Shepherds for Sale Quotes

“Even if one were to agree with progressive Christians that racial inequities should be the Church’s greatest concern, no other race-based injustice can compare to what is being done under the auspices of “reproductive rights,” something Professor Carl Trueman ably highlighted in First Things. “Police actions in 2018 accounted for the deaths of fewer than three hundred African Americans, while in the same year abortions of African-American babies accounted for more than 117,000 of the same,” he pointed out. “One would think this extreme difference (390 to one) would make abortion the centerpiece of Christian critiques of racism.”67 The only reason it wouldn’t is if those drawing such equivalencies do not, deep down, see those 117,000 babies as equally human as the 300 adults. Prior, French, Keller, and both Moores have taken to the pages of the most elite media outlets in the world to incessantly disparage average Christians who felt it was worth voting for Donald Trump for a chance to dismantle the most wicked practice this nation has ever known. Let’s be clear, no one cast a ballot for Trump because he committed adultery or because he bragged in 2005 about grabbing women’s private parts. Nor was the legal protection of adultery or lechery a feature of the Trump campaign’s platform. In contrast, Clinton and Biden did promise voters that electing them would allow the butchery to continue. They did make it a part of their platforms, and a significant number of voters cast ballots for them based on those promises. Given this, which vote is more morally compromising for the Christian—the one that places power in the hands of those who promise to allow the innocent to be put to death or the one that vests power in those who promise to make a way to rescue the innocent? Which group of Christians do these celebrated evangelical leaders accuse of defaming the name of Christ with an untoward interest in political power, and which do they excuse and even promote?”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“First Law” coined by British political pundit John O’Sullivan: “All organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.” Hebrews 2:1 warns of a similar tendency when it comes to theological matters: “Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.” Nothing in the world comes so naturally to a Christian as putting away his oars of resistance and floating off on the cultural tides. This is especially true when you know that the firm ground of Scripture you’re standing on is increasingly becoming a deserted island.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“When the guy who created the Christian children’s program VeggieTales starts arguing that evangelicals should take a more “nuanced” position on abortion,23 and when two successive presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Bible only “whispers” about sexual sins,24 something is badly off in mainstream evangelicalism.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“It was only when I encountered teaching that challenged me not to focus on how I had been wronged, but to repent for the wrongs I had committed, that I was able to find lasting victory.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“My ultimate purpose is to confirm for average evangelicals in the pews that the uneasy feelings many of you have been having (perhaps for some years now) that your pulpits and your institutions are being co-opted by political forces with explicitly secular progressive aims are justified”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“And we should certainly pray for weary, wounded sinners who are coming to the Church in need of the transcendent power of the eternal and who are, instead, given temporal preoccupations with social issues.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“It has become rare in mainstream evangelicalism to hear in-depth theological teaching. Megachurch pastors of Greear’s variety wear not suits and ties, but checked sport shirts, the sleeves rolled up at the wrist, with maybe a fleece Patagonia vest in the fall. Their sermon style tends to be similarly informal, rarely taxing attendees’ attention by delving into theological terms like soteriology or hypostatic. Yet, in recent years, a new form of spiritual jargon—words like hegemony and cultural representation—has peppered their preaching.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“John Calvin: “Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“It is not Scripture but Karl Marx who taught that guilt is based not on the intent of an individual heart but on class distinctions between oppressors and oppressed.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“Take the lithium-ion batteries needed to power electric cars and store solar energy. Producing such batteries requires cobalt, cobalt that right now is being dug out of the ground by slaves in the Congo, including many children,70 some as young as four.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“The Bible instructs us to proclaim truth, not to hold centers—and anyway, the center is far too liberal a place for biblical orthodoxy.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“These shepherds should recall the warning of John Calvin: “Ambiguity is the fortress of heretics.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“Not to be outdone, in 2021 Billy Graham’s alma mater, Wheaton, held a racially segregated graduation ceremony for minority students,24 calling it a “Racial and Cultural Minority Senior Recognition Ceremony.”25 It also removed a nearly seventy-year-old plaque honoring one of its most famous sons, Jim Elliot, a 1950s missionary who was martyred while witnessing to an Ecuadorean tribe, because the inscription described his murderers as “savage.”26”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“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.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“We do not worry for the future of the Church. The gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Its victory, and thus the victory of every true Christian within it, is secure. But it is certainly fair to worry about our nation and what will become of it if the restraining influence of the Church is withdrawn. And we should certainly pray for weary, wounded sinners who are coming to the Church in need of the transcendent power of the eternal and who are, instead, given temporal preoccupations with social issues.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“Here the gospel has been reduced to a program for transforming social structures. This is the Marxist line. It does not mean that those who take this position are Communists. But it does mean they have made a complete confusion of the kingdom of God with the basic socialistic concepts. In back of this stands the Enlightenment idea of the perfectibility of man if only the cultural and economic chains are removed . . . But think further what this means theologically. What has happened to the fall and sin? [Evangelicals for Social Action] seem to be saying that changing economic structures is the means of salvation for modern man since only this deals with the basic “causes of the disease.” Ironically their program is not radical enough! The basic problem is that of the fall and sin and the heart of man. The basic problem is much deeper than social structures, and by not recognizing this[,] ESA ends up with an understanding of salvation which is very different from what the Scriptures teach.29”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“Quite a bit more than preponderance of recent neurological and psychiatric research has found that traumatic memories are no more fragmented or elusive than any other type of memory.18 In fact, studies on Holocaust victims and soldiers suffering from PTSD show quite the opposite. Trauma actually heightens memories—the recollections stay sharper, becoming intrusive and hard to forget, even though subjects wish they could.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“Not to be outdone, in 2021 Billy Graham’s alma mater, Wheaton, held a racially segregated graduation ceremony for minority students,24 calling it a “Racial and Cultural Minority Senior Recognition Ceremony.”25 It also removed a nearly seventy-year-old plaque honoring one of its most famous sons, Jim Elliot, a 1950s missionary who was martyred while witnessing to an Ecuadorean tribe, because the inscription described his murderers as “savage.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“The vast majority of scientists agree that temperature averages have increased slightly in the last 150 years and that man-made greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to some of that rise. What many don’t agree on is how much humans are contributing or how serious a threat this poses.”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

“Do today’s Marxist activists have any reason to say they hate above anyone else in the world the church leaders most celebrated by our cultural elites? Or do they find that these shepherds not only don’t hinder, but even help their cause?”
― Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda