Shepherds for Sale: The Definitive Review
The online pushback and downright vitriol directed towards Daily Wire writer and reporter Megan Basham in advance of her book Shepherds for Sale demonstrate one very important reality: There is an entire industry (dare we say “mindustry?”) invested in suppressing the information in her book. It is one thing for the mainstream of Christian culture to dismiss discernment/polemics websites as fringe for cataloging the awfulness of the Evangelical Industrial Complex (also known as “Big Eva,” “Evangelicalism Inc.” or my favorite “Evangelical Intelligentsia”), it is another altogether to read a comprehensive treatment of these characters engaging in the kind of rank hypocrisy and compromise that makes it obvious to the saved and the lost alike how truly awful the industry of Christianity has become.
Yet this is exactly what Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda does. To be sure, Megan Basham is much nicer than we are at Protestia. The bad actors she might call “compromised” are the same ones we will gladly remind you are, at best, useful idiots and, at worst are godless interlopers of the highest order. Our conference-disqualifying ways have always been blamed on pugnaciousness, lack of “gentleness,” or some other vague, emotionalized label, yet the similar attacks faced by Basham for her straightforward, undeniable cataloging of Big Eva’s seedy underbelly demonstrate yet again that it is the message they hate, not the messenger or the messenger’s verbiage.
In contrast to traditional churches, the Evangelical Industrial Complex funds itself on influence, celebrity, and institutional connections with the world. It looks and sounds just like the world because, at its core, it is of the world. It presents itself as bigger than the church, superior to the people it influences (often institutional climbers and/or “servant leader” pastors with no real ideas of their own), and tasked with offering Jesus-branded fulfillment for the desires of the godless world – usually by partnering with it. As the book anecdotally demonstrates, this has been long suspected (and regularly experienced) by regular pew-sitters who are too nice to simply ask why their pastors are going with the flow of culture rather than paddling furiously against it.
Much of Shepherds for Sale‘s content will be familiar to regular readers of Protestia. This website (along with its progenitor Pulpit and Pen and allied sites, podcasts, Youtubers, and writers too numerous to mention) has been busy exposing and cataloging this downgrade in conservative Christianity for years). Yet Megan Basham has provided an invaluable service to faithful pew-sitters and pastors everywhere through this tightly organized, deeply researched, and smoothly written book. She wields her words with the serrated precision of the strongest polemics bloggers yet deftly draws upon impactful real-world stories to make clear how the players, organizations, and motivations behind each issue have brought abuse and harm to the pews. She hits hard at every major leftist social and political priority, explaining in detail how our churches wound up with the Jesus versions of radical climate change ideology, open borders chaos, “pro-life” industry, media knockoffs, critical race theory, MeToo feminism, LGBTQ capitulation, and COVID “vaccine” and lockdown tyranny. Any faithful evangelical Christian uninterested in reading what, according to John MacArthur, “may just be the single most important book on modern Evangelicalism in recent years” is either unserious about the exercise of their faith or is too invested in the business of Christianity to risk pulling their head out of the sand.
Following is a list of topics covered in the book, with links to additional (and sometimes predating) information as chronicled by Protestia and others.
Climate Change Cult
Basham tees off on what Protestia calls the Christianization of the Climate Cult, featuring characters like Jonathan Moo, who along with his father Douglas Moo, pusher of so-called “creation care” as a form of “biblical social justice, Al Gorean prophetess to the seminaries Katherine Hayhoe, and the weak-kneed, compromised leaders like Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary president Danny Akin, who, to this day, allow the climate cult to dig its claws into seminary students under the guise of being “creation lovers.”
Open Borders and Illegal Immigration
In unpacking institutional evangelicalism’s support for open borders and lawless immigration policies, Basham draws on the personal experiences of individuals like Maureen Maloney, whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant. The funding and political motives behind the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT) and its connections to left-wing organizations are comprehensively detailed. Of course, these include the George Soros connections leftist evangelicals bend over backward to deny, but which Pulpit and Pen and Protestia have been reporting on for years.
The “Pro-Life” Movement
Shepherds for Sale describes the ongoing effort of feminism-compromised evangelical leaders to redefine “pro-life” to include social welfare (womb to tomb, anyone?), and avoid holding women responsible for murdering their unborn children, with she-wolves like Karen Swallow Prior and Beth Moore using the overturning of Roe v. Wade into opportunities not to celebrate a victory for life, but to remind the world that abortion is mostly blamed on a lack of redistribution of wealth to mothers.
