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MEGAN BASHAM | Shepherds for Sale (Ep. 640)

August 27, 2024 54m 08s Full transcript available
MEGAN BASHAM | Shepherds for Sale (Ep. 640)
0:00 / 54m 08s
In this episode, Kyle Thompson sits down with journalist Megan Basham to discuss her provocative new book, 'Shepherds for Sale,' which exposes how evangelical leaders have compromised biblical truth for a leftist agenda. They tackle critical issues like race, the pro-life movement, and LGBTQ+ activism, urging listeners to discern the truth and push back against cultural pressures.
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1:20 This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
1:24 I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:26 Let's get into it.
1:27 All right, guys.
1:28 We've got a special guest on the podcast today.
1:29 Her name is Megan Basham.
1:30 So she is a journalist, reporter, and author.
1:32 She is a culture reporter for The Daily Wire, and she is the New York Times bestselling
1:35 author of her new book, Shepherds for Sale, how evangelical leaders traded the truth for
1:41 a leftist agenda.
1:42 So I have gotten so many requests, emails, DMs, text messages from people, hey, you're
1:48 going to talk to Megan Basham about her new book.
1:50 Hey, have you thought about Megan Basham?
1:51 Hey, have you ever heard about Megan Basham?
1:52 The answer is yes, I've heard of her.
1:53 Yes, I'm familiar with her.
1:54 Yes, I'm familiar with the book.
1:55 And yes, I was working on it, and yes, we got it for you today, okay, guys?
1:58 So we didn't have all the time in the world.
2:00 So I mean, really the depth she goes into in each chapter of her book would have really
2:05 leaned more towards like a two or three hour long conversation to really, really, really
2:10 dig into the meat.
2:11 But I will just tell you from the outset, I think it is well worth your money and your
2:14 time to invest in reading Shepherds for Sale.
2:16 So this has been kind of been a weird year for books.
2:18 There haven't really been that many great books that I've read where I was like, yeah,
2:21 you really should read them too.
2:23 So Shepherds for Sale is one of those.
2:24 It's not like being black by Vodie Bockham is another.
2:27 But in this particular interview today, we don't really get into how do you become a
2:30 journalist and what's it like working out the daily wire?
2:32 We just got right into the book, like the ultimate purpose for her book, why she chose
2:36 to dig in on these subject matters, you know, because it's a very disputatious book and
2:41 it can get into a lot of different topics, but she was acting like a journalist and just
2:45 following the thread and following the money.
2:47 But then, you know, ask her, you know, what was it like getting all this pushback or she's
2:50 still getting a whole lot of pushback, a lot of people are responding to her comments
2:53 and making claims about her work that aren't exactly true, like how she's dealing with
2:57 all that.
2:58 But then we dig into like the actual contents of the book because the book goes into a lot
3:02 of subjects.
3:03 So the chapters talk about climate change, illegal immigration, pro life movement, Christian
3:07 media, COVID-19, race, me too, and church too, and then the LGBTQ plus revolution.
3:12 We really only had time to cover race, the pro life movement, LGBTQ, but how she come
3:16 up with those, how did she basically follow the threads?
3:19 We also talked about some of the main villains of the book.
3:22 So kind of the two main villains that are most prominently featured throughout the entire
3:25 book are Russell Moore and JD Greer.
3:28 And how those two guys are actually operating a little bit differently where it seems like
3:32 Russell Moore kind of knows what he's doing and is kind of like finagling his way and
3:36 really creating these tendrils of negativity, whereas JD Greer is just kind of like going
3:40 along to get along and he's kind of getting sucked up in all this negative energy.
3:43 We also talk about, you know, Tim Keller and how he's such an important minister and, you
3:47 know, may he rest in peace, but some of the crazy things he said on the social and cultural
3:51 side.
3:52 And we just went all over the place and got in and out of a lot of these subject matters,
3:55 guys.
3:56 I really, really think you're going to enjoy this conversation today.
3:58 So without further ado, let's get into it.
4:01 Megan Bastian, welcome to adult to life of man's podcast.
4:04 Thank you.
4:05 I appreciate you having me here and kind of the boys room.
4:08 Yeah.
4:09 This is the boys room.
4:10 And I can tell you, like I told you, off air, the guys are used to clearing throats and
4:13 different things like that.
4:14 Just served by nose.
4:15 Megan is a little bit under the weather because she hasn't been sleeping a whole lot because
4:17 she's doing a bunch of these.
4:18 So guys, if she sounds a little different than she normally does, give her a little bit of
4:22 grace here.
4:23 But normally Megan, I would say, Hey, let's find a soft place to land.
4:25 What was it like growing up?
4:26 Megan Bastian, you know, how did you want to be a journalist?
4:28 But we really just need to dig into the new book.
4:30 We need to dig into shepherds for sale because it's an incredible thing to see the amount
4:37 of vitriol that's coming your way for this book.
4:41 And you can tell by some people that haven't even read, read the thing.
4:44 But I've seen things all over my timeline about how poorly researched this book was
4:49 and how you're grasping its straws the whole time.
4:51 And you're not even a real journalist.
4:52 You work for the Daily Wire.
4:53 So how could you be a real journalist?
4:55 But probably my most fun critique that I've heard so far is that you've been violating
4:58 the ninth command.
4:59 I don't know if you knew that, but you are bearing false witness against your neighbor.
5:03 So we'll dig into the book and what it's about and then we'll get into details.
5:06 But for somebody that's, I believe this is your first book to hit the market.
5:09 Were you expecting this level?
5:10 It's second.
5:11 It's second.
5:12 It's been a minute.
5:13 One was way back in 2008, so.
5:15 But were you expecting this level of pushback and negative feedback on your work?
5:21 So I expected pushback, so I haven't been surprised by that.
5:25 I knew that it was a little bit going to be kicking a hornet's nest.
5:30 I didn't expect the pushback to take the form that it has, because so much of it has been
5:36 what you just described there, which has been, you shouldn't even read this book or I'm not
5:40 going to read this book, it's already perfectly clear what she's doing.
5:45 And so it seems like there's been a real attempt to try to discredit the material I present
5:51 before anyone's even given it a hearing.
5:53 Now, I think it's largely been an unsuccessful effort, but it's been a very strong effort.
