Eschatology Matters

Megan Basham: “Shepherds For Sale"

Megan Basham is a culture reporter for the Daily Wire and the author of Beside Every Successful Man: A Woman’s Guide to Having It All. She is a frequent contributor to Morning Wire, one of the top 10 news podcasts in the United States. She has also written for the Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph, First Things, National Review, and World Magazine, where she worked as a film and television editor. Megan's brand new book, SHEPHERDS FOR SALE, serves as a warning of what can happen when a church forgets that true power lies not in the world’s wisdom, but in Scripture. This will be one of the most important and talked about book as we head into this fall’s heated political landscape.

https://www.harpercollins.com/product...

Duration:: 50m
Broadcast on:: 09 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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You can find us eschatologymatters.org. You can find us on streaming platforms and you can still find us on our YouTube page as well. Eschatology Matters is also happy to partner with Boniface Media. Boniface Media is a streaming platform from Grace and Truth Press. Boniface is currently offering 50% off to 200 subscribers for the life of their subscription unless that subscription is canceled or payment lapses on those. So if you'd like to take advantage of that offer, please head over to boniface.com. That's B-O-N-A-F-I-C-E dot com and enter the codes alpha test or beta test to apply that 50% discount to your subscription for Boniface Media. So I'm excited for today's episode. I'm joined today by Megan Basham. Megan Basham is a culture reporter for the Daily Wire. She's author of the book Shepherds for sale, which I plan to ask her a couple of questions about here at the front end, but she's a frequent contributor to Morning Wire. She's written for the Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, First Things, National Review, World Magazine. But most importantly, if you know her from Twitter, Megan is the keeper of receipts. So Megan, thanks so much for joining us for the first time here on Eschatology Matters. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about the book. So you had Shepherds for sale coming out. You know, you and I were chatting a little bit about that. A really important book, I think, a book that is, you know, ironically, I think written but doesn't aim to pull punches, aims to expose some things. A lot of people were really amped up hoping it would come out before the recent SBC convention, among other things, but it's publishing here at the end of, I believe, this next month at the end of July. But tell us a little bit about the book and maybe what caused you to write that book. Yeah, I would have liked also for it to come out before the SBC convention, but it had a little bit of a bumpy road to publication, in part because of some of the subject matter in the book. So, thankfully, HarperCollins stepped up and said, well, we're big boys. We're not afraid of this. So they took it on. So it did get out a little bit later than I was hoping, but better late than never. So, and part of the reason that I wrote it had to do with, as a Southern Baptist, part of what I was seeing in the Southern Baptist convention, but also what I experienced in non-Southern Baptist ministries and organizations that I was involved in. So, you know, somebody who came out of Christian media and had had a long career within that world, like everyone else, I think right around 2018, 2019, I started seeing things that struck me as unbiblical, and they were being put forward with such a unanimous voice that it felt like, where is this coming from? Why is everybody sort of importing these various or worldly preoccupations into the church with the same sort of language? And, you know, you would see the exact same moment that something was a really hot cultural topic. Suddenly, it was very important to the church too. So, if me too was a huge thing in the secular world, when then suddenly me too was really important to the church too. And I just found that very suspect. I went, "Hmm, I don't know. I just feel like there's something curious that every time these major corporations feel that something's important for us all to talk about, these major ministries also feel that these things are suddenly important for us to talk about." And then on a personal level, I mean, I experienced things like at our previous church, shutting down over COVID, making some statements about loving your neighbor, getting the shot that, you know, immediately I rejected and also things like getting an email from our children's ministry director about how we might talk to our kids about their white privilege. And so just all of these things I was experiencing in my personal and professional life. And then as a journalist and a researcher, when I started looking into it, I went, some of these things are organic cultural compromise. And some of these things are being very purposely orchestrated. So all of that kind of came together. And it was just an absolute passion project from the minute I started working for the daily wire in 2021. So yeah, you're, and you're mentioning like the 2018-2019 kind of genesis of that project. I feel like, I mean, obviously a lot of people talked about this right 2020 onward, that kind of post COVID era has been a huge wake-up call. I think for a lot of Christians, a lot of ministries, a lot of churches, a lot of it's been positive. Some of it's obviously been negative and there's been some bumps in the road. But I think a lot of Christians were grappling maybe for the first time with some huge issues that maybe they should have been dealing with beforehand. But I think also it seems like a lot of those, I think I've heard you describe it as kind of a misalignment of priorities within the church. It seems like a lot of those became a lot more pronounced. And maybe it was the fact that you saw ministry leaders marching in parades or sitting on panels, you're wondering like, what exactly is going on there? But like, as you've done the research for this, has this been an amped up thing in recent years? Because you mentioned the SBC thing and I want to stress like this is not just an SBC thing because you mentioned that as well, right? It's not just the SBC. But the SBC drives so much. And if there's issues within the SBC, that's indicative oftentimes of issues within kind of broader, especially American Christianity. So is this something that is, that is really amped up in our time, like a post COVID type thing? Or is this kind of something that's been going on for a while in your, in your take? So I think it was going on for a long time. And when you talk about the SBC, people who are not SBC sort of need to understand like why they care, because if you're a Presbyterian or an Anglican, you're seeing the same things. It just lives in such an outsized fashion in the SBC, because the SBC represents literally about 5% of the US adult population. So that's a lot. So and they're educating your pastors at their seminaries, even if your pastors aren't Southern Baptist. So they just have a really outsized influence. So for part of that reason, I focused on them a lot, but also to show that it's not just happening there. And I think for all of us, it was simmering. And you had moments where you're like, I just don't really agree with what's being said by say the TGC Tim Keller crowd. But I think we were all a lot more polite about it until COVID. I think we all kind of observed that 11th commandment of not publicly speaking angrily or disparagingly about each other until we got to COVID. And in a weird way, I do now somewhat think of COVID as a blessing for the church, because it exposed so much. I think all of these things that we were all kind of uncomfortably navigating around came out in such a way during COVID, not just with churches that were shutting down or that we're making things like whether or not I should get a vaccine, a test of how faithful you were to Christ. I mean, that was appalling. But I think we also saw George Floyd during that period. And so before some of the racial reconciliation language you heard that you're like, I don't know, some of that sounds good. And some of it, I don't know. I don't feel like I have this latent racism to repent of, but maybe I do need, maybe I'm just not seeing things clearly. During that period of 2020, everything was thrown out in such stark relief that you realized we have a problem here. And it kind of felt like, I think in a good way, gloves were off. And it was like, no, we are now going to talk about the elephants in the room. And we are now going to confront these things. And the people who don't want to talk specifically about what's been going on, I feel like those were the people that I tended to find at the top of ministries who suddenly when they were being called upon to defend these muddy positions, they didn't clarify before, weren't comfortable doing so and just backed off or resorted to name calling. And as a reporter, you immediately start to go, well, why aren't you defending this position? If this is what you really believed and you believe it's biblical, then defend it biblically and you didn't see that. Yeah. Yes. You're mentioning the gospel kind of component of this, the phrase gospel issue. Like for me during the COVID time, that's what brought it. I think so home to so many Christians was, you may have heard of racial reconciliation issues or racial tensions in general and how we should address those biblically. And we walked through those things as Christians, and then all of a sudden you started to hear if you don't support this cause or if you don't toe this line, it's actually a gospel issue or if your church's percentage is different, then it's a gospel issue. That phrase gospel issue, I feel like that brought it into such stark relief. And you're hearing that like you said, not from, this isn't from like lay level Christians, not that you can't hear things from from lay level Christians, but these, these like ministry leaders, like nationally known ministry leaders that you see, I don't know that it gets more stark than if, if you're closing churches and marching on streets and saying one is a gospel good and one would be a gospel ill. So yeah, I mean, it's just good to see you kind of engaging some of those things in your book. And I'm assuming you had to keep, you know, I joked at the beginning, I think it's on your Twitter handle is where I got that from people who have received. People who have receipts, yeah. I'm assuming, I'm assuming honestly, that's probably a big portion of that book is some some receipt keeping. Yeah, it has to be because part of what I wanted to do is there was a lot of gloves off back and forth. And my aim was to be okay, let's be very specific about who said what and what sort of narratives they were buying into. If you are taking the position on something like pronoun hospitality or something, I don't think it's fair to just sort of sneak away with that, you know, away from that without ever having directly confronted confronting it. And so when I dug in, those were the issues that I felt like we're not doing these things to be derisive and you're not doing them to just throw tomatoes, you're doing them to say we have a problem in the church. And as far as I can see, the only way to really excise this problem is for everybody to put their cards on the table and go, here are the things that were said, here are the non-Christian institutions that are influencing your ministries and that you're partnering with. And here's what you're partnering with them to do. And let's look at that. And let's lay it all open to the bright light of sunlight and see, okay, is this something that you do feel comfortable with everyone knowing? So that was really what this book was about was one, confirming for people some suspicions that you may have had or some discomfort that you may have had or some confusion that you may have had. There are some really good reasons for it. And also to do a little bit of a retrospective here on let's not back away from what happened and let's not rewrite history because I've seen a lot of attempts at that to suggest that, oh, well, the things that were said about COVID, for example, can we all just agree to forgive each other and then move on? And you saw that in a pretty well-known Christianity today op-ed from Patrick Miller, who's done a lot of work with the ERLC. And when he did that, even in that piece, the implication was, hey, we've all got things we did wrong. Let's just forget the whole thing. And I'm like, hold on a minute, but we're not going to forget the whole thing because what a lot of you did in leadership was very deliberately done. It was abusing scripture. And I see no indication that you recognized that you were abusing scripture to sort of heap these legalistic burdens on people as to how they were responding to a pandemic. So I think that's another important reason is because it doesn't just apply to that one issue, how they handled that issue. We've seen that same script play out on any number of what you might call cultural or political issues. Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of ties into something I was hoping to ask you to was, you don't live in Moscow, but you've been friendly with the Moscow mood. That's kind of come up in conversations you've been a part of. It's interesting the way the mood conversation is not just isolated to Moscow, but we could at least we could at least use as that as an example, you know, our our show is part of the fight left beast network. And so we're tied to some of those folks. But when you look at, you know, you mentioned the 11th commandment. So that will be nice that carried for quite a while. COVID, it wasn't just COVID, but at least COVID, right? You have a things being brought into, like you said, stark relief. You have kind of battle lines drawn. People are all of a sudden being told this is a gospel issue. If you come in to do this or do that. And then now we're coming into a time where the Moscow mood has become quite popular with a lot of Christians, whether they're aligned with Moscow or not, that kind of visceral cultural engagement or however you want to frame that. And a huge pushback against that Moscow mood. What's your take on that? I mean, I know it's kind of a broad question, but just thinking like how we're navigating this is Christians right now, cultural engagement in a very, you know, to use Aaron Ren's phrase of negative world, a very hostile culture at times. And yet a huge pushback from a lot of especially establishment Christians, it seems, against that sort of cultural engagement. What's what's your take on some of the Moscow mood conversations that are swirling right now, I suppose? I feel a little bit like I'm like, I was Moscow mood before Moscow mood was cool. But before I knew what it was and it had a name, I mean, it's funny because I feel like it describes two things. And one is absolutely the thing that I've been doing, which is hang on a minute, we're all going to be very pointed and clear about what we're talking about. And I think it's okay to bring in the sarcasm because I think the sarcasm can make a point. And I think humor can make a point. You know, occasionally there's, and I think it's old language. I think people will go, well, don't remember when this personality used this word. And I'm like, okay, well, I might not have used that word. And I'm a church lady. So I might not agree with using that word. But it felt like a way to deflect from the much bigger conversations, because I go, some serrated edge was warranted here over the things that have happened in the last few years. Well, and not just the last few years, part of what I go into my book is I went back about 10, 15 years, depending on the chapter, because I felt like it was important for people to know that what we're talking about has been under the surface and covered up with those niceties for a really long time. And there are people in leadership who have been doing a lot of things that I think are biblically very hard to justify, because they counted on those niceties and that politeness, and that it was just uncouth to say, you know, what we involved in this, you know, extremely political immigration organization that is housed by a pretty hard left secular foundation. Why are we doing that? And so I think there was this trust that nobody was ever going to be so gauche as to ask those questions until, you know, not just me, but me and some others came along and said, okay, but I am going to be that gauche. Why are we doing this? And so I do think that that was necessary. And then the pushback after that has been, well, this is a good guy. I know him and I know that organization and they're just, they're really good godly people and how dare you impune the motives of these good godly people. And that's not an answer to when you see something like, you know, some very large hard left foundations that also back things like abortion and transgender surgeries and puberty blockers and process hormones for children, all of that gender madness. When you're partnering with organizations that do that, just saying, Hey, I know these guys, these are good guys. And I just think it's not loving for you to bring this up. That's not an answer. So I think that is part of that serrated edges is to push them to go, you're not going to get away with that now, we are going to demand some answers here. Yeah, yeah, you can see that, I