Shepherds for Sale by Megan Basham 

The book is Shepherds For Sale by Megan Basham. It was originally published in 2024 by Broadside Books a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers. I read the 2024 hardcover edition. I read it in August of 2024.  

The title refers to big evangelical pastors that sold out to wokeness. Pastors who literally took money from left wing organizations to push leftist narratives.  

I read this book because everyone is reading it. One of my pastors was buying copies and handing them out. I wish I’d known that before I bought a copy. Everyone in Christian evangelical circles was talking about it so I figured I ought to read it.  

Basham doesn’t hold back in her indictment of pastors who have gone woke in the knees over the past few years. She names names. Although they’re not any names that have not already been reported on. She didn’t break any new news except from her own personal experiences, which honestly were the most eye-opening.  

Nothing she says is too much of a stretch. Sometimes I can see if an author with an expose like this is trying too hard to turn a mountain into a molehill and I didn’t see that in this book.  

Basham goes through several topics like climate change, immigration, homosexuality, and black lives matter and exposes pastors who have sold out and bought in to these leftist agendas. She points out how lefty movers and shakers like George Soros specifically went after Christian evangelical leaders and pastors in order to get them to say certain leftwing talking points in their churches and organizations.  

My main takeaway from this book was in the realm of the #MeToo movement. That was when women were speaking up about their experiences with “sexual abuse.” The big issue with this movement was that some of these “sexual abuse” cases were consensual at the time but the woman saw an opportunity to absolve herself of her half in the sin and claim abuse because of “power differences” or claiming something like emotional or psychological manipulation took place. But when everything gets laid out it’s shown that the woman willingly participated in the sexual immorality at the time.   

The point Basham makes in these cases is that by automatically labeling the woman as the victim, we’re taking away her chance to truly repent and confess of her sins. We’re taking away her chance to run back to Christ for redemption. She remains in her sin and expands on it by bearing false witness against the man.  

I understand that this is going to be seen as an egregious things to say and that’s exactly the point. A man can’t even talk about these issues without being seen as an evil patriarch. Whatever. I don’t care. It’s true and it needs to be said. Women can sin. It’s actually possible for women to be sexually immoral. And they can also repent and be forgiven. And when we cast them as the victim when they’re truly not, we steal their opportunity at redemption.  

We shouldn’t put any pastor on a pedestal. They’re right down in the trenches with us fighting sin and to a worse degree than we are. They are the frontline fighters so they’re going to bear the brunt of the attacks from the enemy. Don’t put your hope in any pastor or Christian leader. Follow them as far as they are scriptural and don’t drink any Kool-Aid they give you. But this requires you to know scripture yourself.  

This book made me think about the vulnerable position pastors are in. They will be held to a higher standard for their actions and how they shepherd the flock. I don’t envy that responsibility. But with that responsibility comes great power and evil actors will try to manipulate that to their evil ends.  

It made me think about what makes a pastor sell out? Fortune? Social acceptability? 

Basham sheds some light: 

“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.” 

It was a little confusing because I didn’t really know who a lot of these pastors and big eva leaders were. I’m not just saying that to dodge affiliation or influence. I’m familiar with some of these names but I couldn’t tell you what they’ve written or what their job is. Pastor? Convention leader? President of something? Again, I’m familiar with the names but these aren’t “my guys.” I can honestly say these are not my Christian influences. They have not shaped my Christian doctrinal thinking.  

I do have guys like Doug Wilson, Jeff Durbin, James White, C.R. Wiley, Michael Foster, Albert Mohler, R.C. Sproul, John Piper, John MacArthur. I don’t one hundred percent agree with any of these guys, but they do influence me. These are my guys. If any of these names would’ve been in Basham’s book I would be disappointed. But they weren’t. I thank God for that.  

I learned a lot about big eva leaders and pastors. Maybe this book would’ve had more of an impact on me if I knew who any of these sellout pastors were. I guess I’m glad to say I’m not familiar.  