5:57 Yeah, certainly it has been very strong, but it's one of those things that, you know, if
6:01 you hear people talking so negatively about a movie, then it's going to affect your ability
6:06 to want to see that movie, even if you were excited by the preview or not.
6:10 So we need to get into the book itself, but I want to read a quick quote that I think
6:13 kind of captures what you're going for.
6:16 My ultimate purpose is to confirm for average evangelicals and the pews that the uneasy
6:20 feelings many of you have been having, perhaps for some years now, that your pulpits and
6:24 your institutions are being co-opted by political forces with explicitly secular progressive
6:29 aims are justified.
6:31 So Megan, just to start simply, why this book?
6:34 Why right now?
6:35 Why you?
6:36 Right.
6:37 You know, I started writing this book and this will explain the why me and it's, I don't
6:42 know.
6:43 That must have been God's plan because I didn't set out to go, I am going to write this controversial
6:48 book about the church.
6:51 It really felt like every step of the way, God just kind of pushed me through doors.
6:57 Initially I worked at a Christian magazine, still have really good friends there.
7:02 And this, this sort of battles, the fault lines that Vodie Bakam wrote about came into
7:08 my workplace.
7:09 I started to experience it at my church, at my kids Christian school.
7:14 So you know, I'm just an evangelical mom out here who did not have my head in all of these
7:21 spaces myself.
7:22 I just started experiencing it right along with everyone else, like to give you one example.
7:27 In 2020, I got an email from the children's director at our then church, telling all the
7:33 parents how they could talk to their kids about their white privilege.
7:37 And these were the same things we were debating at work.
7:39 And all of these things happening made me go, I feel like we have a problem here.
7:44 And a lot of people were experiencing that.
7:47 And so I started reporting on it as that turned into COVID and we saw how the church handled
7:52 COVID and I think there were a lot of failures there.
7:57 And I wrote about that and had some reporting go viral.
8:00 I had a publisher approach me and say, hey, listen, some of these stories that you've
8:05 been working on, we think there's a book in this.
8:09 So put together a proposal, ended up selling the book, and in the long run I ended up at
8:15 Harper Collins, not the initial publisher that wanted the proposal, but kind of every
8:20 step of the way, there have been people coming to me and saying, Hey, have you heard about
8:25 this?
8:26 Have you told this story?
8:27 Should you should look into this?
8:28 And so I feel like I've just kind of been following wherever God's been leading without
8:33 really thinking too deeply about what comes next.
8:36 When Megan, you're, you're blowing the top off of certain things that, you know, when
8:40 you just hear them outright, they sound almost conspiracy theory-ish, but you do show your
8:44 receipts.
8:45 And one of the big things that we can't super dig into, but that you talk about early in
8:47 the book is about the fact that if you could flip the evangelical vote in America, if you
8:53 could just flip it from red to purple, you know, talking in broad terms, that would basically
8:57 completely change the political landscape of our country and perhaps irrevocably.
9:02 But as we get into this discussion, because we need to go ahead and get into some of the
9:06 main characters of this nonfiction, a lot of times I've said things similar to this.
9:10 I didn't make this up.
9:11 But for evil, Marxist, communist, kind of socialistic ideas to take hold and to flourish,
9:18 you need two categories of people.
9:20 You need conscious nefarious actors, and you need useful idiots.
9:23 And so in this book, you identify, you know, many people and you name names that could
9:28 fit into one of those two categories, whether as a whole, or just about, you know, their
9:32 particular thoughts on a particular issue.
9:34 So you talk about Andy Stanley and Rick Warren, we'll get into them a little bit later, but
9:37 you also bring up Tim Keller and Matt Chandler and Beth Moore and David French and Francis
9:41 Collins.
9:42 And you kind of go on and on for their from there.
9:45 But if I Megan were to categorize as far as, you know, what you showed in Shepherds for
9:49 sale, I think there are two main villains in the book that you bring up in one, I would
9:54 categorize as a conscious nefarious actor and one, I would categorize as a useful idiot.
10:00 The conscious nefarious actor is probably the main villain of the book.
10:02 And that's Russell Moore.
10:04 And the main villain or the main dunce of the book, I guess you could say, at least in
10:07 terms of what you presented is JD Greer.
10:10 And so if you could briefly tell us like, who are these two men?
10:14 Why did they feature so prominently in the book?
10:16 Because you know, like Matt Chandler is a good buddy of mine, he disappeared in the book
10:19 a couple of different places you just made mention, but JD appeared in multiple chapters
10:23 and Russell Moore basically appeared in every single chapter.
10:26 Did you mean to focus in on those two guys mainly or did it just kind of reveal itself
10:31 that way?
10:32 It was very much the latter.
10:34 It just revealed itself that way.
10:36 And some of the people who appeared in the book, I can tell you, I knew going in that
10:40 I would have preferred to not talk about them.
10:43 For example, Tim Keller, because he had just passed away.
10:46 I knew there were a lot of sensitive feelings there.
10:49 I would have very much preferred and actually fought at one point.
10:52 I'm going to probably just leave Tim Keller alone, except that it was unavoidable as I
10:56 was going through research and I was investigating what was happening.
11:01 It became very clear that I could not do my due diligence and present a true picture without
11:07 talking about him.
11:08 And that was very much the case with Russell Moore.
11:11 So many roads led to him.
11:13 When you talk about the different kinds of ways that people might sell themselves and
11:18 one of the things that's been funny and we were just talking about that the pushback
11:22 has been the refusal to acknowledge that a title can be both literal and figurative
11:28 and it is.
11:29 It is both.
11:30 So sometimes you can deliberately sell your influence to left-wing funders, but people
11:36 also sort of sell themselves out for the adulation of the media or the world.
11:41 And that's also a kind of selling, you might say.
11:44 And in fact, I took this title from a think tank that was a Soros and Bill Gates funded
11:51 think tank.
11:52 They had written a report about how to infiltrate evangelicals on the issue of climate change
11:58 and they had called it the evangelicals for rent model.
12:02 And at one point we had thought maybe we could title this book evangelicals for rent, but
12:07 it just seemed clunky when I was crowdsourcing it with friends and going, what do you think
12:12 about this?
12:13 So that's how we ended up at Shepherds for sale.
12:15 And Russell Moore was just a consistent figure with all of these influential left-wing funded
12:23 organizations like the evangelical immigration table.