mean, having been to an SBC convention before, you know, again, not to lay all the blame at the SBC speed, but you know, just having been to an SBC convention and hearing questions of your LC members, there's a very quick dismissal and often kind of a questioning of your motives when some of those questions are brought up to the point where a book format sort of engagement with that seems necessary. And I'm certainly warranted, but I'm thinking toward, because again, we talk about eschatology on this channel. It's we take a broad view of eschatology, we're looking at sort of a, you know, whole Bible, big story sort of view of eschatology and not just sort of a truncated view of the millennial period. But when we talk about these things, politics inevitably comes into that so you just mentioned immigration, which I almost corrected you and said, Hey, we don't talk about politics on this channel. But I mean, what's your take on in general, the way politics are being processed by by Christians, which again, I know many of these questions are sort of broad, but I'm asking really about a lot of the stuff that you've unearthed from some of your recent research and writing politics, you know, for many Christians, it's been, you know, there's one of the things you don't discuss at the dinner table. Recently, it seems that most of the time when politics are engaged, and this is this is just speaking from our channel. When we engage eschatological issues, whether it's issues of kingdom or whether it's issues of church state, politics is something that we should not be, or this is the pushback is that it shouldn't be something that we're, we should be discussing because it's not, it's not true great commission work or it distracts from the true mission of the church or whatever that looks like. What's been some of your take as you've been handling, I think a lot of these are inherently political issues, but how has that been handled by the church? How are we doing with that right now? Well, and there are also in many cases now, though, fundamentally, biblical issues as well. And so what I have seen is some leadership who have tried to pretend that things that are biblical issues are political issues. And, you know, I tell a story in the book about when some of what Andy Stanley had been saying privately to, I would say, create space for his church at least, but also a lot of other churches because he is so influential on training other pastors to make room for being, he would dispute affirming, but I think it's pretty clear that he has taken up the position of LGBTQ affirmation as the word goes, not only in his private conversations, but in the people that he has invited to speak at his church. I mean, he isn't invited, you know, openly affirming speakers, speakers who are men, quote unquote, married to other men. So that was very clear. And, you know, when I was doing some interviews trying to get another source to confirm something that the first source told me, this man, this pastor, said, yes, that did happen. And I was, you know, doing my job going, okay, can I get you to talk about this, going to get you to go on the record about this? And he just said, look, I don't want to get into a political battle over this. And I went, this is not a political issue. This is the church we're talking about. And so I think there has been a lot of effort to say, again, it's not polite. Those are political issues. So we're not going to talk about them. When in fact, I felt like as a pastor, if you know that he's doing this and you know that he's been talking about this for a long time, and you know, I mean, this was, you know, several years ago, and you know, what a massive influence he has on the American church, I think you have a biblical obligation to stand up and talk about it. First, you can confront him privately and if he's not going to draw back, then you need to let people know, this is what he's saying privately, that he that he is now affirming and he might someday perform a gay marriage. You need to talk about that. So that's part of what I see. But then I also see on the other hand, so they're taking issues that are biblical and saying, oh, that's political, let's not be so political. And then they're flipping it and saying, here are some issues that are very biblically debatable. Let's take something like climate change, where we all know climate changes. There's no disagreement there. Most people agree. Maybe there's a little bit of human impact on what's happening with temperature. It's not super clear, but there's a whole lot of disagreement on whether that's an existential crisis and what needs to be done about it. How to have fun. Anytime. Anywhere. Step one. Go to Chumbukasino.com. Chumbukasino.com. Got it. Step two. Collect your welcome bonus. Come to top of welcome bonus. Step three. Play hundreds of casino-style games for free. That's a lot of games, all for free. Step four. Unleash your excitement. Chumbukasino has been delivering thrills for over a decade, so claim your free welcome bonus now and live the Chumbukasino.com. That issue that is extremely biblically debatable, and some might even say, "Well, we know how the world ends, and I don't know how this plays into eschatology. You'll tell me," but they would say, "We know what happens to this Earth, so it doesn't matter." It's not biblical to be fretting all the time about climate change, but the point was it was a debatable issue, and they skipped steps. It suddenly became this gospel issue. It was given a new name of creation care, and then we were told that to be faithful Christians, you have to be engaged in the business of creation care, and what creation care meant was, you have to be an activist for certain kinds of fossil fuel legislation, such as cap and trade legislation. At that point, it was like, you missed a whole lot of steps here, so they don't come