? Because unlike any other targeted demographic, we have the objective source of truth. We have a North Star that pulls us back when we wander too far afield, that ensures that we fight the right battles in the right way. We have the Word that is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). The time has come to pick up that sword and unashamedly use it against the cunning and craftiness of people who would see us blown here and there by every wind of teaching, and to pursue what our Lord calls us to in Ephesians 4:15-16:

 

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (pp. 242-243)

Please get this book and read it for yourself.

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