12:27 He actually appears in some open society documentation that's George Soros's foundation was listed
12:35 as a grantee.
12:37 So that was probably the reason why I kept running into instances where Russell Moore
12:42 could not be avoided.
12:44 If you look at the #MeToo issue and how that was handled in the Southern Baptist Convention,
12:49 it was very clear that Russell Moore was not someone who was just reacting to the cultural
12:54 zeitgeist.
12:55 He had some figures in that chapter, you mentioned J.D. Greer, who I think probably were doing
12:59 that.
13:00 That was the dominant thing in the culture at that moment in 2018, 2019.
13:04 #MeToo was all the rage.
13:06 And so they were just kind of moving to a line with what the acceptable cultural worldview
13:11 was on that issue.
13:13 Russell Moore was different.
13:14 He was orchestrating what was happening in so many of these instances, specifically through
13:20 his close relationship with influential media outlets, The Washington Post, The New York
13:26 Times.
13:27 This actually made me laugh when it came out, a New York Times piece that named Russell
13:34 Moore a dissenter trying to save evangelicals from themselves.
13:39 So for him, it just seemed like a much more proactive orchestrated type of strategy as
13:46 opposed to someone just being acted upon by the prevailing cultural wins.
13:53 When I think that's the delineating point between the conscious nefarious actors and
13:57 the useful idiots.
13:58 Because I know that's kind of like a harsh phraseology for some people, but it's like
14:01 we've all been useful idiots at one point or another for some sort of an ideology.
14:06 But not all of us have been pastors of enormous churches or the president of the SBC or a
14:11 big person in media or in big EVA or something like that.
14:14 So the consequences of our ignorance are a lot worse.
14:17 So in the book, you talk about a lot of different subjects and guys, I was able to read this
14:21 book in a couple of days.
14:22 There's so much inside of it though, we're not going to be able to cover or even scratch
14:26 the surface on a lot of these.
14:27 So go and buy the book it is in the show notes, but you cover the dark money influence and
14:32 kind of how that's been influencing climate change, illegal immigration, the pro-life
14:37 movement, Christian media, COVID-19, race, MeToo/church2, and then the LGBTQ+ revolution.
14:44 So we're just going to cover the ones that I find to be the most incendiary.
14:48 So the one I want to start with is actually race and then we'll get into pro-life stuff
14:51 and then make sure we get into LGBTQ.
14:53 So on the race thing, this is where JD Greer featured prominently in this chapter as the
14:58 former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
15:01 Because he was dubbed by some people as the anti-racist reformer, which is kind of like
15:05 this grand title almost, and he kind of became this mainstream media darling as this big
15:10 evil guy that is going against kind of the hegemonic viewpoints of this old institution.
15:18 But to set this up, it's going to take a while to set it up, but he openly bragged that he
15:21 went out of his way to ensure that two thirds of the North American Mission Board, which
15:25 is essentially the SBC's planting and missionary support wing, that they were either women or
15:29 people of color because they "needed" their wisdom, which is essentially straight up racist
15:34 against white men and it's straight up standpoint epistemology or to use a voting-bachum phrase
15:38 not ethnic Gnosticism.
15:41 But then you have in the 2021 SBC National Convention, he said, "We mourn when closet
15:46 racist and neo-Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people
15:50 of color."
15:51 And he said that without even doing anything that resembled evidence or providing some
15:56 sort of evidentiary basis to back up such a serious claim, CRT was accepted as an analytical
16:02 tool while under his tutelage and leadership at the SBC conventions.
16:06 But here's the thing, Megan, and this is my struggle, is I have been told by reliable
16:11 sources that J.D. Greer is a good dude, that he is a good guy in the fight, that he is
16:15 about God's kingdom, and that might be true.
16:19 But even if that were true, Megan, he's so woefully ignorant out of line on the issue
16:23 of race and also other issues, but specifically on the issue of race.
16:27 And I feel like this is the one issue, it's this issue in LGBTQ stuff where Christians
16:31 can be just suckered in to the category of useful idiots so easily.
16:36 Again, I know that took a long time to set up, but help me kind of understand why the
16:40 race issue in particular can get a guy like J.D. Greer or other thinking individuals and
16:44 kind of get them suckered into a non-biblical, non-Christian position.
16:48 Well, and you know, part of what I do in the book for a long time is I do try to not ascribe
16:53 motives where I don't have it in black and white because I can't read hearts and I don't
16:58 know, but what I can tell you is I could set what J.D. Greer was doing in cultural context.
17:05 So we know that as he became president of the SBC, there was that summer of 2020, the BLM,
17:14 George Floyd riots, and one of the things we saw were political leaders like Nancy Pelosi,
17:21 Chuck Schumer, calling for removing statues of not just people associated with the Confederacy,
17:30 but also our former leaders, our historical leaders who had been slaveholders or anyone
17:37 who had been touched by that particular unrighteousness in the past and yet they are a part of
17:42 our history and like all human beings, they are a mix of good things and bad things and
17:47 we honor them for those good things and anyway, we saw that it was just this massive effort
17:52 to sort of strip the United States of so much of its historical record and at the same time
17:59 as J.D. was coming in to the SBC, he kind of started to do the same thing and I mentioned
18:06 that he, for example, retired the gavel of John Broadus who was Robert E. Lee's chaplain
18:13 and it had been used in the SBC for many, many, many, many years and he said that he felt
18:19 uncomfortable using it.
18:20 It was right there in that summer of 2020 that he retired that gavel and, you know, he
18:27 objected and this was just this week and tried to say, that's not why I did it except
18:31 that the record at the time shows that Washington Post, even the gospel coalition in which he
18:37 serves as a council member said that that was why he did it.
18:41 And so it was something that was just paralleling to a T, what we saw happening in the wider
18:47 culture and same thing with that desire to rename the Southern Baptist Convention.
18:53 It was to erase that Southern connection and I apologize, I have a cough drop in my mouth
19:00 so that I'm not coughing on my way through the interview.
19:02 But so we saw that also with the wanting to change the name to Great Commission Baptist
19:09 in order to distance from the history of the Southern Baptist Convention.
19:15 And that is not to say that, you know, everyone should be proud of everything and every stance
19:18 that the Southern Baptist Convention took.
