Megan Basham: Bearing False Witness

Aug 04, 2024

Megan Basham, a reporter/pundit for various conservative media outlets, has, with the release of Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, made a big acerbic splash within Protestant Evangelical circles. As I write, this book ranks #24 among Amazon’s best sellers, and #1 in each of her appointed categories Church & State Religious Studies, Christian Social Issues (Books) and History of Religion & Politics.

Good for her, (albeit stated with a tinge of vainglorious envy). This book appears to have the typical hallmarks of a good American writer, amassing a surfeit of artifacts to validate a conclusion.

I have likewise declaimed some of the same Mainstream and Progressive Evangelicals as Basham (i.e. David French, Grand Polarizer; Russell Moore, current editor of Christianity Today). But I am also inclined to aim my polemical arrows against Conservative Evangelicals (i.e., Albert Mohler, Owen Strachan, Denny Burk, John MacArthur). Intellectual integrity and fidelity to the God of Scriptures undermines any hopes of acquiring an audience in either camp in these extremely polarized times. Indeed, to be an outlier and renegade in these times, “do not swerve to the right or to the left.”1 Basham clearly swerves to the right, even declaiming those who hold “center” positions.

The Bible instructs us to proclaim truth, not to hold centers. And anyway, the center is far too liberal a place for biblical authority. So is most of the right these days for that matter.2

But it is in the scrupulous search for truth, a disposition made existentially necessary in order to survive and overcome a deep psychosis (“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”3), that I naturally arrived at a neither left nor right theological and sociopolitical stance.

Whatever Basham accomplishes, it does not compete but may rather complement and factually undergird any future writing project on the matter. For I delve into the deeper theological reasons why Evangelicalism has long been in a state of terminal decline.

However

The one serious, even unforgivable, fault with her book is the lack of judiciousness in whom and upon what basis she aims her polemical arrows.

We are counseled to attack the erroneous idea, more so than the beholders and promulgators of those spiritually dangerous errors.4 Yet, I am not averse to calling out the idiots and charlatans by name. However, if intending to perform such a task, a Christian must proceed with the scrupulous care of a prosecutor, subject to disbarment for dishonesty and injudiciousness.

With regard to Gavin Ortlund, in particular, Basham is expressly dishonest and injudicious. One, if not the primary, theme of the book is the willingness of some Evangelical pastors and theologians to dilute and compromise the full counsel of God for the sake of filthy lucre and/or social relevance and prominence. Many become committed activists for (Leftist) issues which lack any authentic and unequivocal biblical sanction.

These are complex topics. It is not wrong for pastors and Christian leaders to weigh them and debate. But it is wrong for them to make agreement on environmental policies a test of biblical faithfulness. It is wrong to make climate change activism a measure of one's commitment to the gospel.5

The very inclusion of Ortlund in a book with such a title incontrovertibly insinuates that Ortlund is an Evangelical whore, at least with regard to Climate Change. But is Ortlund such a gung-ho activist for Climate Change? Ought there not to be more than one vlog artifact by which one can make apprise such a claim? (“Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” – 2 Corinthians 13:1). Were there not better candidates to prove Basham’s point?

As one defender of Ortlund has noted about that vlog, although Ortlund is openly persuaded of the reality and perils of Climate Change, and has long been so, well before recent attempts by rich Progressives to infiltrate the Evangelical camp, Ortlund has made no litmus test for heresy.

I don’t know if I’d agree with him on what needs to be done about it or not because he didn’t even advocate for any specific policy solution in his video.6

Ortlund does upbraid mindless pundits who opine without bothering to thumb through the documentation, both for and against.

I'm just deeply burdened that many people come to this super strong opinion about climate change just as they do on other social and cultural issues without having studied it, not based on the evidence, but based on the socio-political associations of the issue. I think that is a massive problem and we've got to avoid that if we are called to be people of truth. That means we shouldn't make up our minds in advance on an issue we should study the issue we should read books about the issue.7 . . . If you're gonna go against a near consensus in the scientific community, don't just shoot from the hip. 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 . . . Whatever conviction we come to, we should come to it by thorough study among other things.

Jonathan David, quoted above, felt compelled to defend Ortlund, partly because, as he admits, “I am a fan of Gavin Ortlund.” I am not such a fanboy. Indeed, I recently sent Ortlund a 3,000 word essay, objecting to his medicalized understanding on mental health (“John MacArthur on Mental Illness: This is Bad Theology,” May 2nd, 2024). I pulled no punches.

Until you have knowledge, sifted with critical scrutiny, shut the hell up about something you know little about except that which comes from your gut (a.k.a. truthiness). Both of you cause nothing but harm. A plague upon both your houses.
– email to Gavin Ortlund, May 4, 2024
The Curse of Pompous Know-Nothing Seminarians
The last people that I would recommend going for psychological distress are seminarians. Gavin Ortlund declaimed the latest of John MacArthur’s stance on psychology; a low hanging-fruit, to be sure. However, the position to which Ortlund subscribes is equally ignorant and repugnant. MacArthur and Ortlund represent the two rival Evangelical camps, Biblical and Christian Counseling, both of which are largely worthless.8

Yet, my sense of intellectual integrity and justice is aggrieved when the reputations of even those, with whom I heartily disagree, are shafted through all the sophistic tricks of deceit and dissembling, especially when conducted by self-identifying Christians. I went no less ballistic on Russell Moore for perpetuating the Democratic line that Trump was a convicted felon in a case which seriously violated many basic procedural principles of biblical and natural justice.

Megan Bashan, who claims to speak truth to power, appears to be punching down. As of August 3, 2024, 7:04 pm, the vlog entry in question has received 8,564 views since it was published August 3, 2022. The number of views that Megan Basham’s “How Pastors are Compromising the Gospel to Appease the Left,” published on September 22, 2022, has received ii 23,101. Who is the greater Evangelical influencer?

The basic point is that there are significant instances where what Basham claims Gavin Ortlund said in his video and what Gavin Ortlund actually said in his video are not the same, and the differences are significant.

It has been Ortlund’s stated and general practice to win the argument, partly by being winsome. The heavy-handed psychological and spiritual manipulation (i.e., Climate Change as a “Gospel Issue”), which one observes among many seminarians and influencers, is typically missing from his vlogs.

A Mea Culpa Required

Considering the dishonest polemic vis-à-vis Gavin Ortlund, a truly regenerated conscience would freely admit to maintaining a less than adequate standard of provable truth-telling in this instance, especially when handling of the reputations of others. I no longer expect a public mea culpa from Evangelicals anymore, especially from those from the Reformed stream.

Certainly, I cannot in good conscience throw money at Basham’s book although it was on my wish list just last month. Who else has she unfairly maligned? Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

Moreover, as one for whom the current lack of intellectual integrity is one of my biggest bugaboos, it would be hypocritical to sponsor such dissembling and callous disregard. It was this very lack of intellectual integrity which turned my stomach and my regard for the climatologists in the aftermath of Climategate. Unless and until, Michael E. Mann’s is severed by the rusty blade of an old guillotine, I shall continue to disregard the issue upon a greater principle.

For contrary to Ortlund, who fails to heed the warning to be “shrewd as snakes,” the modern practitioners of science are no longer those impartial gnomes of Nietsche’s febrile fantasy (Beyond Good and Evil, 1886, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers”).

Yet those, who declaim the practitioners of lies, deceits, and disingenuity, out not to be practitioners of similar sorceries.

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