Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

For years now radical secular left beliefs and practices have been increasingly infiltrating the churches, including Bible-believing evangelical churches. In the name of “love,” “tolerance,” and “compassion” – terms lacking clear biblical referents – many activist agenda items of the radicals are being pushed in Christian circles.

Be it pro-abortion agendas, homosexual and trans agendas, or socialist agendas, far too many churches have been falling for all this. Calls for “acceptance” and inclusion” and “diversity” and “social justice” are also being heard, but again, usually bereft of Scriptural definition.

For decades now I and so many others have been seeking to sound the alarm on this. Three years ago for example I discussed 20 important new books offering critiques of all this.

One of the newest and best books is that by Megan Basham. Titled Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, it is a very well-researched and heavily documented look at how the progressives and radical leftists are white-anting the churches from within.

Biblical truth is being replaced by social justice sloganeering, Scriptural facts are being replaced by feelings and emotions, and long-standing Chrisian doctrines are being replaced by the latest trendy activist agendas. And as she informs us early on, she is NOT here speaking of the obvious hardcore religious lefties such as Jim Wallis of Sojourners fame.

But it is in supposedly Bible-believing churches and denominations that so much of this is taking place. In her Introduction Basham asks why so many leaders, pastors and organisations are falling for this:

Are they dupes or deceivers? Is it organic or orchestrated? Certainly, money is playing a role in some of these evolutions, and there is no doubt, as we’ll see, that once-trusted evangelical leaders and institutions have yoked themselves to left-wing billionaires and their pet projects. But it need not always be explicitly transactional. Institutional prestige, seeing oneself lauded on CNN and in the Washington Post as more intellectually and morally advanced than the rest of the evangelical rabble, can also be a potent elixir. So can gilded invitations to the most exclusive parties in the world.

Pastor Rick Warren boasts of his role as a “global influencer” to the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. Christianity Today’s editor in chief, Russell Moore, opens his latest book with an off-topic recollection of being a guest at President Obama’s White House Christmas party. Is it a coincidence that both these men now habitually push progressive views that directly conflict with the feelings of the men and women the media claims they represent?  (xxii)

Of course, in a 300-page book like this, we do not just have theoretical musings. Plenty of details are presented, and plenty of names and organisations are discussed. There is a large amount of documented detail found here, all fully backed up by 50 pages of endnotes in fine print.

And the volume makes it quite clear that all this has not happened by accident. There have been deliberate attempts made to undermine the gospel and the churches and to see them replaced with fake gospels and fake churches. And this even involves some well-known evangelicals.

Part of the reason for a big backlash by some against Basham and her book is that she does name names. The usual retorts are being heard: ‘We should just love others.’ ‘We should strive for unity.’ ‘We should not be divisive.’ But when the very gospel is at stake, folks can be named and shamed and called far worse, as when Paul says such people should be accursed.

The stakes are indeed far too high. And there are many areas where we see the leftist takeover of the churches, be it radical climate alarmism, pushing pro-death agendas instead of defending life, Covid hysteria, championing open borders, race-baiting, and the usual ‘hate America first’ ideology that is now as much at home in some churches as in the world.

The title of the book speaks in financial terms, so be aware that there is quite a bit of documentation here on where funding is coming from and where it is going to. Consider the evangelical media, and the charitable institution the Lilly Endowment, which funds many leftist organisations. It has also given large grants to magazines like Christianity Today.

‘That’s good’ you might say. But, as Basham explains, “a quick look at public campaign records shows that when it comes to political donations, Christianity Today’s heart is most certainly with the party of abortion and the LGBTQ agenda. She explains:

Between 2015 and 2022, the outlet’s staff and board members made seventy-four political donations. Every single one went to Democrats. That tally includes Christianity Today president and CEO Timothy Dalrymple who in 2020 donated $300 to failed Georgia Senate candidate Sarah Riggs Amico, who ran on a platform of protecting abortion “without exception” and of repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal tax dollars from funding abortions. Amico also declared herself a “staunch LGBTQ ally,” promising to support the Equality Act, a radical bill that would, as the Heritage Foundation has detailed, threaten parental rights over children who claim to be transgender, decimate conscience rights for medical workers, and “cancel religious freedom.” (p. 75)

Reading this chapter on the “money men” alone will give all biblical Christians real pause for concern.