19:20 I think it is good that at points throughout history, the Southern Baptists have said,
19:24 hey, we repent of the period of time in which we were aligned with slavery as an institution,
19:32 we reject racism.
19:33 That was a good thing to do, but there is the sense in which people who have a history
19:39 that isn't founded in those groups are not allowed to acknowledge that anything good came
19:44 out of it, that anything good lived in those people.
19:48 And so anyway, that was part of what I was drawing a distinction to with J.D. Greer was
19:54 that he was part of this larger cultural moment in wanting to do the same things with the
20:00 Southern Baptist Convention that we saw Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, a lot of liberal groups
20:05 wanting to do in the culture at large.
20:08 And then you marry that to what was happening with CRT coming in and using this language
20:15 of the oppressed and the oppressors.
20:17 And this dichotomy of saying that these people, these white people are the oppressors and black
20:24 people in churches are the oppressed and not seeing us as individuals.
20:28 There was nothing biblical about that to me.
20:31 And I showed a video where I don't know if he knew it.
20:34 I tend to think he didn't know it, but he was reading a glossary from the Aspen Institute
20:40 that was just chock full of critical race theory lingo and ideas.
20:46 And when I see that, I go, my question is, does this person have the discernment then
20:53 to be a leader?
20:55 Because he may be very well-meaning and may have had very sincere reasons for what he
20:59 was doing, but there was a lack of discernment there when you literally had the Aspen Institute
21:04 glossary full of CRT ideas and worldview diametrically opposed to scripture.
21:11 And you are promoting that to your Christian audience.
21:15 And that's what we saw.
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22:48 I certainly think it's a concern and look, I don't normally have a whole lot of grace
22:52 in my disposition.
22:54 So I have to like think about it to have grace for people.
22:56 That's the shock to know when the listeners are the show.
22:58 But I have grace for people that come around and say, gosh, I can't believe I said that.
23:01 I can't believe I had that opinion again.
23:03 I've been a public figure with the show since 2017.
23:06 So there are certainly things in the archives that I don't agree with anymore.
23:09 But like, you know, for instance, when Matt Chandler and you put this in the book where
23:12 he said that he would hire a black seven over an Anglo eight, well, whenever I interviewed
23:17 him for the first time, I asked him about that and he's like, if I could take one sentence
23:20 back from any sermon I've ever done in my entire life, that would be the one.
23:25 And it's because he did experience regret over putting it that way, even though he fervently
23:29 believed it at the time.
23:31 And that's why again, there's there's the categories of conscious nefarious actors, the
23:34 people that are kind of like pulling the strings in the people on the other side.
23:38 And so to really get into the next conversation about the whole pro life movement, this is
23:42 where Russell Moore really featured prominently as well because of his non reaction to the
23:48 overturning of Roe v. Wade on June the 24th of 2022.
23:51 So I want to read a short quote from the book.
23:52 Sure, it came as something of a shock then when many of the big name evangelical leaders
23:56 who were supposed to represent pro life activists, like her sounded distinctly less than celebratory.
24:02 Instead, a number of them used the fall of row as an opportunity to argue for bigger
24:07 government and to bolster the pro abortion narrative that Christians only care about
24:10 babies before they're born to which I would say a frickin man.
24:14 I loved that section there because I was like, I literally was in the middle of mowing
24:18 the lawn and I got the call that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey went over and
24:22 I immediately started crying.
24:23 I run up to my studio and I'm like, it's still covered in dirt and sweat and I'm recording
24:27 this episode.
24:28 I'm so over the top.
24:29 Like I stopped what I was doing to respond to something that pro lifers and Christians
24:32 have been fighting for decades.
24:34 And then we either saw these like, well, we got to think about both sides here.
24:38 We know there are people that are crushed today.
24:40 And then we had people like Russell Moore who basically said nothing for weeks.
24:44 And so why on this issue, which was packaged Megan distinctly as a Christian issue for
24:51 all these times, trying to protect image bearers of God, why did all of a sudden these
24:56 big Eva people specifically Russell Moore either go silent or try to like acquiesce to
25:00 both sides without being celebratory?
25:02 Well, you know, I know it's uncomfortable for people, but I think there's actually a very
25:06 simple answer to this one and it's Donald Trump.
25:09 Donald Trump was the president who did keep his promise and he did appoint pro life justices.
25:16 And it was a result of those appointments that we saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
25:21 And you had people who had so staked a position on being morally superior for having opposed
25:27 Trump and having not voted for him that to admit that this was a significant victory would
25:33 have I think in their eyes diminished that moral certitude that they had it through that
25:40 into a state of questioning because that was a good and we should have all been able to
25:47 celebrate it as a good and they didn't.
25:49 And in fact, you had some saying I wouldn't have paid this price or this wasn't the right
25:54 way to do it.
25:56 And I think that is a big part of why he said nothing for a number of weeks.
26:00 And then when he finally did say something, what he said was fairly disingenuous because
26:05 he said, well, something to the effect of I think anybody, any president, conservative
26:10 Republican president, you would have seen the same result.
26:13 Well, we didn't though.
26:14 And in fact, the George W. Bush appointee, um, he did not sign on to the majority opinion
26:22 right over turning row.
26:24 So John Roberts was going to have a much narrower opinion that still would have left
26:29 row essentially in place.
26:31 And so that didn't float, but he still went with that.
26:34 And I think that is part of why he was so silent for so long because it was almost like,
26:39 how are we going to address this?
26:41 Um, yeah.
26:42 Yeah.
26:43 And then you, I mean, you saw sort of the tortured logic that came out when they did
26:46 finally start speaking.
26:47 Oh, tortured logic is exactly that because you're, you, you said it right there in that
26:51 short quote, but evangelicals went from thinking that from womb to tomb was like this new concept
26:57 that we've never actually thought about this before, but they, what they attached it to
27:01 was only left wing, wishless items like universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal
27:06 paid family leave, uh, you know, universal basic income free college.
27:10 And they just ignored strong churches, strong marriages, strong families, strong fathers,
27:15 like all of these things, they were just very, very silent about that.
27:18 But in this as well, uh, you know, it, it does provide me some, cause some internal
27:22 consternation and dissonance when I talk about Tim Keller as well, because Tim Keller's ministry
27:26 and his books have been very, very important to me.
27:28 We have a book list on our website, the 100 books every modern Christian man should read
27:31 lists.
