Basham Attacks and Sour Sacks: An Appeal to Mortify Polemicist Pride

Staff Contributor

While we fully expected the sound of wailing and gnashing teeth coming from the gates of the Evangelical Industrial Complex, a peculiar new kind of critique began to echo among them. It appears that some of those who have been calling out the evangelical progressive drift the longest have positioned themselves as some of the most vociferous critics of Megan Basham’s new book, Shepherds for Sale.

It is not a concern to us that Basham is facing opposition on both the left and (a very small portion) of the right, so far as the far-and-wide heralding of her work is concerned. It is out the gate. The train has left the station. The ship has sailed. The cat is out of the bag. The toothpaste is out of the tube. The beans have been spilled. Truth is funny that way. It doesn’t stop for complainers.

What concerns us at Protestia is that there appears to be an underlying motivation among her right-wing critics that betrays the flesh and offends the Spirit. What we feel to be true concerning this matter is just that—a feeling—even as it’s a well-informed feeling that we indeed share. We talked about this at some length before deciding to publish this concern for fear of several things. These include, predominantly, the claws of some that will inevitably come out as they are cautioned to avoid sinful jealousy.

Protestia, and before it, Pulpit & Pen, was among the first (if not the very first) to raise the issues cited by Megan Basham in Shepherds for Sale. It has been far more than a decade, for example, since we first wrote about Russell Moore. When we did, a friend and well-known conservative Pyromaniacs blogger contacted the founder of our website and told him that criticizing Moore would be the death of his influence (and should be) because Moore was a Calvinist and, therefore, solid. It has been nine years since we exposed Karen Swallow Prior as a leftist plant, which led to a full-frontal attack by another friend and well-known pastor, who assured us our concerns were mostly unwarranted (he has since recanted that view), which led to the unfortunate departure of a valued P&P contributor as he defended Prior as nothing short of conservative. Another well-known evangelical voice—now mercifully a good friend of this ministry—tried to have JD Hall removed from G3 (and almost succeeded) because he had characterized Karen Prior as a liberal. We have not only been the first to publicize criticism of these leaders, but we shoulder the scars of a million little arrows for speaking up back when we were the only target.

Shepherds for Sale, as important a book as it is, largely offers no surprises to those who have read the writings of our contributors and former contributors, including David Morrill, Dustin Germain, JD Hall, Jeff Maples, Seth Dunn, Diane Gaskins, Gene Clyatt, Alan Maricle, Tom Buck, Landon Chapman, and many more. For most of those years, our foxhole was lonely.

We suffered through the stages of influence often attributed to Ghandi (it was actually an American, Nicholas Klein),

“First, they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

They have ignored us. Remember when Ed Stetzer sparked the #The15 controversy by alleging that criticism is always from “the same 15 angry Calvinists?” That was back in 2014, a decade ago. And that’s back when Stetzer was still masquerading as a conservative, and some still believed him. They tried to ignore us. Read this article if you want to truly understand the origins of the current controversy.

They have ridiculed us. One of the first articles at the gloriously conservative Babylon Bee in 2016 satirized us and made us into a punchline (that was back when Karen Swallow Prior guest-wrote pieces for them and, like so many others, were left with egg on their faces—exactly what happens when you ignore discernment ministries). JD Greear made some celebratory fun of receiving Dunn’s Worst Christian of 2021 Award (for all the reasons now laid out in Basham’s New York Times best seller). Many of us have become punchlines and bywords.

They tried to attack us and burn us. Some who have attempted to do so, as mentioned above, eventually recanted but seldom apologized. They have called our churches to have us excommunicated. They have called our employers to get us fired. Countless cease-and-desist letters. Cops at our doors. Our kids lied about and kicked out of so-called Christian schools. They made it very, very personal.

We are now at the stage where they are supposed to build monuments to us. So where are the dang monuments?

This is the natural, fleshly feeling that we believe some have tapped into to become angry caricatures of their former selves. This is because, although we were mostly alone, we were not entirely alone. There were others among the seven thousand straight-kneed evangelicals. These include, but are not limited to, Brannon Howse, Janet Mefferd, Tommy Littleton, Alan Atchinson, Michael O’Fallon, and more. Few, if any, big-namers got into the game to any serious degree. Heavyweights like John MacArthur’s short retorts would make headlines for “Go Home” or “Unqualified,” but he largely avoided the skirmishes setting fire around us, preferring instead to send surrogates who could not pack quite the punch. We were alone back in the days before G3, before Sovereign Nations, before The Dallas Statement, before the Conservative Baptist Network, before Founders focused on anything besides Calvinism, or James White opined on much besides apologetics (as thankful as we are for all of the above).

