Some critics seem intent on taking down Basham’s book at all costs. Whether the book is truly inaccurate seems a secondary matter for them. They just want to stop others from reading it…It is hard to ignore the feeling that much of the brouhaha raised against Basham’s book reflects insecurity and even fear.

If you want to better understand what’s going on inside American evangelicalism’s elite, Shepherds for Sale (2024) by Megan Basham is a great place to start. And if you are a member of the evangelical elite yourself, you should read her book to understand what is going on among rank-and-file evangelicals.

A journalist with The Daily Wire, Basham has spent the past several years chronicling the growing chasm between many evangelical leaders and those they are supposed to shepherd. Her reporting has defied the standard narrative. Most journalists who cover evangelicals obsess over pastors and ministry leaders who they think have sold their souls to right-wing populism. That’s a legitimate concern and worth reporting on. However, this way of framing coverage of evangelicals provides—at best—only a partial picture of reality.

Most notably, it ignores the evangelical leaders who are being co-opted by various movements on the political and cultural left.

By turning the spotlight on evangelical elites she thinks have been comprised by progressivism, Basham has done the evangelical community a significant service. Some have criticized her for not also covering unholy alliances among some evangelicals on the right. But given the pervasiveness of the standard narrative, I think that criticism falls flat. If you are a well-read evangelical, you can’t avoid hearing (non-stop) about the corruption (or supposed corruption) on the right.

What Basham is doing is investigating the side of the story you don’t typically hear from the establishment media.

As a result, she has provoked the ire of many in the evangelical leadership class and its “old boy network.” The full-court press to silence her book even before it came out provides evidence of the anger—and perhaps the insecurities—of her detractors.

I’d like to make a plea to those in the evangelical leadership class: I know you might be tempted to denounce or dismiss or ignore Basham’s book without reading it or without fairly considering its main points. Please don’t. Basham vocalizes the concerns of a large and growing number of American evangelicals. Perhaps you think these evangelicals are stupid and self-destructive. But you aren’t going to have any hope of reaching or finding common ground with them if you ignore or demonize them. Try to read Basham’s book carefully and non-defensively. It may help you understand the views of people outside your own echo chamber.

Giving Voice to the Marginalized

Some of the most powerful parts of Basham’s book, which I didn’t expect, were her profiles of ordinary Christians and their experiences. She writes about a wife recruited by fellow church members to join a “Women’s March” for abortion, climate change, and LGTBQ rights. She tells of a husband who joined a racial reconciliation group at his church only to be “told that new white members weren’t allowed to speak for the first six months.” She recounts the experiences of a grieving mother whose son was killed by an illegal alien. She interviews a friend who was taken aback when her church’s advent devotional focused on the climate crisis rather than Jesus. She tells about the nurse who has devoted her life to helping women avoid abortion who is disheartened by the seeming disparagement of pro-life efforts by some leading evangelicals. Finally, Basham reveals her own painful journey of transformation. She tells how she was delivered from a life of substance abuse by hearing the sort of hard truths of traditional Christianity that so many leading evangelicals seem afraid to talk about.

These personal narratives counter the stereotypes of conservative evangelicals that even some evangelical leaders help perpetuate. They make Shepherds for Sale worth reading for anyone who wants to understand the views and challenges of ordinary evangelicals. For evangelical leaders disconnected from those they serve, the stories will be a helpful guide to the concerns of parishioners they may have marginalized.

Of course, the book offers much else as well. But before getting to some of those other takeaways, let me address a couple of flashpoints involving the book.

Is the Book Really about Trump?

Warren Cole Smith has published a lengthy critique of Basham’s book that bears the subtitle: “A new book about evangelicalism is really about Trump.” Smith claims: “Shepherds For Sale has many villains, but it has only one true hero: Donald J. Trump. He is mentioned more than 30 times in the book, all positively or defensively.”

Smith published his critique in the pervasively anti-Trump publication The Dispatch, which I suppose has an interest in trying to make everything about Trump. Except in this case the charge isn’t true. Basham’s book is not focused on Trump, and it spends very few of its 320 pages discussing him. The book’s chapters focus on abortion, LGTBQ issues, immigration, climate change, the me-too movement, critical race theory, and COVID-19 policies. To reduce Basham’s book to a pro-Trump polemic is both unfair and inaccurate. Having said that, Basham’s reporting does raise an important issue connected to Trump: Are certain evangelical leaders so blinded by their opposition to him that they are abandoning or at least downplaying some of their previous commitments? That’s a serious question worth exploring. Of course, I also think it’s a serious question to ask whether some evangelical leaders have compromised their beliefs in support of Trump. But that latter question gets asked a lot. Basham’s book broaches a question that you typically won’t find covered, say, in either The Dispatch or Christianity Today.

Are Evangelical Leaders Really for Sale?

Another flashpoint over the book has been its title. The title seems to suggest that there are a lot of evangelical leaders who have apostatized because they’ve received money from left-wing funders. Let me be clear: I don’t think that’s true. There are exceptions, but in my experience pastors, professors, and ministry leaders don’t change their views primarily because of funding. Instead, they take the funding because they’ve already changed their views. They are what I’ve called “Stockholm Syndrome Christians.” Held hostage by the secular elites, they end up identifying more with the cultural oppressors of Christianity than with their fellow Christians. (Full disclosure: I have a book coming out on this topic early next year.)

Despite my disclaimer about the title, the preoccupation of some critics with the title strikes me as unjust. In the book itself Basham makes abundantly clear she is not arguing that every evangelical leader is for sale. She explicitly acknowledges that “motives may be complex and sometimes unclear,” and there are “different degrees of error.” She admits that Christians can have sincere differences of opinion on many issues. So just because someone is named in her book doesn’t mean she thinks they are a “shepherd for sale.”

Even so, it is true that one of the book’s most damning indictments involves money.

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