27:32 He's got two books on that list.
27:34 So I legitimately say when I say even mentioned Tim Keller, may he rest in peace, but he really,
27:39 really screwed the pooch late in his life as it pertained to a myriad of social and cultural
27:43 issues.
27:44 And it just, we have to be able to talk about it while holding him in tension because his
27:49 public comments on abortion were just astonishing.
27:52 So I'll read a quote from the book.
27:53 This is actually a direct quote from a Tim Keller tweet.
27:57 I know abortion is a sin, but the Bible doesn't tell me the best political policy to decrease
28:02 or end abortion in this country, nor which political or legal policies are most effective
28:07 to that end.
28:08 And I just saw, I just sat there and I read that sentence over and over Meghan because
28:11 I read that when he tweeted that years ago being like, what is he talking about?
28:16 Like of course we can't go to, you know, second Timothy and find exactly what the wording
28:21 should be inside of a law for the federal government.
28:24 But clearly we know which laws to advocate for the ones that protect human life and which
28:28 ones to advocate against the ones that destroy human life.
28:31 There's also another quote here that says, as a Christian post op ed put it, replace the
28:35 word abortion with the word slavery and imagine if Keller would have still felt comfortable
28:39 signing his name to that, that tweet.
28:42 And so Meghan, even someone like Tim Keller, who was a great leader and had a lot of great
28:47 ideas and did tremendous things for the gospel in a depraved place like New York City.
28:52 Why was this abortion issue just one of those issues that these guys couldn't just be like,
28:56 yes, we shouldn't kill image bearers of Christ.
28:59 If you want to hang me for it, hang me.
29:01 But let's dig our heels into the ground on this issue.
29:04 Well, you know, as I've said, I think there can be a lot of different motivations and you
29:08 just brought up what Tim Keller's may have been New York City.
29:12 He was ministering in a very blue state in a very blue city and would have had a mission
29:19 field that was very opposed to an idea like that.
29:23 And I think maybe that's part of why so much of Keller's leader work focused on that, what
29:29 we've now come to term the third way option, Christ is neither right nor left.
29:34 He's this third thing that's somewhere in the middle.
29:37 But of course, I would say actually, if there is a third way, it's way over to the right
29:43 of the right in the sense that I as a social conservative who believes in the sanctity
29:48 of human life and the sanctity of marriage as being between a man and a woman, I am too
29:53 conservative for the GOP now very often.
29:56 So to me, that's the real third way and that certainly isn't something that would have
30:00 been well received in a culture like urban New York.
30:05 So I think that's part of it.
30:07 And also when they brought in some of the arguments for how Christians could show their
30:15 pro-life bona fides as opposed to voting for pro-life candidates and outlawing murder
30:19 in law, which I think is very clearly scriptural that governing authorities have a responsibility
30:26 to protect citizens and protect their lives.
30:29 There's to punish wickedness and they are to reinforce good.
30:33 So the very baseline should be, you're not allowed to kill your fellow citizens.
30:37 But instead, they would say things like, well, we could expand the social safety net and
30:42 that could also be a way to be pro-life.
30:45 And we could do things like ensure that women don't ever feel like they need to have an
30:51 abortion.
30:52 Already, that is a slippery, almost dishonest approach to what's really happening with
30:58 abortion.
30:59 It's, well, we need to make it so no woman ever feels like she needs to get an abortion.
31:03 That's actually not when you look at the research why most women are getting abortions.
31:07 It's not because they're in poverty.
31:09 It's not because they're just desperate and think they won't be able to feed themselves
31:15 or clothe themselves if they don't.
31:17 It's just an inconvenience that they do not want.
31:20 And so that already started in a dishonest place.
31:24 And as you said, it also started in a place when they were arguing for the social safety
31:28 net that further entrenched, what I would say is a societal, very much destructive thing
31:36 of removing men from homes, removing fathers from homes.
31:41 And so that would just perpetuate that cycle that we have already seen in, for example,
31:45 the black community where social programs were targeted specifically at them in the 1960s.
31:51 And since then, it has absolutely decimated marriage.
31:55 So that a black person over 40 is the least likely of all Americans to be married.
32:00 So these were the things that I really struggled with with Tim Keller, but you're right, I could
32:04 not get away from that.
32:06 And then also this diluting of what pro life was because the other way to sort of maintain
32:14 that one was credibly pro life without saying we are going to take a position on what our
32:20 legislation should be and what sort of people we should elect in terms of understanding that
32:27 we want to elect people who are going to use their political power to protect babies in
32:30 the womb.
32:31 It became pro life can also be racial justice pro life could also be I didn't remember like
32:40 the entire basket of things that they threw into what pro life meant.
32:44 But what it certainly no longer just meant was protecting babies in the womb.
32:49 Which is again, when you complicate something to to an extreme degree, it becomes problematic
32:55 when you're trying to address the core of the issue.
32:57 Because here's the thing.
32:58 I'll just tell you straight up, Megan, if the cost of expanding the social safety net.
33:03 So let's check all those those boxes that I mentioned earlier, all these universal things
33:06 that are available.
33:08 If the trade was okay, we will do that.
33:11 I will increase my taxes significantly in the taxes of everyone that I know, but abortion
33:15 is completely outlawed for all reasons.
33:17 I think we all take that as legitimately pro life individuals, but that's where the disingenuous
33:21 nature of their, their arguments came out is because that's what that wasn't what they
33:25 were asking for.
33:27 It's kind of like when pro abortion people want to argue about rape and incest, these
33:31 extreme cases that account for well less than 1% of all abortions without addressing the
33:36 99% of abortions.
33:37 And so when you do the Ben Shapiro tactic of, okay, if you give me the 99% of abortions
33:41 that we can illegalize, then I'll talk to you about a middle position on these.
33:46 It's vapid.
33:47 It's nonsensical.
33:48 They don't actually mean it.
33:49 So we're, we don't have a lot of time.
33:51 I wish we could talk more about everything, but we've checked the race box kind of.
33:54 We've checked the abortion box kind of we need to move on to LGBTQ.
33:57 This was the last main chapter of the book.
33:59 I think this is, this is probably the one I said, you know, race and LGBTQ are probably
34:04 the ones that are easiest to get people, but this one is just man, people really get
34:09 been out of shape with this one.
