The Forum: Hiking the money trails

Megan Basham sees herself ­primarily as a “suburban church mom,” but she also works as a reporter for conservative news outlet The Daily Wire. Basham’s new book, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, chronicles attempts by left-­leaning organizations to persuade evangelical Christians to advocate for particular public policies on climate change, abortion, illegal immigration, and more. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation.

You call this book a passion project. Why?

It arose from seeing ministries and churches push progressive narratives, marry them to Christianese, and manipulate Scripture to say, for example, you now have to support fossil fuel legislation or certain bills. I couldn’t not talk about these issues, because they’re the most important things in my world: my church, my faith, what I see happening in ministries, how it was impacting my family.

What was the most surprising thing you uncovered?

Probably just how closely tied some Christian ministries were to openly leftist, secular institutions. I would not have had any idea that the Evangelical Immigration Table is under the umbrella of the National Immigration Forum (NIF), a left-wing group funded by large secular foundations, like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Tides Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. Secular leftist foundations are donating money to Christian ministries to produce reports, to put out statements. I did not know that was going on to the extent it was, and that was shocking to me.

Where else did following the money, as they say, lead you?

You can look at IRS 990s and see the Tides Foundation and other leftist groups gave, collectively, $1.3 million to an NIF program intended to influence conservatives called “Bibles, Badges and Business for Immigration Reform.” And the After Party curriculum, designed to reform evangelical thought on politics, is being pushed for churches and Christian schools. It’s supported by the Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest private funders of Planned Parenthood in the country, and by the New Pluralist project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which is another big supporter of abortion and so-called gender-affirming care for youth. Why would churches bring in curriculum funded by these organizations even though we know all their other intentions are opposed to Scripture and a Christian worldview? That should put up red flags.

You challenge some revered figures in your book: David French, Rachael Denhollander, Tim Keller, Russell Moore, J.D. Greear ... That might make some people squirm.

I do, and I’m not known for mincing words. But I try to, at every point, back things up with hard quotes, hard receipts. This is not a polemic. This is not just my opinion.

Isn’t it fair to say some evangelicals come to some of the left-leaning positions you criticize without the influence of left-leaning groups?

Yes, there are people who are taking those sincere positions. And that could lead to me explaining why I, reading my Bible, come to a different position. “You’re a Christian, you disagree with me,” but we walk away both being Christians. But it wasn’t “We’re going to preach the Bible, and we are going to let people, through the Holy Spirit, come to their own conclusions.” It was pushing various ideas into churches to convince them to take certain positions. And at that point, I think you are politicizing the church in un-Biblical ways. So yes, you can come to these positions without the infusion of money, but that wasn’t being allowed to happen.

At some point you opened a door you knew you couldn’t shut again. When was that?

Probably during COVID. The way the church handled issues that should have been matters of personal conscience was the scales-falling-from-the-eyes moment. When the former director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, was hailed as this wonderful Christian leader, I felt a little bit of a temple-cleansing impulse. This is someone who has openly pushed for fetal stem cell research. He has fought for research on aborted organs.

Talk about COVID and the “Love your neighbor” view of vaccinations.

You saw all kinds of evangelical leaders sign that statement published by Collins’ organization, BioLogos, on the COVID vaccine: “Love your neighbor. Get the shot.” It was assumed there’s a loving position, and this is it. I’ll certainly have a good-faith, open argument on “What should our border policies be?” But there is by no means a clear, Biblical, “God says support the Lankford border bill.”

What does accountability going ­forward look like for leaders?

Christian media and media in general play a role. If it’s just left to The Washington Post and The Atlantic and The New York Times, only one kind of story gets told. I also think for the average parishioner, it’s OK to ask your pastor in a respectful, submissive way, “Why are we bringing this in? Why are we doing this?” What I would say to ministry leaders is, if you have questions, do a lot of research, but it’s also OK to go, “You know what? This is off mission for us. This is not what we do here. For example, we feed and clothe needy immigrants who cross our path. We don’t sign statements and lobby for legislation.”

I have to admit the subject matter of your book left me feeling bleak.

I hear what you’re saying. I had to remind myself that throughout history, there have always been secular actors trying to get hold of the Church for one agenda or another, and that Satan’s agenda is to get the Church off the mission that it was given by Christ. Once people realize it’s happening, a lot of Christians rise up and go, “We don’t want this leaven in our churches.”

How do you follow up on a book like this? If some of these organizations or people were to show repentance or regret, what does it look like to report that as publicly as you’re reporting this now?

Hopefully that becomes something I have to deal with. But Rosaria Butterfield said, I repent of taking that position of supporting transgender pronoun hospitality. And Becket Cook, who endorsed books from gay identifying Christians, said, I need to retract that endorsement. Just owning that is an act of humility that I think makes all of us go, OK, we feel so much more unified now, having acknowledged it. And then you can move on. The problem is, we’re not seeing that from a lot of people.

—Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is a former WORLD film and TV reviewer and former co-host for WORLD Radio