in Featured World News During the COVID Panic, Our ‘Shepherds’ Worked for the Wolves
An interview with author Megan Basham, originally published on ‘The Stream’
Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago, The Stream reported on a ground-shaking study showing that more than three million deaths worldwide were caused by unconstitutional and freedom-killing measures around the COVID-19 pandemic — some by the abortion-derived vaccines that allegedly were supposed to prevent the spread of the virus (but didn’t), as well as lockdowns and mask mandates. Jules Gomes told readers how Pope Francis spiritually blackmailed Catholics into adopting those measures; in her new book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda (Broadside, July) Megan Basham exposes how several evangelical leaders did the same. She recently sat down with The Stream to discuss those details.
The Stream: You reported in your book that the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College formally partnered with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to get people to take the vaccine out of “love for their neighbor,” going so far as to set up the website Coronavirus and the Church. Has Ed Stetzer, the center’s director, ever changed his tune about the information disseminated there that could have led many away from possible solutions that might have served them better?
Megan Basham: No, he hasn’t. Instead, at least one article Stetzer wrote during that period, which depicted Christians who doubted that the virus had natural origins as conspiracy theorists, disappeared from Christianity Today’s website. But he has never, to my knowledge, addressed it again.
Naming All the Sadducees Who Got in Bed with Pilate
TS: You mention a lot of people and organizations in your book who, along with the Billy Graham Center, Christianity Today and well-known faith leaders and influencers such as Russell Moore, author Philip Yancey, David French, Duke Divinity professor Curtis Chang, Bible teacher Beth Moore, celebrated theologian N.T. Wright, VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, Baker Publishing Group President Dwight Baker, NAE President Walter Kim, Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren, Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear, and several seminary presidents, eagerly partnered with the government’s “mask and jab” enforcers. Was that the camel’s nose under the tent to get evangelicals to sign on to other nefarious leftist must-have “treasures,” such as championing climate change, opening our southern borders to illegal immigration, watering down the pro-life movement, and accepting Critical Race Theory?
MB: I actually think many of these figures became involved with other progressive priorities before the pandemic, so that when it came, they were already accustomed to using their platforms, pulpits, and influence for the left’s purposes. We see the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today introducing climate change activism into the church years ago — for example, distorting Scripture to make it fit their environmental aims. Same with the immigration issue. Moore, Greear, and others were already applying unequal weights and measures there, acting as outspoken critics of the Trump administration’s policies but having nothing to say about the Biden administration’s callousness toward Cuban refugees. The double standard was long apparent.
When Francis Collins called on them to help spread the government’s false COVID narratives and to try to convince ordinary Christians to comply with authoritarian policies, they were just doing what they’d already been doing for years.
The Faithful Few, the Remnant
TS: You describe these particular “shepherds” in your book as “Wolves, Cowards, Mercenaries, and Fools.” Were there any heroes who stood up for their flocks’ freedoms against the overwhelming pressure from our government and their fellow evangelicals?