Gavin Ortlund Breaks Ranks, Bolsters Basham Book Sales
The cone of silence order had been issued. The Evangelical Intelligentsia was busy pretending Megan Basham’s just-released book Shepherds for Sale didn’t exist. But pastor-turned-professional-Youtuber and “theologian in residence” at daddy’s church Gavin Ortlund couldn’t help himself.
Noticing his presence in Basham’s chapter on climate change and convinced that he could ride in as fellow “theologian in residence” Russell Moore’s white knight and vanquish the evil journalistic seductress, Ortlund rushed to his office to record a video claiming that he was a victim – not of the same leftist infiltration that has similarly overtaken many evangelical pastors – but of Basham’s lies. Lies that, according to Ortlund, involved Basham labeling him a “shepherd for sale” who made agreement on climate science a marker of Christian faithfulness.
Except Basham’s book didn’t label Ortlund a “shepherd for sale.” Nor did it say he made climate change activism a measure of one’s faithfulness to the Gospel. Basham’s anecdotal use of Ortlund’s March 2022 video instructing Christians to “engage” on climate change – a video in which he claims the climate science consensus “obvious,” “common sense,” and characterizes “engaging” with the presumed obvious truth of the science is a natural outworking of Christian worldview and love of neighbor – is used by Ortlund as evidence that Basham’s book is not a truthful or helpful book for the church in our time.
Yet apart from his hyperbolic claims that he’s the “climactic example of a shepherd for sale in chapter one” (with requisite naval-gazing questions like “Does Megan think I am a shepherd for sale? Does she even think I’m a Christian?”), Ortlund’s primary issue is with Basham’s logical construction of his position on Christians and climate change by sentence summary of his own words. Or you know, exactly what this very article is doing.
In his response video (in which he bizarrely claimed to not know who Greta Thunberg was and chastised Basham for not reaching out to him before including him in the book even though they’ve already publicly debated the issue), Orlund was aghast that Basham’s wrote:
Ortlund cites only one scientific authority in his video, the same one the ECI cited 16 years earlier: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which he describes as a group of leading scientists from all over the world. He goes on to say that every “scientific body of national or international standing agrees that human-caused global warming is a serious problem.” To not accept that consensus, he says, is to buy into “conspiracy and hoax;” it is a failure to “take a responsible posture” as a Christian.
Shepherds for Sale, page 26
He claimed that Basham’s summed conclusion about what he was saying in his video was “a very shady tactic of distortion,” “thick spin,” and “bearing false testimony.” Yet her “tactic” is the exact same used in the preceding sentence – summarizing a subject’s position and/or claims by drawing a clearly logical summary into the narrative. The quotes used in Basham’s summary were drawn from Ortlund saying:
If you’re going to go against a near consensus in the scientific community, don’t just shoot from the hip, you know, study it and make sure that that’s a wise thing to do, because I see a lot of people reacting instinctively rather than really hitting the books. And I don’t think that that’s a responsible posture for Christians to take.
…from 2007 on, every other scientific body of national or international standing agrees that human caused global warming is a serious problem. So the level of conspiracy and hoax, it would be if somehow all of these different people think that scientists are all together, people have this distrust of science…
If this were the only statements Ortlund made in his video, he might have a case. But adding additional context from his video makes the accuracy of Basham’s summary even clearer:
Ortlund’s March 2022 video clearly frames the climate science consensus as obvious, opposition to it as conspiratorial, Christians as morally responsible for taking action, and evangelical resistance to acceptance of and advocacy for the climate narrative as politically motivated rather than the result of study and conviction (no, these facts are not changed by Ortlund’s Keller Juke* at the end of his video). Basham could not have found a more perfect case study of pastoral capitulation to the left’s climate change agenda.
* A “Keller Juke” is when authoritative assertions are bookended by statements of noncommitment or positional equivocation.
By transparently and narcissistically attempting to be the hero for progressive opposition to Shepherds for Sale, Gavin Ortlund (and his laundry list of decidedly un-conservative positional baggage) broke ranks. He violated the cone of silence. He drew unwanted attention to the theological particulars the evangelical left tries so desperately to avoid discussing – the particulars that are at the heart of Basham’s book. The discussion that followed, marked by a wide array of voices exposing Ortlund’s ham-handed attention grab, both exposed the compromise of ankle-biting institutional climbers on social media (bigger evangelical names are apparently hanging Ortlund out to dry) and reinforced exactly why pew-sitters and faithful pastors are rushing to buy Basham’s book.
Gavin Ortlund is not a victim. He is a cautionary tale.
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This was disappointing, to say the least. The amount of clearly inflammatory language made it near impossible to focus on your actual rebuttal of Ortlund — which, not incidentally, buttresses his claims.
Very good post, David.