to you and say, "This cap and trade bill, God wants you to vote for this cap and trade bill," but that was the upshot of it. They were coming into seminaries, they were coming into other ministries, pushing that line. I'm like, so you smuggled that in so that we didn't have the debate. It's a political debate, and we should talk about how does it impact gas prices, grocery prices, how does it impact developing nations who are just now coming out of that third world past? Anyway, that was very much to me where I go. You don't see the Bible in really clear moral issues, but muddy issues, you're like, "Nope, this is something that we all have to agree to sign on to." It was like a bait and switch. I've got two questions. I don't know which one to ask first, but I was thinking, number one, while you're talking at the front end, why that became something that we weren't addressing, why politics became the out for Christians. Just from what you've experienced anyway, why is it? There's a lot of probably different reasons, Christians approach those things. A lot of Christians have different conceptions of how politics plays into their Christian witness and those sort of things, but I wonder what's a driving force, because it seems with an evangelical Christendom within America, at least, that's something that's been verboten for a long time. That's something that's one thing I'm thinking of, but the second thing is, with climate change, you intimated something about how it fits into eschatology. It's fascinating, and I don't want to say nuance, because that can be a dirty word to some people, and I appreciate it with which you lay that out. There's certain things that seem pretty clear, there's certain things that do not seem at all sufficiently clear, but it's interesting when you have chapel services at major seminaries, where we're bowing down and apologizing to trees, or it's interesting when you hear Christian leaders saying maybe we should start having intentionally less kids, because the world God created cannot sustain life that he commanded to be prosperous and multiply or be fruitful and multiply. Those are the things that I wish Christians would engage a little bit ahead of. I'm not sure what the makeup carbon footprint sometimes. I have some theories, but I'm not exactly sure about some of the details, but I do know some biblical categories that it seems. We just hop, skip, and jump smooth past in our pursuit of those things. Yeah, and something you just pointed out there is that these can be complex conversations about, okay, how do we apply scripture to these debates, and that wasn't what was happening. I'm certainly open to applying scripture in a full and deep way to these subjects, and that wasn't what you were seeing. It was literally, and I do cover this in the book, again and again and again. I mean, it almost became a running joke in our house. I'm like, hey, babe, guess why we have to support this bill. Love your neighbor. You'll never guess. You know, whatever it was, whatever sort of just totally random political, I mean, specific piece of legislation. Guess why the National Association of Evangelicals says that we have to support this. Love your neighbor. So it wasn't like a deep and rich biblical application. It was sloganeering, and it was so insulting to me, as I just went through it over and over again, going, and maybe this is also an indictment of the rank and file in the pews. And I'm like, how many times can you run this play? And it works before we go, well, now wait a minute, there are other ways to love your neighbor. Let's talk about some of these other passages that you just brought up. Right. So yeah, that was really frustrating as I was going through it, that I just went. They seem to think we're idiots, we're biblical idiots. And maybe they're right. And that's in part on the rank and file as well. You need to know your Bible so that, you know, when manipulation is being run on you, you recognize it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I found, you know, I know you've run around with Joe Rigne here or there, you guys across paths, and I don't know all, you know, we're all but I noticed in you guys speaking at similar events, and that's why his book on not being steered, you know, the whole leadership and the title slipping me now, but emotional sabotage, leadership and emotional sabotage. That's it. Sorry, Joe, I promise I read it. But yes, the, you know, steerage and those sort of things. But like you said, slogan earring to the point of, I mean, how often did we go through this with church closures, not to not to jump back to that topic, but just thinking toward that, church closures, and the only kind of, you know, nail that the hammer could seem to find was love your neighbor, as if we had never dealt with this in the history of the Christian church before, that that's what was so upsetting was like, we've had a lot of these discussions before and a lot of the riches of those discussions and fruit of those discussions wasn't being brought to bear on it. But yeah, thinking, thinking back to the, to the politicist, politicist. I hate that we're politicization. I'm gonna get there. I'm a professional, Megan. I don't know if you knew this or not. I'm really good with words. I'm just kidding. But like politics within the church. Why? Like, what's some of your sense that drives some of the Christians and especially like evangelicals on America? These are the circles in which we run. What is it that is driving a lot of people to think of these political issues as just, I mean, is it just a foil? Is that just a way of getting out of the discussion or is it an actual belief that these are things we shouldn't touch? What is it that drives so many evangelicals to be so distasteful of those conversations, do you think? Well, I think that there has been a sort of successful narrative