In May 2022, Megan Basham wrote to Texas pastor Tom Ascol as an intermediary to seek clarifying information from David Sills about his relationship with Jennifer Lyell and subsequent firing from the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
That email is among a trove of information made public through the discovery process in the defamation lawsuit Sills and his wife have brought against the Southern Baptist Convention and several other SBC entities and leaders. The Sillses claim they were defamed by SBC leaders who characterized David Sills’ 12-year sexual relationship with Lyell as abuse — a claim Lyell herself made consistently but Sills has denied.
Basham, who writes for the conservative news outlet The Daily Wire, is among those who say claims of mishandled sexual abuse cases in the SBC have been vastly overblown. She has publicly misrepresented Lyell’s own record — for example, claiming Lyell never took a class under Sills when in fact her transcript shows she took three such classes.
‘Journalistic malpractice’
Basham considers herself a watchdog over evangelical pastors and ministries — as evidenced most fully in her controversial book Shepherds for Sale in which she claims a variety of high-profile evangelical pastors have sold out to “woke” ideology and sacrificed biblical truth for public acceptance and church growth. Several of those mentioned in the book have said Basham misrepresented their own words, but the publisher — HarperCollins — has not withdrawn the book.
One national leader accused her of “journalistic malpractice.”
“In June 2022, Basham launched a full-force assault against Lyell’s credibility.”
In June 2022, Basham launched a full-force assault against Lyell’s credibility with an article titled “Southern Baptists’ #MeToo Moment” published on the first day of the SBC annual meeting. Basham said whatever number of actual abuse cases may be found in the SBC, they represent such a small percentage as to be anything but a “crisis.”
Against that backdrop comes this new revelation about Basham’s insider role in the Sills case. While publicly questioning Lyell’s story of abuse, Basham was consulting with Sills. None of these claims has yet been adjudicated in a court of law, as the evidence presented here is drawn from pre-trial depositions and documents.
David Sills
In one email dated July 8, 2022, she wrote to him: “I had a good conversation with Don Barrett and put him in touch with some contacts who may be able to help more. I very much hope he’s able to bring you and Mary some justice. If he should decide that you are able to say more at some point on the record, let me know. I won’t use it for now of course.”
Don Barrett is a Mississippi attorney who got involved in the Sills case along with Basham and Ascol, who worked to question Lyell’s story. That resulted in a Nov. 28, 2022, article in BNG that Basham and Ascol strenuously objected to on social media but never contacted BNG to request a factual correction.
On May 30, 2022, Ascol wrote to Sills to commend Basham: “Megan is the real deal. She is on a tight deadline. It may be that the Lord would use you to help point her in the right direction to get at the truth that is being distorted not only or primarily in your own story but in the larger narrative that is being foisted on the SBC and evangelical world. I am praying that he will do just that and that you will talk to Megan in a helpful, God-honoring way for just that purpose.”
That was in response to Basham’s May 30, 2022, email to Sills through Ascol as an intermediary. It is this email that has drawn immense commentary in the past week:
Megan Basham
Hi David, This is Megan Basham with The Daily Wire. I know you’ve spoken with Tom Ascol about my desire to speak with you and hear your version of events surrounding Jennifer Lyell’s accusations. Candidly, the pieces highlighted in the Guidepost report on the SBC don’t fit together to me. I’ve also spoken with a couple of faculty members at Southern who have told me that Lyell’s abuse claim never made sense to them either, and they strongly doubt that it is a truthful characterization.
“I wanted to assure you that my only aim here is to bring as much truth to this story as I can. As you’ve seen, major media outlets have gone so far as to state that you admitted to abuse. Tom has told me this is not the case, and I’d like to play a part in correcting the record. That said, I’m happy to speak with you on background to start if it would make you more comfortable. From a personal standpoint, I don’t know if it’s wise to share this, but I’m going to so you’ll know a bit about me.
When I was in middle school, my dad was a lay leader of our church’s young adult (college and career) ministry. He had an affair with a woman in that group. She was in her mid-twenties. I have a half-sister from that relationship. I knew the woman well. She was like a part of our family and often babysat my siblings and I. She was a close friend of my mother and went on many vacations with us, and I frequently spent weekends shopping and having outings with her. Looking back, l don’t know if she insinuated herself into our family or if the situation developed naturally, but certainly she became very entangled in all our lives.
You can imagine how the affair upended our family when it became public knowledge. We left the only church I’d ever known. We moved states. My parents sought counseling, and it’s been a rough road, but they managed to keep their marriage together. When I see them with my children today, I’m so grateful God preserved their union against all odds.
