Let me start with a light-hearted reference to a famous bit of pop culture. Back in 1959, Marilyn Monroe (along with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) starred in the film, Some Like It Hot. In it she sang the memorable song, “I Wanna Be Loved by You.” It opens with these words:
I wanna be loved by you, just you
Nobody else but you
I wanna be loved by you, alone!
Boop-boop-a-doop!
And now for my more serious point. Sadly we have many in our churches today who seem to crave a similar thing: being loved – in this case, by the world. Let me explain. For those not in the know, ‘Big Eva’ refers to ‘Big Evangelicalism,’ which has to do with Christian elites, celebrities and powerbrokers within the evangelical camp, especially in America.
Unfortunately, there are many in this group – just as there are many ordinary believers – who crave the love, approval, recognition, and praise of the world. The older biblical term would be ‘men-pleasers’. They want to be loved and accepted by the surrounding pagan culture, especially by the pagan elites and powerbrokers.
They want to be seen as respectable and acceptable and oh so very mainstream. ‘Hey, there is nothing radical about us!’ True Christians, however, according to the New Testament, will normally be hated, rejected, maligned and relegated to the fringes of secular society. Seeking the praise and imprimatur of the world is not something biblical Christians should be striving for.
Indeed, we must choose who we want to please. As the Apostle put it in James 4:4, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
So it is the old ‘choose you this day whom you are going to serve’ imperative (Joshua 24:15). Do we want to be embraced and gushed over by the world, or do we want to have the approval and recognition of God only? While sometimes loving and serving the Lord can result in the world liking us, usually, this is not the case, and we must be aware of this reality.
I am writing all this because, for the third day in a row now, I want to highlight a very important new book. I have been writing a lot lately about Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda by Megan Basham. It fully documents the sort of things I have just been talking about: evangelical pastors, leaders, organisations, and institutions that seem more intent on earning the praise of men and the approval of the world than of being true to God and his Word.
To be seen as cool, trendy, with-it, and acceptable to the likes of the world’s VIPs, the media, and the academy, they are far too willing to compromise biblical truth. To make it into the good books of CNN and the NYT, they are happy to jettison or water down key biblical beliefs and values. Some are willing, in other words, to sell their souls for a bowl of porridge.
Given that the powerbrokers in the West are overwhelmingly of the left, Big Eva is willing to cozy up to their various progressive agenda items. In order to curry the favour of the world, it will soft peddle or backtrack on key ethical issues such as the sanctity of life and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. All this I have documented in my two previous pieces.
Here I just want to offer a few key quotes found early on in the book. These are damning quotes indeed but must-read quotes. Basham uses the major evangelical publication Christianity Today as a clear case in point. I earlier had quoted from her, noting how their staff made 74 political donations – all of them to Democrats. She goes on to say this:
Nor is the issue that a number of Christianity Today staffers donate to Democrats. It’s also which staff have done so. It might not make much difference if the IT guy or the woman who sells advertising places some chips on blue before an election, but when the CEO, a board member, and a vice president do so, and no one in the executive ranks appears to counterbalance their views, there’s a question of how much that’s influencing the content of the magazine. Even worse is when the editorial staff are making campaign donations. Then it’s not just a question of a political outlook that’s wildly out of step with the audience the magazine purports to serve, but also a violation of professional ethics….
Five different editors at Christianity Today contributed to Democrats (and only Democrats) between 2015 and 2022, including news editor Daniel Silliman. He gave to five different pro-abortion candidates, among them, Elizabeth Warren, who is so committed to the cause of death that she has pushed to shut down all crisis pregnancy centers across the country.
pp. 75-76
But get this, the most important bit of all:
After he left the magazine former editor in chief Mark Galli admitted in a since-deleted essay that the staff is driven by a deep desire for the approval of secular elites:
“Elite evangelicalism (represented by CT, IVPress, World Vision, Fuller Seminary, and a host of other establishment organizations) is too often ‘a form of cultural accommodation dressed as convictional religion.’ These evangelicals want to appear respectable to the elite of American culture….”
Part of the reason for this, Galli explained, was because these members of the evangelical media fancy themselves as elite:
“For the longest time, a thrill went through the office when Christianity Today or evangelicalism in general was mentioned in a positive vein by The New York Times or The Atlantic or other such leading, mainstream publications. The feeling in the air was, ‘We made it. We’re respected’….”
Galli acknowledged that this hunger for worldly respectability drives Christianity Today’s editorial decisions as well, not just in what editors cover, but also in what they choose not to cover.
“We said, for example, that the magazine did not take a stand in the complementarianism or egalitarianism debate. But we rarely if ever published an article that endorsed complementarianism; we did offer many that assumed egalitarianism in family and church life (not to mention the many women pastors who [sic] we published).”
It was also no coincidence, Galli said, that Christianity Today has not run an article in the last 30 years that “argued for or assumed six-day creation.” Instead, it publishes writers who take the respectable secular position that the Earth is a billion years old.
pp. 76-77
All that is very telling indeed. No wonder Galli’s essay was deleted. The men-pleasing evangelical elites do not like it when they are outed in this regard. And Basham is of course not just picking on CT. She goes on to say this:
What has happened to Christianity Today is a story common to any number of once-faithful evangelical institutions. Part of it is, no doubt, organic, as predicted by the famous “First Law” coined by British political pundit John O’Sullivan: “All organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.” Hebrews 2:1 warns of a similar tendency when it comes to theological matters: “Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.”
Nothing in the world comes so naturally to a Christian as putting away his oars of resistance and floating off on the cultural tides. This is especially true when you know that the firm ground of Scripture you’re standing on is increasingly becoming a deserted island.
But another part of what is happening at some high-profile evangelical media organisations and think tanks is being quite intentionally orchestrated. Young Christians on social media have developed something of an edgy corollary to O’Sullivan’s law that describes the phenomenon: “Progressives will hollow out your trusted institutions and wear them like a skin suit.” That is, from the outside, those institutions will still use the lingo and symbols of the Christian faith. But look at them a little more closely, and you will discover something newly alien within.
pp. 78-79
Of course, the great Gresham Machen had said similar things a century earlier in his 1923 book Christianity and Liberalism. There he spoke of how Christian terminology was being usurped by theological liberals so that what remains of the faith really has nothing to do with biblical Christianity.
Indeed, Basham refers to Machen a few times in this book. So the problems we are facing today are really not anything new. Although back then those seeking to undermine and effectively destroy historic Christianity were not usually calling themselves evangelicals. Today they are.
That is why this book is such absolutely essential reading. We did not learn our lessons from the warnings Machen gave 101 years ago. Will we now wake up and heed Basham? Time will tell.