pushed by the culture in a large way that they're, but also within the church, that it is not spiritual to be political. And so, and I think there's a certain point at which that can be true. Because I go, I get frustrated with, you know, hardcore Trump people that want to bring him up and on both sides, both the Trump fans and the, you know, never Trump people who just want to insert him into every conversation. And you're like, they're actually, the world is going to continue and American politics are going to continue after him. So maybe we need to think a little bit bigger about some of these issues. So I get that frustration. But I think long before Trump ever arrived on the scene, there was this narrative pushed that to be political or to talk about political topics was to not be as spiritual. And I think that was kind of where that color third way influence where you saw that, we're like, look, we're not going to be left or right. We're going to take this other way, the way, not the donkey or the elephant, but the way of the cross. When the cross has a lot to say about a lot of political issues. And when we break it down to, okay, politics is about the policy that impacts people in this nation and how we are going to order our society and our culture. That's a very legitimate topic for pastors and for the Bible to speak into. So you can do all of that without talking about specific political personalities. And I think that was, you know, the play that was run. And so I think everybody just kind of for a while got that inference that, well, it's not polite. So as I say that, at the same time, and I don't know why, well, I mean, I have my suspicions, but like, why did you see the gospel coalition welcoming in extremely political actors? People like a former Obama White House staffer and one of the architects of Evangelicals for Biden and really holding him out as a thoughtful Christian voice in the public sphere and in the political sphere. I mean, that to me is sort of shocking when you look back on that and you go, okay, fine, would you have welcomed somebody from, you know, the Trump White House to similarly speak into these issues? And would you have held them out as somebody who's a really thoughtful voice? Or do you really believe there were no thoughtful voices whatsoever in the entirety of that administration? I find that really unlikely because I know some thoughtful voices. And so I think that's part of it is it was like the respectable, the intellectual crowd was on the left. And so they would say, we're spiritual, we're less political, but our spirituality informs our politics and we would invite them into the conversation in a way that you're never going to invite somebody who grew up on Rush Limbaugh into the conversation. So yeah, I think that's why. And you know, something I go into in my book a little bit too is, I mean, look, carrots were dangled all over the place and I think some of them worked. Yeah, goodness. And that's the part that I'm glad it's being exposed and brought to light. It's it's it's saddening. It's just a it's something it's something that should bring repentance within the church when we see those things taking hold because that's a shame. I am curious though, you're talking about politics. And obviously, the way a lot of these things weave together with, we could say like, you know, biblical arts, creational arts is one that that Joe Rigny had mentioned when he was on here. But what our instructions are as Christians, sort of intersecting inevitably with the political sphere. One of the things we've worked through has been abortion, obviously. And for many years, you know, I'm an 80s baby and early 80s baby. And I can remember many well-meaning Christians growing up and they would say, you know, we we ought not be single issue voters. We ought not think about, you know, just single issues and let that drop our voting patterns. We're right now, though, celebrating the anniversary or just did as of this recording. I think it was yesterday was the anniversary of Roeverse Wade being overturned, which was great in many regards. And it was not great in some of our states. I'm in Michigan. It has not gone well for us in Michigan in the short term, at least, politically after Roeverse Wade. But looking at some of those issues, what's been what's been your take on the trends within evangelicalism with pro-life engagement? There's been, obviously, there's been a lot of hubbub with, you know, Lincoln Duncan was mentioning, you know, abolitionism as some sort of new movement. So you saw a lot of kind of back and forth between abolitionists and pro-life. How are we doing with sort of pro-life movements, just broadly speaking with evangelicalism? Because I know you've interacted with this and a lot of your writing and research. I have some eschatological thoughts on it. But what's been some of the things you've seen going on right now? How are we doing? Well, I think we're starting to do better. I feel like the abolitionists have forced a really hard conversation that needed to happen for a long time. And that is the fact that logically our positions do not make sense. Morally, they don't make sense. It doesn't make sense to say that this is a life in the womb. And yet, we're at the same time, we are not going to hold an adult woman of sound mind who certainly the majority of them do, I mean, the vast majority, I would say a very small, maybe potential, you know, sliver of women don't understand what they're doing when they're seeking out an abortion. And we're going to not hold them morally culpable. And, you know, part of what I've seen, and as I've thought through this issue myself, because I think I too, it was like a lot of people, my default was, well, you know, we want to hold the doctor and the laws and the politicians responsible, but never the women. And then you started thinking