Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham’s latest book revealing the leftist influences on American Evangelicalism hit the shelves on Tuesday and quickly jumped into the top 10 bestsellers in new book releases on Amazon.
In “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda,” Basham “documents how progressive powerbrokers — from George Soros, to the founder of eBay, to former members of the Obama administration — set out to change the American church. Their goal: to co-opt evangelicals for political purposes.”
The book also documents how a megachurch pastor pushed fellow pastors to move their views on sexuality to the Left and how leftist talking points on climate change and “systemic racism” have crept into American churches. “Shepherds for Sale” is the #1 bestseller in Christian Church Leadership on Amazon.
“Shepherds for Sale” hits the shelves as controversy erupts in the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). Earlier this month, the board of the ERLC, which is the SBC’s lobbying arm, announced it was firing President Brent Leatherwood, who has faced criticism from conservatives within the SBC over his apparent friendly statements about Joe Biden and his advocacy for a red flag law in Tennessee.
Hours after the announcement, however, the ERLC backtracked and said it was reinstating Leatherwood. Board Chair Kevin Smith, who took responsibility for firing Leatherwood, resigned after Leatherwood was reinstated. Basham said the controversy shows more proof of how the SBC is being influenced by legacy media, but she added that rank-and-file Southern Baptists are waking up to the political influences on their denomination.
“The New York Times, CNN, the Atlantic, POLITICO, and many other secular media outlets, immediately howled about Leatherwood’s ouster. That tells you they understand how valuable he is to them in his position,” Basham said. “In the end, Leatherwood was reinstated, but there’s no question that this is not over because of the unhappiness of Southern Baptists with his leadership. They may not have media megaphones, but their demands for accountability cannot be held off forever.”
Basham urged evangelical leaders to “get serious about tracing the secular Left influences in any number of evangelical institutions.”
“When we have leftwing billionaires like atheist George Soros or Buddhist Pierre Omidyar funding evangelical projects, (especially given their direct opposition to biblical ethics on issues like the sanctity of life and gender, sexuality, and marriage), we should ask why,” she said.
“When church leadership does not know who is behind an organization, they should not agree to sign their public statements or participate in their coalitions. Also, the time for politely ignoring what is going on has come to an end,” Basham added. “It is time to follow the model of J. Gresham Machen in the 1920s and begin to directly call out compromise, capitulation, and infiltration. As he has stated, liberalism is an altogether different religion than Christianity.”