34:10 I want to read a quote from the book here.
34:12 It is hardly surprising then that an all out effort is being made to break down this final
34:16 citadel of orthodoxy.
34:18 While the frontal assaults of LGBTQ activists demanding full inclusion have garnered the
34:23 lion's share of attention, more transformational efforts are being made by well known mega
34:27 churches using their dominance on the evangelical landscape to quietly influence smaller congregations
34:34 to compromise.
34:35 So here, Megan, the, the main villains are Andy Stanley and Rick Warren.
34:39 Now I've done three entire episodes on the Andy Stanley stuff.
34:43 So episode four, 23 is called Andy Stanley's a heretic episode four, 99 update Andy Stanley
34:48 is still a heretic and then episode five, 12 Andy Stanley, the circle drawing snake.
34:53 So you don't need to re elucidate all the things from the conferences and everything.
34:57 But why, why are Andy Stanley and Rick Warren kind of the main guys that you feel like are
35:02 pushing this from their mega church per, you know, for their purposes or from their purchase
35:07 rather.
35:09 So, you know, as I did with a lot of chapters in this book, I traced the dark money that
35:14 was coming in from secular left funders.
35:17 And one of those is an organization called the Arcus Foundation.
35:22 It was started by a, a gay multi multi billionaire John striker heir to a surgical supply company.
35:31 And he began the foundation to specifically try to at that time get gay marriage across
35:40 the legislative line in a number of states, but it kept losing.
35:44 And so of course, a burger fell happened.
35:46 But in the meantime, what he realized was that the reason it kept losing even in places
35:51 like California was because of the influence of Christian voters.
35:55 And so his foundation said, okay, how do we get around this problem of these Christian
35:59 voters?
36:00 And they realized that what they really needed to do was infiltrate and try to change their
36:06 doctrine.
36:07 And that was going to be the only way that they thought at that time that they were going
36:09 to achieve their legislative goals.
36:12 And so that's what they started doing.
36:13 They started funneling millions of dollars into all the, all Christian denominations, Catholics,
36:19 Mainlines.
36:20 I give the example in the book that he gave something like three to five million dollars
36:25 to just one ministry in the United Methodist Church to try to reform their doctrine.
36:31 And of course, they just went through a schism on the issue of gay marriage and ordination.
36:34 And he also started funneling money into evangelical groups.
36:38 So one of those groups is called the Reformation Project.
36:43 And it has a program that trains activists to come into churches and really try to mislead
36:51 and confuse people about what scripture says when it comes to issues of homosexuality,
36:57 gender and marriage.
36:59 So they also, by the way, have a pastors in progress program that it's a confidential
37:04 program that will teach secretly affirming pastors how to slowly move their Bible believing
37:10 congregations toward LGBTQ affirmation.
37:14 So that group Reformation Project was partnering with another group that came right out of
37:21 Andy Stanley's Church.
37:22 And I want to be clear that this wasn't an incidental thing that embracing the journey
37:26 came out of Andy Stanley's Church.
37:28 They encouraged this couple who were the parents of a gay son and eventually became affirming,
37:37 openly trans and gay affirming.
37:40 They encouraged them to start this program and this curriculum called Embracing the Journey.
37:46 And they financially supported it.
37:48 And this program was also partnering, doing conferences and speaking engagements with
37:54 the Reformation Project, the Arcus Funded Group.
37:57 So together, that curriculum then, backed by North Point, Andy Stanley's Church was going
38:04 out into other churches.
38:06 One of their organizational members is a counseling pastor at Saddleback Church.
38:18 And they started a number of this Embracing the Journey groups at Saddleback.
38:23 Now, the question is, did Rick Warren know?
38:28 Because this started under his watch, and of course, he's still an advisor today.
38:32 But did he know what these groups were doing?
38:34 Did he know that they were LGBTQ affirming groups?
38:38 I tried to ask that.
38:40 They didn't answer me, but they did take all of the web pages associated with this Embracing
38:46 the Journey group off their website.
38:48 And in fact, the counseling pastor, who I'm told still works there, even took down his
38:52 linked in.
38:53 So they really tried to erase the trail.
38:56 But what we see is that this was the effective gambit to bring this false doctrine into churches
39:02 all over the country.
39:05 When it's had a wide impact because, I mean, gosh, Rick Warren and Andy Stanley, we're
39:10 talking about two of the top five, maybe most influential pastors that we've had of this
39:15 millennium, certainly between their books and how big their churches have gotten and all
39:19 the churches that use their materials.
39:22 But one of the concerning things about this entire subject, Megan, is pastors scrubbing
39:26 from existence.
39:27 Any of their previous negative comments about homosexuality or just, you know, minimizing
39:31 scripture altogether, there's a quote from the book here, Beth Moore, whose Bible studies
39:35 shaped a generation of Christian women removed passages from her book, Praying God's Word
39:40 that described homosexuality as another deadly assault of the evil and of the evil one in
39:45 our society and encourages those struggling with the issue that God indeed can deliver
39:49 you and completely transform a transformation as a complete transformation as possible.
39:54 She later said those passages had overshot scripture by a mile.
39:57 So she was hedging.
39:58 I have it on good authority that Craig Rochelle, the leader of life church, you know, that
40:01 I attended for over 10 years is here in my backyard, that he and his buddy Bobbie Grewenwald
40:06 that invented the U version Bible app, they've scrubbed the internet clean essentially of
40:11 any of Craig Rochelle's old mentions of homosexuality about it being sinful or any of those types
40:15 of things.
40:16 So I haven't confirmed that myself, but that is something that I have them good authority.
40:19 And then even on this subject, JD Greer steps in it again.
40:22 He said that in reference to homosexuality, that we should not shy shout about what the
40:27 Bible only whispers about, which, you know, I would assume it was pretty loud at Sodom and
40:30 Gomorrah.
40:31 So maybe that was louder than a whisper, but he's also a very staunch supporter and advocate
40:35 of pronoun hospitality, which is knowingly lying, so sinning on purpose by using pronouns
40:41 that are incorrect when referring to someone that is gender confused.
40:44 So he's apparently big on that as well.
40:46 So Megan, why are so many prominent pastors, not just the random passer of the Baptist church
40:51 of 150 people down the street, but these prominent enormous pastors with these huge
40:56 podcasts, huge churches, lots of book deals and all that, why are they being so cowardly
41:03 about what God clearly says in his word so that they can come off as understanding or
41:08 winsome?
