While evangelical leaders across the nation mourned the untimely death of Jennifer Lyell, Megan Basham took everyone to task for having too much empathy.
And then she engaged positively with a conspiracy theorist who suggested — with zero evidence — that the 47-year-old woman died because she got a COVID vaccine.
Basham is the most visible female in the ultra-conservative world of TheoBros and Baptist Calvinists who writes against women in leadership while speaking loudly on all issues. Her latest book, Shepherds for Sale, has been criticized as slanderous to several pastors who contend she blatantly misrepresented their views.
The book was published by HarperCollins, which has not responded to accusations about the book’s errors. Rather, the publisher continues to tout the book as “a New York Times instant bestseller!”
Jennifer Lyell
Lyell, who became a public face of the sexual abuse crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention, died June 7 after suffering a massive stroke. She previously reached a settlement with the SBC Executive Committee after Baptist Press changed a story to say she had been involved in a consensual sexual relationship with a seminary professor. She contended to the end it was not consensual.
Basham posted on X: “Jennifer Lyell’s death is tragic and I pray for her loved ones hurting today and I pray we will meet again as sisters in Heaven one day. But it is reckless and gross for French and Du Mez to use her death from stroke for their political purposes. They have not shown that anyone hounded her, and they have not disputed any of the facts that made her story questionable. If anyone has shown their callousness and hunger for power, it is those who use the untimely stroke death of a 47 year-old woman to advance their narrative.”
That was in response to kind words about Lyell published by New York Times columnist David French and historian Kristin Du Mez.
Specifically, Basham was responding to French, who quoted Du Mez with this introduction: “When people ask, ‘Why don’t more women come forward?’ I think of Jennifer Lyell. Evil people hounded her, harassed her, and relentlessly attacked her. These words, by @kkdumez are haunting.”
In the comments to Basham’s post, a person named LeAnne Davis asked, “Did she take the (COVID) jabs? Persons who did seem to have a higher than average stroke rate. But, they won’t ever admit the clot shot was the root cause.”
To which Basham replied: “I don’t know. Certainly unusual for that age.”
That Basham would even entertain such an unfounded conspiracy theory drew immediate criticism from others on social media. However, others lauded Basham for taking on French and Du Mez.
Du Mez, a bestselling author and opponent of Christian nationalism, had written a tribute to Lyell on Substack titled, “Some Things She Could Not Survive.”
She wrote: “Jennifer Lyell died yesterday. Three years ago, she told me she didn’t think she would live. She had survived alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her seminary professor. For a time, she survived being viciously attacked, over and over again, by those who sought to make her out as the villain, the temptress, the whore. But she told me she didn’t think she could survive what was being done to her much longer.”
Du Mez said of Lyell: “Jennifer placed herself in the line of fire because she wanted to protect other women. At the time she came forward, she was one of the most powerful women in the SBC. Converted at a Billy Graham crusade, she’d wanted to become a missionary but instead became an executive at Lifeway. She was a gifted teacher and taught the Bible to women and children. She had a hand in around a dozen New York Times bestsellers. But she lost her job after speaking out publicly. And then, she lost her life.”
Although Du Mez does not mention Basham by name, she does reference the “vicious smear campaign” against Lyell that Basham and others advanced.
“She wanted to know if I thought people believed the lies being spewed about her, lies coming primarily from a ‘journalist’ with a massive platform.”
It was this campaign Lyell told Du Mez left her “seriously broken” and fighting back panic and unable to take any more.
“She wanted to know if I thought people believed the lies being spewed about her, lies coming primarily from a ‘journalist’ with a massive platform,” Du Mez noted.
In her retort to Du Mez and French, Basham later replied: “Yes, it did rather occur to me that if the stress of my looking into these claims was so great to cause stroke, can I lay my cancer at their feet because they’re attacks have caused me stress? (I would never do that of course. I’m just making a point. Doing that would be insane and wicked.)”
Meanwhile, across social media, other Southern Baptists who had been critical of Lyell largely kept their silence.
Kind tributes were posted by religion writers, pastors and denominational leaders.
“Do not let all of the posts talking about how kind Jen Lyell was distract you from the fact that she was probably the smartest person in almost any room. And if you were in one of those rooms and disagree, there’s a good chance it’s only because Jen was being kind,” wrote Robert Downen of Texas Monthly.
“Grieving the loss of Jennifer Lyell — Jennifer was a friend and help to me in so many ways. She was so gifted and so filled with love and encouragement and grace. We miss her. Rejoicing with her that healing is complete and the faith she clung to, in the bitterest moments, has become sight,” wrote former SBC President J.D. Greear.
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Jennifer Lyell, key figure in SBC abuse crisis, dies after brief illness
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Shepherds for Sale and the evangelical civil war | Analysis by John B. Carpenter