I’d recommend this to any Christian who is balls-deep in the big eva world. Christians should be aware of who their leaders really are and who is pulling their strings.  

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Notable Quotables 

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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. 

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Before he was disgraced in a sex scandal in 2018,2′ few American pastors boasted more star power than Bill Hybels, founder of Willow Creek Community Church and pioneer of the seeker-sensitive church growth movement. It was thanks to Hybels that so many evangelical pastors became convinced in the 1990s that the best way to grow their churches was to embrace entertaining multimedia worship services and avoid sermons on culturally unpopular topics like sin. (p36) 

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In June 2016, a group of anonymous hackers known as DCLeaks published a trove of private emails and other records from a host of powerful political figures from across Europe and the United States.’ Among the staggering revelations contained in the documents was the fact that Soros was using his billions to buy access to Democratic politicians for the purpose of manipulating elections. It also showed he was buying access to evangelical leaders for the same reason. (p44) 

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Quoting Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), J. D. Greear called Trump’s border policies “wicked” and said “Americans (should be) better than this.”® He then appeared on PBS’s Firing Line, arguing that any believers who voted for Trump must speak about the “dignity of immigrants” lest they damage their Christian witness.” Again, not just any believers, period, but those who voted for Trump. While Greear’s ire toward Trump’s six-week-long policy of family separation might have been a legitimate point of debate, the megachurch pastor never indicated that it bothered him when the Obama administration sometimes employed the same tactic. (p48) 

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Prior’s framing-that pregnancy forces women to “choose between their children and themselves” — sounded disconcertingly close to the proabortion narrative that babies are a fundamental obstacle to female fulfillment. (p53) 

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Metaxas captured well what was happening with groups like the EIT when I asked him about his brief involvement with them: “It’s disturbing that some Christians seem quite happy to twist the scripture that says we are to ‘care for the strangers and aliens among us’ into a carte blanche invitation to enact dramatically destructive immigration policies, as though painting a smiley face over the monstrous reality of encouraging vicious drug cartels and child-sex traffickers. It’s hard to overstate the blasphemy of using God’s Word in that way.” (p50) 

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When Beth Moore was challenged on Twitter about her abortion convictions given her vociferous opposition to evangelical Trump voters, she deflected with her own version of those progressive talking points: “I believe in pro-all-of-life from conception to the grave, including every ethnicity, she said. (p68-69) 

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To the most holy of progressive sacred cows, LGBTQ orthodoxy, Collins was happy to genuflect. He declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements and said he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically,” pledging his support to them as an “advocate.”& These were not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’s declaration of allyship was deeply reflected in his leadership. (p107) 

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New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian, the theologically conservative church founded by Tim Keller, segregated its church body based on vaccine status, allowing the “fully vaccinated to sit on the main floor of the sanctuary. ” The announcement posted to the church’s website said that unvaccinated kids under sixteen would be allowed to sit with their vax-compliant parents. The unvaccinated, it said, were “welcome to sit in the balcony.” (p115) 

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Similar remarks he made during a 2019 presentation offered no more clarification, but he reiterated his position that white Americans suffer from an irremovable stain of racism that will not be alleviated this side of Heaven. 38 

Scripture, of course, knows nothing of particular classes of sin from which there is no freedom or repentance. Either Hall was saying that God is not capable, as He promises in 1 John 1:9, of cleansing us from all unrighteousness, or that racism is not really unrighteousness. (p138) 

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Chandler said that he had told a church hiring firm if they brought him an “Anglo” candidate ranked as an eight out of ten and an African American candidate ranked as a seven, he would hire the African American as a way for white church culture to “give power away.” (p142) 

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This blasé conflation of different degrees of offense—that if a man is clearly guilty of doing one bad thing, it gives Christian leaders license to publicly name him guilty of things degrees of magnitude worse— is now a pattern in the Church. 