Christianity Astray
Basham offers an excellent treatment of the woefully and disgustingly compromised Christian media complex, using Russell Moore’s Christianity Today and the Trinity Forum as prime examples of leftward drift, influenced by leftist funders like the Lilly Endowment. Christianity Today’s staff and writers, as Basham has previously reported, donate exclusively to liberal Democrat candidates, parroted the church-shaming COVID lockdown narrative, and produce what is, at best, a cheap, Christian-veneered knockoff of Time Magazine.
COVID Spiritual Abuse
Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, and their band of COVID propaganda-pushing evangelical ghouls like Russell Moore and Ed Stetzer are exposed in chapter five, along with evangelical mainstays like Tim Keller, Rick Warren, JD Greear, David French, pushing now-debunked government COVID demands into churches via the spiritually abusive application of “love your neighbor.” Collins famously called evangelicals murderers for not masking up while singing in church.
Kingdom Diversity
The divisive push of critical race theory (CRT) is laid at the feet of Ibram X Kendi, Jemar Tisby, and world-pleasing stooges like Summit Church’s JD Greear and Village Church’s Matt Chandler. The Southern Baptist Convention’s twisted adoption of the infamous Resolution 9 in 2019 (originally an anti-CRT resolution that became a doorway for its adoption) is recounted, along with the near veneration in evangelical circles of George Floyd as a martyr for systemic racism.
Abuse Inc.
Chapter seven of Shepherds for Sale, detailing the MeToo calamity that overtook evangelicalism (particularly the SBC) is perhaps the most controversial and important in the entire book. To this day, many pastors and pew-sitters are convinced there was and is an ongoing sex abuse crisis in the SBC akin to the priest pedophilia scandal that rocked Roman Catholicism in the early 2000s. Led by pied piper Rachael Denhollander and a predictable stream of cowardly bureaucrats like North American Mission Board president Kevin Ezell, the total lack of a systemic abuse problem in the SBC remains largely unknown by regular churchgoers.
LGBTQ “Christians”
Andy Stanley’s Embracing the Journey conference (as comprehensively exposed by Protestia—we were there for it) is part of Basham’s thorough examination of anti-biblical compromise on sexuality that has overrun mainline denominations and Roman Catholicism and made measurable inroads into conservative evangelical circles. Stanley’s unabashed compromise and willingness to “accommodate” the gay preferences of the culture has been enough to wake up many pastors (Ryan Visconti being a discussed example), who are now seeing the devil behind the curtain of world-sensitive marketers like Stanley.
Megah Basham’s book is thorough, easy to read, and well worth the time of every Christian – whether you are familiar with its topics (because you wisely read Protestia), or are simply wondering why your pastor is refusing to side with obvious biblical truth on the world’s pet issues. Pick it up today, or gift it to someone you know who needs to be equipped to fight evangelicalism’s leftist disease.
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This book is much-needed and I pray wildly successful.
About the infiltration of Climate Change cult–
Why should the church participate in Gaia worship/ Green Agenda? That’s pagan and one of tenants of the N-azi party. Sounds like the shepherds are paid spokesmen or Biblically illiterate.
I once gave talk at a church about a mission trip. They had a grade school and were promoting Earth Day. I asked one of the young teachers why were they doing that and she answered,” We’re supposed to be good stewards and not hurt the Earth.” I stated that was true, but it was not appropriate to teach children that somehow humans held the fate of the Earth in their control. She objected. I asked if she had read Revelation? She looked down, but said yes. Then I asked,” what does it say about the Earth during Tribulation… the earthquakes, lack of water, the death of all life in the oceans, and burning up of all green things ?” She stared. I continued,” You do know there will be an asteroid striking the Earth that tips its axis to “wobble to and fro like a drunkard”… islands and land masses disappear while others will gain land… you do realize that is the Earth’s future until JC returns?” She looked like she was going to cry.
Not being nasty, but concerned over her Biblical ignorance. What are these preachers teaching the flocks?
Should we be good custodians? Absolutely. Is this world going to be completely wrecked during Tribulation then restored when JC rules? Absolutely. After GWTJ, we get new Heaven and new Earth. Based on all that, whether I recycle my plastics or use cloth grocery bags is really not that important.