This was in the early nineties, so though my father was a leader in the church, it was (I believe rightly) characterized as a consensual adulterous relationship. But my dad and I have often talked in the last few years about how his sin might have been described if he had committed it today. We’ve talked about how he most certainly would be characterized as an abuser today and how that would have impacted my mom, my siblings and I.”
“A movement that tells adult women they have been abused when they participate willingly in sexual sins is unbiblical.”
I believe that a movement that tells adult women they have been abused when they participate willingly in sexual sins is unbiblical. It keeps them in a state of unrepentance and creates incentives for dishonesty, even in one’s own mind. In short, I believe the “believe all women” narrative of the MeToo movement is godless and the church undermines its power to cleanse souls and change lives by capitulating to it.
Perhaps this is not Lyell’s story. Perhaps you’ll tell me you have decided that abuse was a factor. But I have strong doubts.
I would love to speak with you and get a chance to get a better perspective on your story, which is being used to shape a national narrative which is, in turn, being used to shape the direction of the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. Our story (or perhaps an inaccurate version of it) has already become national news. I’m hoping to find out if that record needs correcting.
When that three-year-old email became public, the reaction was swift and stout. Here’s a sampling of the comments:
- “It would be trite to say ‘daddy issues,’ but maybe not entirely wrong? She knows her dad would be considered an abuser if she admits that someone under the spiritual authority of a spiritual mentor/church leader cannot consent.”
- “Basham putting in the hard work of covering up abuse. The question is why?”
- “Significant violations of journalistic ethics here — if she still views herself as a journalist in this arena.”
- “OH MY GOD…..she was groomed by her own father to label his clergy sexual abuse as a consensual relationship. She hates the idea of believing all women/Me Too because she has a neurosis regarding her own adulterous father.”
- “That’s a hot mess. Everything about that letter is wrong. So many boundary issues. Inserting opinions. It’s all together wrong.”
- “She has shown her unprofessionalism in so many ways in the past, but this really does take the cake.”
- “I only have one question. It sounds like @megbasham‘s mum and dad are doing reasonably well. What about this other woman — the one in the ‘consensual relationship.’ How’s she doing? How did her life go? Is she still connected to Meg’s half-sister in a loving way?”
Undeterred
Meanwhile, on her own X feed Dec. 15, Basham continued her campaign: “The purpose of the false abuse crisis narrative was to make them feminists. That was why the activists and the SBC leaders who coddled them so often tied it to promoting women to positions of power and putting women in the pulpit.”
Jennifer Lyell
Earlier, in between praising ICE — “ICE are heroes. They are standing between us and criminal chaos. Saying a prayer of thanks for every single ICE agent. They put themselves on the line for the good of their neighbor and their country. God bless them.” — and Donald Trump, Basham took aim at those who challenge her view of the Sills case.
On Dec. 13, she tweeted: “OK, I know this is going to be difficult for some to hear, but you cannot now appeal to trauma dynamics to make Jennifer Lyell’s claims of abuse factual. Because she did not give you that option. She and her lawyer NEVER claimed that Lyell continued in the relationship with Sills because of ‘trauma bonding’ or patriarchy or any psychological explanation like that. They claimed, from the get-go, that it was forced and unwanted. Always. That, in fact, it was VIOLENT sexual assault. You cannot claim violence and force and then try to explain away these emails by saying it was ‘trauma bonding.’ Because I don’t think women engage in baby talk about how much they miss someone when we are talking about violent sexual assault.”
That same day, she reposted a comment from her April 2024 feed: “There is not and never was a systemic abuse crisis in the SBC. It was a false narrative manufactured by subversive political operatives and their friends in big media. (And this was largely the result when I said it).”
On Dec. 12 — amid a flurry of acerbic posts — Basham definitively portrayed the Sills discovery documents as saying something they do not say: “And just to finally round out this thread, also in discovery, emails that indicate the Sills and Lyell relationship was consensual.”
That is the opinion of David Sills, Lyell’s alleged abuser, but it never has been Lyell’s position or the position of those who knew her and advocated for her.
What is clear from the trove of discovery documents is that Basham herself has a family story that is similar to what happened in the Sills family. Lyell spent huge amounts of time in the Sills home, became close to the entire family and served as a babysitter for the Sills children — all while being forced to perform oral sex on David Sills in the family basement, according to her story.
Related articles:
Court records reveal tangled trail in Sills sexual abuse case | Analysis by David Bumgardner and Mark Wingfield
Sills lawsuit misrepresents a piece of evidence, and that error got highlighted by Ascol and Basham
Not everyone believes there’s a sexual abuse crisis in the SBC
Megan Basham is lying again | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
Megan Basham goes after Jennifer Lyell even in death
Megan Basham sharply criticized for outing Johnny Hunt’s alleged abuse victim
Also see the latest episode of the BNG podcast “Stuck in the Middle with You” that discusses the Sills case.