If you hadn’t noticed, I deleted my last post in support of Megan Basham’s new book: Shepherds For Sale. Here is something else I have written in its place.

While exposing the darkness is what we ought be about I’m having second thoughts on putting too much stock into Megan Basham’s book, Shepherds For Sale. What she is confronting is clearly a problem in the evangelical churches, and one that has been present long before the expose. But I’m afraid her book is relying too much on making some type of forensic case in regard to following money-trails and backers. Ultimately, what matters is what is being introduced into the Christian world by the folks Megan is highlighting, and many others who she is not. It seems people on the side she is exposing are attempting to claim that if all the details of MB’s work aren’t inerrant, then her recognition of the broader problem is in fact errant. But of course this isn’t the case.

In other words, it isn’t that I think MB’s book is reporting things that aren’t true, per se. But ultimately the problem remains an ideational one, as communicated by these mainstream evangelicals. The case, at an ideational level could be made that the real problem that stands behind evangelicalism is the fact that it is built on a turn to the subject anthropology and thus, epistemology. Evangelicalism’s foundations, as those took shape under American Fundamentalist pressures, are rationalist, romanticist, and positivist just as much as are the leftists’ and progressives’. Until the pastors and churches who are against the progressive agenda realize this no amount of pietism and moralism will be able to finally stave off the very foundations that ground the whole evangelical experiment.

Conversely, I think an unintended consequence of Basham’s book might be to allow her opponents (in her book) to deflect away from the real ideological and theological issues by arguing against the details of her reporting (i.e., following the “money-trail”). But I don’t think that is where the argument is at, even to start with. Whether or not Soros, and others like him, are behind the funding of the mainstream evangelicals, particularly as we find that at Christianity Today, and other like outlets, (and I think they are, in many demonstrable ways) is not where this argument should terminate. It only counts further against these types of operatives within the churches. But the better way to counter them, as in any spiritual war, is to undercut the very rootage of their beliefs and agendas at the ground level. At best, Basham’s work can expose some of the financial compromise that is happening behind the scenes, which then ties into identifiably secular (and satanic) agendas. But the “argument” need not rise or fall on that point in itself.

Addendum:

I am continuing to read through Megan Basham’s book. She is writing as a reporter should write, and simply following the leads as they present themselves. This type of work needs to be done so people in the churches can, at the very least, understand better where their tithes are going; and with what “other monies” it is being mixed. This is no small matter since tithe money is collected as unto the LORD, and ostensibly being used to execute the work of His ministry through the Church. The problem though remains; as Os Guinness titled one of his books, evangelicals in the main, “have fit bodies but fat minds.” Until the pastors stop fleecing the sheep—by not teaching them deep and stretching biblical theology etc.—I’m afraid Basham’s work will fall on mostly deaf ears. Even so, the work itself needed to be done.

The problem remains though, there isn’t a “stable” place to return to for “evangelicals.” Evangelicalism in the main hasn’t ended up where it has in a vacuum. I’m not exactly sure what the antidote is, but staying within the “intellectual” milieu that funds evangelicalism will only result in a full circle cycle of movement. Once again, these matters are not purely binaries of us/them-them/us. That is too shortsighted, and too pietistic to think this way.