about, well, hang on a minute, if there were this deterrence of a law, how many women might not have sought out an abortion? And would that not have been the kinder thing to prevent them from seeking out an abortion? Because they didn't want to suffer the consequences that they would have faced, whether that was jail or something else or some type of fine, it's even been on the table, but they would have known this will be breaking the law. And I think a lot of times there's a lot of women who would go, I'm not going to break the law. And it would have been kinder for them to understand that. And it's also a failure of shepherding to a certain degree, because if you can't say that this was a willful sinful act, then you can't minister to a conscience that is burdened by that willful sinful act. So, you know, when I think it through, I think that is forcing a much deeper conversation that should have happened for a long time. And at the same time, I mean, I do want to say, I get the people who are like, that's not going to happen right now. And we want to take these incremental wins. And so I'm still grappling with that a little bit myself, knowing that, okay, morally, that is the only tenable position to take when you look at it is that women are culpable. At the same time, do we push to get whatever legislation we can get right now? Because we need to get a public who has incredibly seared consciences on this issue to sign on. And we know they're not going to, we're not going to get them to admit they've been bathing in blood for 50 years, though they have. So how do we get them to agree to, you know, whatever limitations we can right now? So I mean, I think that's a big conversation, but let's have it in a real way like that. And I think that kind of goes to, in general, what I see when I look across the evangelical landscape about how we're talking about politics is it does feel like there's a recovery of understanding that we went so long arguing, just give us a seat at the table and just protect our religious liberty, that we didn't argue for the good, we just argued for, let us have our say too. And those are two different things. And it feels like we're just now moving into a space and a lot of people are being made uncomfortable by that where we're going, no, we're arguing that we have a right and moral position that should be the position of this nation versus we have a position that we just want to be accommodated. Right. And you know, I mean, people who are much smarter than me are discussing those issues, because I am always like, I am just now doing the reading. But what bothers me is even the people who are much more educated in these issues and much smarter and at the top of these institutions, they need your pullback from these discussions, like how dare you even bring it up when, you know, even a gumshoe reporter can go, well, hang on a minute. Don't we believe our positions are right and good? And if we believe they're right and good, why would we not believe they're right and good for the whole of this nation? And why are we not arguing from that position? So, I mean, what I see is that we are turning to something now where we are starting to say that. And you've got some people who are like, Oh, that makes you uncomfortable. I'm sorry, we're going to keep talking about it anyway. Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said and a lot of encouragement from people, assuming the center on this issue. You know, as has been said, this is not some sort of fringe belief we're trying to enforce or anything. This is just this is what is actually true. And we're going to assume the center on it. You know, we've talked about it. This is my brief eschatological page. But we've talked about it on our channel before we had we had an episode that we called I think it was why they want your kids or something like that. It was at the beginning of June, I think everybody was so worn out from June. I don't think people were wanting to even engage it honestly. But but it is there's an eschatological theme of the offspring of believers. This is this is all throughout the biblical canon. Obviously, it culminates in Christ, but there's a very real sense in which the darkness hates the light and it hates the image of the light, which every little child created in that image of God. There's an eschatological war that goes on with this with this dynamic. I'm curious, the Megan, what you're just mentioning. And you might I'm still waiting on my my advanced copy of your book with your autograph and everything like that. It hadn't come yet. I know it's probably in the mail. But I'm just eating my copies next week. I heard. So I'm very excited to see them myself. This is what people don't understand. The author's usually the last one to get the copies with craft me up. Yeah, no. So in your book, do you engage at all with because you're obviously you're talking about like, you know, leaders and you're talking about ministry leaders specifically pastors. Does this come into that conversation of sort of shepherds for sale is the abortion thing on the is that part of what you're working through? Is that kind of a side issue? No, I mean, it was definitely an issue, something that I talked about because part of what you saw was in a weird way, like the blessing of COVID, whatever you think of Trump, there was kind of the blessing of Trump that it ripped back the curtain on you're like, Hey, I thought we were all on the same page on this. And then suddenly you discovered that you weren't because I saw essays from, you know, respected seminary professors like Karen Swallow prior that we're suddenly redefining what pro life meant to mean really just just anything that is humanitarian. And I was like, that's not what pro life means because if you make it mean all of that, it will mean nothing. And by the way, would you be willing to make