41:09 I mean, I think it's unavoidable that we have to look at the fact that this is the number
41:15 one cultural issue that can cost you personally and professionally if you take a stance that
41:23 the culture doesn't like.
41:25 We have seen that.
41:26 I mean, we have seen people like the Baker Jack Phillips put through the ringer being
41:31 sued again and again and again because he wouldn't comply with this LGBTQ orthodoxy.
41:38 We see people get fired from their jobs for just saying the wrong thing about this issue.
41:44 And so I think that that is a big part of it is that this is as much as we saw in Machin's
41:49 era that the question of whether or not you believed in the virgin birth was a point of
41:57 doctrine that people thought that was a little embarrassing to believe in miracles or to
42:01 believe in the supernatural.
42:03 What we see today is that all of these churches will say, yeah, we believe in the virgin birth.
42:09 We believe Christ rose from the dead.
42:11 We believe all of these things.
42:13 So they'll try to say we're still Orthodox, but the things they don't believe is the Bible's
42:17 moral code when it comes to these issues because that's where our point of pain is today.
42:23 And I think that's why you see, if not a total falling away in some of these cases, you are
42:27 seeing just a desire to try to de-emphasize the seriousness of it.
42:33 And it's not to say it is the only very serious sin, but it is certainly very clear throughout
42:37 scripture that if you are practicing this habitually and you do not have repentance
42:42 in this area, you are not going to heaven.
42:45 This keeps you out of heaven.
42:46 You are condemning people to hell by not confronting them with the truth about this issue.
42:51 And I think that desire to avoid saying that plainly is what so clearly makes us sort of
42:59 create these, I don't know, they're not biblical, but they're churchy-sounding jargon of terms
43:06 like pronoun hospitality or like whispering, where the Bible whispers.
43:12 When that is not true, obviously.
43:14 And so that's all I can think is that in so many of these cases, it's not a question
43:19 of funding, though that happens too, I think it is a question of they just know that this
43:25 is the thing that will cost you the adulation of the world.
43:32 And my goodness, it's like, why are we so concerned about the adulation of the world?
43:36 And so again, we didn't have a whole lot of time to really dig into the meat of all these
43:40 chapters because all the chapters are very, very meaty, lots of references, so you can
43:44 check them out in the back of the book.
43:46 So if you think this is so poorly researched, why don't you show your receipts random people
43:49 on Twitter?
43:50 But it seems like you're clearly advocating through all of your reporting here one thing,
43:56 and that's for us to push back darkness.
43:58 And so that's what I'm done to life is here to do.
43:59 We're here to equipment to push back darkness.
44:01 So I've got a few quotes.
44:02 I want to read just a short ones from the end of the book.
44:05 The Bible instructs us to proclaim truth, not to hold centers.
44:09 And anyway, the center is far too liberal place for biblical orthodoxy that goes back
44:13 to something you alluded to earlier.
44:14 Another quote, where shepherds and teachers are compromising the word for the sake of
44:18 worldly approval, where they are belittling their sheep and defaming the church for the
44:22 applause of the important and influential.
44:25 We should not reward them by remaining in their churches or buying their books.
44:29 And one last quote here, maybe one of my favorite quotes of the book, they are in fact starving
44:32 the sheep to appease the goats, Megan, you even talked about in this book toward the end
44:37 about Charles Spurgeon, everybody's favorite pastor, right?
44:40 He spoke openly and full-throatedly against socialism while he was alive.
44:46 So for all you, we're just going to be about the gospel people and we don't want to fight
44:49 the culture world's wars and we want to be known for what we what we're for, not what
44:52 we're against for all you people, then you are going anti what Charles Spurgeon, the prince
44:57 of preaching, would do and what's what he would say.
45:00 So I guess, Megan, in general, what are we supposed to do as concerned citizens or concerned
45:05 Christians about everything that you're talking about in this book?
45:08 Well, I'm so glad that you brought up that ending with Spurgeon because one of the things
45:13 we see from Spurgeon is in his sermons where he talks about socialism.
45:19 He was very clear that it wasn't because it was politics or he was taking aside and the
45:24 politics of his day, it was because socialism was presenting a rival gospel.
45:30 It was a counterfeit gospel that kind of looks a little like Christianity in that it's supposed
45:36 to address the needs of the poor and the needy.
45:40 And so in a way, it kind of sounded Christian and they would kind of use that language but
45:45 he understood immediately, this is a counterfeit gospel.
45:49 And what it is promising you is a life of envy and resentment and division.
45:55 And that's why Spurgeon spoke about it.
45:58 And I think when we look at these ideas today, one, we do need to have that discernment.
46:02 We need to be so saturated in Scripture that we know instantly when we hear these things
46:07 and that's not gospel.
46:09 We are Bereans and we know that doesn't align with this chapter and verse.
46:14 And then the other thing I think we need to do, if we had had some tough conversations
46:21 prior to 2019, 2020, those CRT COVID years that revealed so much, I don't think the
46:29 issues would have gotten as bad as they did, but it was like we had gotten into this period
46:34 where we saw any sort of conflict as unchristian.
46:38 It wasn't about how we have conflict, it was about you shouldn't have conflict.
46:42 And I don't think that's biblical.
46:44 I think we can look all through the New Testament and see the apostles, not just opposing the
46:51 churches under their care and telling them, hey, you have some false doctrine coming in,
46:55 but also each other.
46:56 We saw that with the Apostle Paul confronting Peter, bringing in legalism and Jewish law
47:01 and wanting to attach it to grace.
47:03 And so I think that's the model we have to follow.
47:06 And when we're in these churches, it doesn't mean that you have to be obnoxious or combative,
47:14 but when we see these things, we do need to speak up and address it and you need to say
47:18 to your pastor, hey, can I take you to coffee?
47:21 Can you help me explain and understand why we're doing this sermon series on systemic
47:28 racism?
47:29 Help me understand why we can't just view these issues differently given all of these
47:32 different factors that might be contributing to this.
47:36 By the same token, I think we have to recognize that we do live in an era where we have to
47:41 be really, really discerning.
47:44 So churches, when you're bringing in curriculum, you need to look at who's behind it and you
47:49 need to ask questions about, okay, who is funding this thing?