The homosexual invasion of the churches

But the ongoing attempt to fully queer the evangelical church is of course a major example of all this – perhaps THE major example. Her eighth chapter, “None Dare Call It Sin: LGBTQ in the Church” is all about this nefarious attack on the faith. Consider just one way this has been attempted by those with power and influence:

In 2000, Jon Stryker, gay heir to a one-hundred-billion-dollar surgical supply conglomerate, kicked off the new millennium by launching the Arcus Foundation, a grant-making institution that soon became the largest funder of LGBTQ initiatives in the United States. But after legislative defeats like the passage of a 2008 California law banning gay marriage, it realised its efforts to break down America’s last remaining vestiges of traditional sexual morality were continually running into the same formidable roadblock – Christianity….

Stryker’s foundation began devoting tens of millions of dollars to, in its words, “challenging the promotion of narrow or hateful interpretations of religious doctrine” within every major Christian denomination. Between 2013 and 2018, for instance, it gave over two million dollars to the Reconciling Ministries Network to “secure the full participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the United Methodist Church,” the last mainline denomination still resistant to full affirmation of the entire rainbow panoply. . . . Given that the UMC went through a schism in 2022 over LGBTQ ordination and gay marriage, it seems Stryker’s money was well spent. (pp. 202-203)

She goes on to demonstrate how megachurch pastors and leaders such as Rick Warren, J. D. Greear, Beth Moore, Tim Keller, Andy Stanley and others have sadly gotten into all this. For example, one gay-friendly program Embracing the Journey has been picked up by many of these leaders. Consider just this about Warren:

The question is whether Saddleback got duped by Embracing the Journey or whether it, like North Point, understood what kind of organization it was partnering with and was hoping to gradually “nudge” its members in an affirming direction. I reached out to Saddleback about these questions but never received a response. But the best-case scenario is it had a shockingly poor vetting process and an equally shocking lack of discernment. The worst case is that Warren and, certainly, the husband-and-wife team he hand-selected to take over pastoring duties in August 2022 knew exactly whom they were letting in the door. (p. 213)

Concluding thoughts

Let me at this point say something that needs to be said, and many of you might concur. When we get criticisms of people like Warren and others, that is not to say that they are only always evil of course. Often they are quite good and sound, at least when they stick to more biblical and theological areas. It is when they veer into leftist politics and agendas that it becomes so concerning.

For example, those familiar with my site will find a number of positive articles on Keller, be it quoting from him, reviewing his books, and so on. I even wrote a glowing eulogy of him when he recently passed. And when my wife was in her last stages of terminal cancer, she found various Keller podcasts to be quite helpful indeed.

So it is this mixture of the good and the not-so-good that makes this all the more problematic. On many topics, such as the issue of suffering and evil, Keller has a lot of brilliant and useful things to say. But when he runs with one side of politics – especially one that in so many ways is antithetical to biblical Christianity – that makes it even more of a worry.

As is often the case with books like this, one can be left deflated and discouraged. But in her Conclusion, Basham gives us reasons to be hopeful:

Many forces are trying to claim American churches for many agendas, but ultimately there’s only one force, one agenda. We do not battle against flesh and blood. Satan’s wolves in sheep’s clothing secretly slip into the church for one reason: to prevent it from snatching more souls out of the fire. But while their number and certainly their advantages can seem overwhelming, we often discover that when we face them with the courage of Christ, it doesn’t take much strength or wealth or cunning to overcome them. (p. 237)

And again:

Now is our moment – “Laymen as well as ministers” – to stand in defense of the Gospel against foreign doctrines that have come into the church. It is our moment to pray that the Lord will strengthen our hands and embolden our hearts for the task.

Boniface, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Machen, Schaeffer, and Lewis (not to mention the Apostles Peter, Paul, and Jude) courageously called nonsense nonsense and heresy, heresy. These are our heroes of the faith…. (p. 241)

Even though this book has been out only for a short while, plenty of controversy surrounds it, and some of those she takes to task in it have already challenged her on what she wrote. I have seen her carefully and courageously answer point for point the objections and criticisms they level against her.

Given all this back-and-forth debate and discussion, one can already perceive that a follow-up volume may well be needed. Time will tell if that eventuates, but what we have here is a vitally important and necessary volume. Full credit to Basham for having the insight, bravery and fortitude to produce this book for such a time as this.