me to mean everything? Could me to mean, you know, making sure that people aren't fired from their jobs because of their race, because that's what you're doing with pro life right now, you're taking something that means something and throwing everything in that basket. And so and remind me what your original question was. No, just thinking toward pastors, because I and I don't want to just throw it out there and say like our pastors, ministry leaders being co opted intentionally to not speak about pro life issues. But that's kind of what I'm angling at is there's a there's a extreme hesitation and silence from a lot of pulpits and a lot of ministry leaders on this issue. I understand it's a complex. It's not a complex issue. It's a sensitive issue, right? You have women who have committed these these sins in their past and God has forgiven them. And yet there's still those those harm or not harm, but those hurts that, you know, they hang on to get that it's something you want to approach carefully. But but it's been my experience that that oftentimes it's it's something that's approached with silence. And so I was asking like, does that come into the books kind of approach at all? Or is that yeah? And so I mean, what I do is a little bit I show what you're talking about right there. And then when I brought up Trump, that was to show how quickly people are like, I'm not as committed as I might have once, you know, voiced my commitment to that issue. And that surprised me was seeing people who were starting to say under Trump, people that, you know, institutional leaders that I knew went from completely respecting the one issue vote to saying, you know, RC sprawl was kind of naive when he said that and kind of laughing at him a little bit for his, I won't even vote for a dog catcher whose pro abortion. And so that it was it was less about Trump than it was about how quickly that ripped back the curtain that I went. So you're committed to this issue, but not if it requires you to be associated in the public's mind with somebody that you find very unsavory, you're not willing to bear that. And that was an issue to me. And you know, I think Karen Swallow prior since I just brought her up sort of gave this notorious, I will say comment to the Washington Post about I saw Trump address the the pro life march. And I thought I wanted this, but not like this. I'm not willing to pay this price to get it. And I went, okay, if we're going to talk about who's making an idol of politics, if you're not willing to pay that price of, then then I think you have to look at what are you idolizing when it comes to politics. So, you know, that was something that just struck me really hard. And the other thing that I think, you know, as far as major issues is that I do think on a positive side, we're starting to see people rethink this, give us a seat at the table position. Like just today, I think it was, I saw a Gallup poll showing that there's been a 16 point drop in Republicans who now think gay marriage was a good thing. And that, I mean, just in like the last couple of years, a 16 point drop. And I think part of that is because we all, I mean, and you saw way too much in the church, people who are like, I am going to be personally opposed to it. Our churches should be personally opposed to it. But you know, like, for example, the CEO of Christianity today had once written an essay saying, maybe it's time we stop arguing for marriage, biblical marriage as a matter of law. We will still stand for it as the church, but we will say in a pluralistic society, we're willing to accommodate those who have different views of marriage. And we're going to do that for the sake of our witness and try to wrap your head around that. The way that we protect our witness is by throwing out like God's first creational order. Right. The world is watching. But I think what we've seen in the last couple of years is that that you never contain moral disorder. And so as soon as that happened, the dominoes fell so fast that, you know, it's a cliche at this point, but now we don't know what a man and a woman are. And I think that's why you've seen that quick 16 point drop, because I think everybody realized by not arguing for the moral good, but just arguing for accommodation, we unleash total chaos on when it comes to the subject of sex, sexuality and marriage. Yeah, Megan, we probably need to lay on the plane. I appreciate your time because there's a lot of a lot of rabbit trails we could run down. But when number one, when does the book come out? It's coming out through HarperCollins. What's the published date on that? And then secondly, if anybody's not familiar with you, you're in a lot of places. What are some good places for them to keep up with you and what you have going on? So the book comes out July 30th, and it's HarperCollins, broadside imprint. You can get it anywhere you get books, ideally, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, shepherds for sale, how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. And you can find me usually multiple times a week on Morning Wire podcast, which is in the top 10 of Apple and iTunes and Spotify's news podcasts. And there, I'll be doing just straight, hard-hitting culture reporting. And yeah, and on Twitter, I'm @atmegbashum, and on Instagram, I am @journalist, Megan Bashum. Perfect. Yeah, your Twitter account is one of the few that actually encourages me. Most of Twitter makes me sad. Here's a plug to follow, so keep it up. No, thank you so much for the work you're doing. And honestly, I just appreciate your time today and everything you are trying to expose for the good of Christendom. So thanks for your work. Thanks so much. I appreciate that. It is Ryan Seacrest here. Everybody needs some variety in life. That's what I love about Chumba Casino. 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