47:53 Who are you partnering with to do this?
47:55 Because part of what I saw so frequently when I was working on this book is that some well-meaning
48:00 pastors would have a friend who was connected to one of these left-wing funded organizations
48:07 and they would come to them with a general statement of principles, something that any
48:10 of us would agree on, whether it was immigration or climate change, and it would be something
48:15 general, like we want to take care of the earth or we believe that every human being,
48:21 whether they have entered the country legally or illegally is made in the image of God and
48:24 that we want to spread the gospel to them, these are all things that we all agree with.
48:29 And so these people would lend their names to these general statements.
48:33 And then those general statements would be used to do something very specific politically
48:38 and very debatable politically.
48:40 So that's the other thing is I do want to tell pastors, you can't rely on that friend
48:45 or ship network anymore to just figure, I'm good, I know this guy, he's a good guy, I'm
48:49 going to go ahead and sign this piece of paper.
48:50 And that's great, I'll just, you know, I'll lend my credibility and my name to this organization.
48:56 I certainly think it's a time for discernment and there's a time for the flock to be dysputatious
49:00 and there should be some of those litmus tests, even recently, a buddy of mine went to a church
49:04 and they had a woman come and preach on a Sunday to the entire congregation and he just
49:11 tried to ignore that because he really, really liked the church and the advice another pastor
49:14 gave us.
49:15 Man, you need to sit down with a pastor and get an idea as to why they came to that conclusion.
49:20 And depending upon their answer, it's like, hey, they might be a little bit more egalitarian
49:23 as opposed to complimentary and maybe they've got a reason for it.
49:25 But then you also have to be discerning because you're not going to have to give an account
49:29 someday for how well you were a member of that church.
49:32 However, you are going to have to give an account someday for how well you shepherded
49:35 your own home, how you performed headship over your wife and your children and all that.
49:39 And so if you're exposing them to things like that, that may have just been a one off
49:43 kind of random thing or that is, you know, Satan's foot wedged into the door and he might
49:49 be like, you know, getting through at some point.
49:50 And so we're running out of time here.
49:52 So we're going to go to the last question.
49:53 So some people might read this book and be like, great, Megan, you gave me a bunch of
49:57 information on pastors, I should market avoid and all these horrible, evil, terrible, stupid
50:02 men and all these things and whatever.
50:03 So they're like, well, crap, who am I supposed to listen to now?
50:05 Whose books am I supposed to read?
50:07 And so from your perspective, who are the pastors that you personally like, the ones that you
50:12 read, you listen to, the ones that you support, that you would suggest to my audience that
50:15 they should as well.
50:17 Oh, gosh, I mean, I have so many people that I listen to on a regular basis, Jay Mac is
50:22 my bro.
50:23 I love John MacArthur.
50:24 I listen to him a ton.
50:26 I like Bodie Baca.
50:27 I like Paul washer.
50:29 I like Joe Rigny.
50:32 So I mean, there's just so many.
50:33 I love my pastor.
50:34 If you're look, if you go to Lee Park, Chris Justice has a we are, we have an app I know
50:39 because whenever I miss church, I listen to it so, you know, so many, but that's the
50:44 big thing I want to say too is that look, there are many, many, many, many, many faithful,
50:49 doctrinally sound men of God out there who are leading and I try to stress that I am
50:55 not trying to tear down the church.
50:56 I want to build up the church and I want these good Godly men leading.
51:01 And so that's why, you know, these are the guys I listen to and I want to see a field
51:06 just like them for the next generation, because sometimes you worry what's going to happen
51:10 when some of these older guys go.
51:12 But we know that God doesn't leave himself without a witness.
51:14 So there will be a next generation of good Godly guys stepping up.
51:18 And yeah, so I mean, those are some that I listen to, but people should tell me too,
51:23 we need a resource to go who are the people that you're constantly, you know, feeding yourself
51:27 with.
51:28 Yeah, the one, the one that I would give you, which won't be shocked anybody because they're
51:31 such good friends.
51:32 Every Martin out of Florida, he is the example of somebody who runs a huge multi site church
51:39 that actually cares about the discipleship and actually cares about like literally putting
51:44 their money where their mouth is on the abortion issue, on the homelessness issue, on, you
51:49 know, first responders on the elderly.
51:52 So when people talk about being pro life from womb to tomb, there are churches that are
51:55 out there that are hidden grandslams on a regular basis in the church of 1122 down there
51:59 in Florida, certainly doing that.
52:01 And Megan, we've gone everywhere in this conversation, not as deep as I wanted to go.
52:04 But hey, this isn't the Joe Rogan experience.
52:05 I didn't have three hours.
52:06 So I just did my best.
52:07 But that's all for me.
52:08 Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
52:10 No, that was awesome.
52:12 Thank you and apologize that I'm sick.
52:13 So judge it with a grain of salt.
52:16 Hey, the last thing that any one of my audiences is going to care about, they've heard me clicking
52:20 around, cough drops in my mouth.
52:22 They've heard me taking water breaks and coughing in the mic.
52:25 They are certainly used to it.
52:26 Megan, thank you so much for coming on.
52:27 Best of luck to you.
52:28 Thanks for having me.
52:30 There you go, guys.
52:31 I hope you enjoyed my time with Megan.
52:32 But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
52:34 Adam Donald's life or mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
52:37 forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
52:40 So I've got these links for you today.
52:41 I've got the Amazon link shepherds for sale, how evangelical leaders traded the truth for
52:46 a leftist agenda.
52:47 And then I've got a link here to Megan's website and a link to all of Megan's work for the
52:51 daily wire.
52:52 Thank you for listening to this podcast.
52:53 Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five-star
52:57 review.
52:58 And come speak live at your event or on your podcast to shoot me an email to info@undonton.life.
53:03 That's iNFO@undonton.life.
53:05 Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
53:08 including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
53:11 Just go to www.undonton.life.
53:14 And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for
53:17 our content.
53:18 The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album
53:22 on Face Down Records.
53:23 The links are in the description.
53:25 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
53:27 Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
53:34 Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
53:57 [end]
Key quotes
2
Megan Basham
My ultimate purpose is to confirm for average evangelicals that the uneasy feelings many of you have been having... are justified.
Kyle Thompson
We are here to equip men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
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