Again, we ask, where are our monuments? All we got in Basham’s book were footnotes.

This seems to be the underlying issue for a small but potentially ferocious number who are criticizing Basham’s book, siding almost inexplicably with the same bad characters they spent the better part of a decade criticizing from the foxhole adjacent to ours.

To those dear friends, please understand our concerns on this matter. Sacred Writ may tolerate, but it does not commend, preaching out of envy (Philippians 1:15). Although the Apostle Paul seems to suggest that such jealousy-based proclamation may be inevitable given the frailty of human nature, he exhorts us to be more high-minded than this. We do not do polemics for the monuments, the accolades, or the applause. This is a field of study, as we have said for some time, “where reputations come to die.” It is our drink offering poured out in love, tenacity, and perseverance to be hated for His namesake.

When you see some who appear to desire the office of Discernment Queen Bee or Polemical Potentate, now throwing jabs at Shepherds for Sale and going so far as to find fellowship with the very priests of darkness they once tried to expose, understand that all signs point to a heart of bitterness for not being the Chosen One to get the truth about evangelicalism’s dark side to the masses. We do not quote Martin Luther King often on this website and have little reason to, but he once said, speaking of the metaphoric Promised Land, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

This is ultimately our hope and always has been. We cannot see infallibly inside the heart, but we suggest that the reader merely review the previously written work of those criticizing Basham from the right and ponder why they have suddenly performed an about-face on the issues they fought on behalf of for so long.

Janet Mefferd, a come-lately conservative critic of Basham, will be our example. JD Hall, Protestia’s Founder, was a guest on Mefferd’s radio program in 2019 to discuss the FBC Naples situation that Greear attempted to exonerate himself of due to ignorance. Mefferd was in agreement at the time with his assessment (which is the same as Basham’s assessment) of the situation. The leftward trajectory of the Greear-led SBC was certainly not in contention. Discussed in that podcast between the two were the very issues written about in Shepherds for Sale. It was clear then what side Mefferd was on. Mefferd has criticized, at length, nearly every single leader highlighted in Shepherds for Sale and for the same reasons as Megan Basham.

Writing a book with the pages necessary to cover all the ways Mefferd preemptively corroborated the overarching truths of Basham’s book would be a voluminous bug-killer because she sounded the alarm on liberalism’s encroachment into evangelicalism more loudly than almost anyone with a polished radio program. So what changed?

Again, judging our own hearts is hard enough, but Mefferd is not the only example of someone who appears unreasonably bitter toward Basham in an unreasonable and unexpected way. There are a number of others, albeit small in number. Unfortunately for the Cause, each and every absconder from our side is used as propaganda by the enemies of our Savior as a reason to throw Basham’s baby out with the bathwater.

A few other critics seem bent on Basham not knowing well enough the details of how bad these Sold-Out Shepherds really were. After all, we were laying the groundwork for all of this before Basham knew there was even a controversy. No doubt, Janet Mefferd would have a more thorough, exhaustive accounting of the issues than Megan Basham if for no other reason than she has been at it so much longer. But Mefferd did not write the book. We presume upon God’s providence that his sovereign timing and appointments in the realm of time and space are better than our own.

There are a few other critics as well, mostly from the camp that is rightly concerned about Christian Nationalism (this comment is neither an affirmation nor rejection of Christian Nationalism), trying to ascertain whether or not Basham may be friend or foe in the next ensuing battle that is about to split open evangelicalism. For these brethren, we simply ask them to consider that “sufficient for the day is its own troubles; tomorrow will be anxious for itself” (Matthew 6:34).

Caricatures exist because there is a certain truth within them, albeit exaggerated. For those of us still nursing trench-foot from the days we were alone in the foxhole, we have had to consistently strive not to be the caricature the left has made of us. We are not doing this just for the thrill of controversy. We are not doing this just to build a following. We are not doing this to make a name for ourselves. We do not revel in the excitement. No friends, we are fighters for a cause that is bigger than ourselves. We do this not for ourselves but for our children and God’s children.

We don’t get a monument. We get a cross. We very well may not reap, so we must be content with being the ones who sow. A beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, as the poem goes, and we must slay it. We are polemicists. We have one job, and that is to magnify the name of Christ by promoting that which is true, laying waste to that which is false, and committing to ride-or-die with the consequences.

John Knox once said, referring to heretics, that he must “smoke out the devil’s foxes.” Thanks to the work of so many people, the foxes of American Evangelicalism have been smoked out. That’s right. We smoke them, but others have smote them. That’s how it works in God’s economy, and we rejoice in Him.