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Criminal cases, as everyone knows, require an evidentiary standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But many campuses had been using a lower threshold known as “clear and convincing” —which translates to roughly 75 to 80 percent probability of guilt. (p162) 

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She [Rachel Denhollander] spoke on Twitter of the “neural damage” trauma causes, in whick victims’ “memories are fragmented, not linear.” She told the Houston Chronicle that “mental neurobiological injury often make [s] it impossible for survivors to fully remember what’s taken place.” “71 In an interview with a religious think tank, she adhered to the same unfalsifiable acceptance of allegations that Title IX critics warn about, saying that when someone responds to abuse claims with questions about “why the abuse couldn’t have happened the way [the accuser] described,” it’s because they “don’t understand trauma responses.” 

Even after the revelation that Denhollander was both advising the SBC on abuse reforms while facilitating lawsuits against the denomination, no one in SBC leadership raised so much as a peep about ethics. It’s hard to imagine anyone would let such a situation stand if it were not tied to such an emotionally loaded subject. 

Denhollander was similarly unbothered by the fact that Ford had changed her recollection of the year of the party and couldn’t recall basics like how she got there or got home. Writing for Vox, Denhollander, once again, put it all down to trauma. “The ‘evidence’ wielded against Ford, such as gaps in her memory, was easily explainable by anyone who understands the impact of trauma,” (p183-185) 

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When I asked my friend if she viewed this pastor as an abuser, she hesitated. “I can say that he abused his authority because I respected him. The first time he attempted [to kiss me], I immediately left. And I could have stayed away. But I came back. I lingered. So, I would say that in the beginning, he sexually harassed me. But then, it wasn’t sexual harassment, because I went back. Then it was consensual. And then Ileft.” (p191) 

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After a bit of probing, they discovered that the Saturday night worship leader appeared to be the primary influence behind the burgeoning progressive views of most of the students. He was where the proselytizing had started. After some conferring with the other parents, they discovered that the leader had recommended the kids listen to LGBTQ-affirming podcasts like The New Evangelicals and The Bible for Normal People. (p196) 

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Religious academics and intellectuals attempt to justify this shift with tortured interpretations of Scripture that conveniently align with every power center in the United States from the Fortune 500 to the NFL. But most Americans who call themselves Christians today don’t even bother with that. They make no appeals to serious theology; they have simply traded God’s creational wisdom for a “Love Is Love” bumper sticker mentality and shifted their allegiance from Jesus Christ to Harvey Milk. (p197) 

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he [Time Keller] promoted them himself with an endorsement of Johnson’s book about coming out as a gay man. “Still Time to Care provides a good history & critique of the older ex-gay movement which was a form of the ‘prosperity gospel,” Keller posted on Facebook. “It’s important that we know its history and, in light of its implosion and [sic] ask: now what?”83 It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Johnson’s book specifically provides an answer to “now what.” The “now what,” which he lays out clearly in the conclusion, is Side B and Revoice! (p224) 

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These shepherds should recall the warning of John Calvin: “Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics.” (p228) 

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My word for them: Keep praying, and let any help or counsel you offer adhere to Scripture, not culture. Our God is still a God who brings dead girls to life. 

It humbles the heart of the obstinate sheep with the tough but loving truth that change is not only possible, but possible now—if only she will turn her eyes from the tea leaves of her own psyche and grievances and fix them on Jesus. (p237) 

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At the end of Friedrich Engels’s life, Marx’s daughter interviewed the coauthor, with her father, of The Communist Manifesto. When she asked him who he disliked most in the world, Engels answered with a single word: “Spurgeon. ” It’s little to be wondered at. Engels believed that a counterfeit form of Christianity could be used to advance the cause of socialism, as both ostensibly addressed the interests of what he called the “labouring and burdened.” ° A true shepherd like Spurgeon necessarily stood in the way of such efforts, reminding the world that mankind’s greatest need was not a social project, not power over his oppressors, but forgiveness from his sins. True Christianity promotes not grievance but gratitude. There’s little doubt Marx and Engels knew this. (p240)