I thought it was strange. For months prior to the July 30 release of Megan Basham’s bestselling Shepherds for Sale, Christian firebrands on X were counting down the days until the book hit “Big Eva” like a wrecking ball.
They claimed it would finally expose the Benedict Arnolds lurking among evangelical leaders. It was strange because they weren’t privy to pre-publication copies of the book. They hadn’t read it yet. How did they know Basham really had the “receipts”? Sure, she boasted she did, but did she?
No. She didn’t, as, by now, at least five independent reviewers have verified.
The receipts
John B. Carpenter
First, Samuel James documents a list of factual errors that becomes tedious by its length. He asks, “Should we conclude that the errors, mischaracterizations and inconsistencies in Shepherds for Sale are intentional lies in order to sway readers and enrich the author?” He wants to be more charitable.
Second, Jonathan David, in “In Defense of Gavin Ortlund,” examines Basham’s descriptions of what Ortlund wrote and concludes Basham “egregiously misrepresent(s)” him.
Then, Chris Date, of “Theopologetics,” examines Basham’s claims in a 93-minute video titled “Gavin Ortlund Not For Sale: An Appeal to Megan Basham” and concludes “Megan blatantly and very badly misrepresents what Ortlund says.”
Fourth, Warren Cole Smith of Ministry Watch, in “Which Shepherds Are For Sale?” (The Dispatch), documents numerous cases of Basham’s journalistic malpractice in the book and notes, “If we can’t trust her with the basic facts, why should we trust her with the interpretation of these facts?” He concludes that her book is “propaganda.”
Finally, peacemaking Christian apologist Neil Shenvi, after comparing — with exact quotes and screenshots — Basham’s claims of what people wrote with what they really wrote, comes to the verdict, “She is an unreliable interpreter.” Unlike Basham, Shenvi has the receipts.
This is as old as Satan himself
But a shabby piece of pseudo-journalism doing hits on prominent Christian leaders isn’t new or even particularly interesting. Sadly, it’s not even strange. It’s as old as Satan himself, the original “accuser of the brethren.” (See Revelation 12:10.)
What is strange is how many online Christian voices were hailing Basham’s book before they had even read it and then, as documentation of its many errors mounted, circled the wagons and began pouring out posts, threads, even published articles defending Basham. These Basham-defenders claim the protests against her many mischaracterizations and distortions are merely proof Basham was “over the target.”
These reflexive defenders of Basham range from the merely obfuscating to those adding to the falsehoods.
The obfuscators try to distract from the evidence against Basham with irrelevancies, often deflecting, seeking to poison the well by getting us to dislike Basham’s targets by highlighting how the target said something, perhaps years ago, we Christians probably won’t like. “Big Eva” pastor said something too squishy about LGBTQ a decade ago, never mind that he retracted it, apologized and has consistently upheld biblical sexual ethics.
This was the tactic of X commentator Josh Daws, who treated his 25,000 X followers to claims that critics of Basham’s book, like those above, were using the same manipulative tactics as “Evangelicals for Harris” and suggested that J.D. Greear was a dupe, and thus “effectively just as bad as” a sellout.
Daws’ kind of oily, nonfactual insinuations are harder to pin down than Basham’s specific errors but are intended to be just as damaging.
Other obfuscators claim because the reviewers listed some of Basham’s factual errors on trivial details, like getting the seminary credentials of her targets wrong, that all their complaints were trivial and were only meant to obfuscate Basham’s main theses.
“Ironically, Basham’s obfuscators claim her critics are obfuscating.”
Ironically, Basham’s obfuscators claim her critics are obfuscating.
This was the tactic of David Schrock, pastor of Occoquan Bible Church and editor-in-chief of Christ Over All, an online journal. Schrock dismisses Shenvi’s objective documentation of Basham’s substantial misrepresentations as “highly subjective” on the basis not that Shenvi was wrong or that his incontrovertible documentation is controvertible but that Shenvi is a member of a church led by one of Basham’s targets: J.D. Greear, pastor of Summit Church in Durham, N.C.
Schock never acknowledges the facts presented against Basham but rather holds up the book as “the way forward” and dismisses the reviews as “defensive appeals to discredit” Basham.
Megan Basham
Similarly, Michael Clary, pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati compares the complaints against the many substantial misrepresentations to those straining gnats but swallowing camels. I wonder if he’d regard being colored a sell-out or dupe as a mere “gnat” if he were the one being so accused. Actually, I don’t wonder that.
Others, like J. Chase Davis, co-pastor of The Well in Boulder, Colo., went beyond merely muddying the waters for Basham and plunged head-long into a well of falsehoods. Davis, in “Shepherds for Sale Turns up the Heat on Gavin Ortlund,” accuses Ortlund of “trading on his family name,” thinking “he is above being questioned,” displaying “typical passive-aggressive pietistic contempt” and a “staggering level of naivete.”
These are simply baseless insults. Further, in a laughable act of projection, Davis claims the reviews, like those above, have refused “to engage with the ideas and factual claims and instead have resorted to character assassination in order to signal to others that she should not be trusted.”
“It’s not possible to make a statement more opposite of the truth.”
As we’ve seen, it’s not possible to make a statement more opposite of the truth. He repeats the debunked Basham claim about Ortlund, “The only reason evangelicals don’t care (about climate change) like he does is because they are motivated by politics.” In actual fact, Ortlund says people may come to a different conclusion than him.
Davis cites John West, vice president of the Discovery Institute, who issued a series of long posts attacking those reviewing Basham, thus creating a self-referencing circle of mutually endorsing but baseless sources. So, enter Timon Cline, editor of American Reformer. Cline begins his 12-post thread, most of which contain a cute meme or demeaning GIF, trying to take down Ortlund’s rebuttal with a claim that it will be “easy.” The boasting, memes and GIFs signal how unserious Cline is. He concludes, contrary to the actual reviewers we surveyed, “There’s no factual inaccuracies” from Basham about Ortlund.
The fact is he didn’t once even touch on the actual factual claims Ortlund made about Basham’s book. I liked Timon before his descent into this insanity. I hope he can recover his integrity.
Evangelical civil war
Such is the evangelical civil war unleashed by Basham’s book. Somehow Basham — with whom I was friendly online until this — or her publisher were able to capture a niche of disaffected conservative evangelicals with their pre-publication hype. How they did this should be studied by marketers for generations. But that it’s unleashed a flood of acrimony, disingenuity and out-right dishonesty is grievous. It has opened a civil war.
Demonstrating his penchant for taking the wrong side in civil wars, self-confessed “paleo-confederate” Doug Wilson celebrated Basham’s book. Akin to his earlier big-lie claim that “slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before (the Civil War) or since,” Wilson denies Basham’s book has even “gnats.”
Wilson doesn’t obfuscate or minimize. He goes full-on denial and claims that now, thanks to Basham, “Big Eva” — this shadowy, undefined, elite conspiracy — “is going to have to explain the camel to us.” I think we need an explanation for his defense of slavery first.
“Church members are now judging their pastors by whether they support Basham’s book or not.”
Besides its many factual errors and gross misrepresentations, Basham’s book is both destructive to good ministries — like Ortlund’s — and divisive. Church members are now judging their pastors by whether they support Basham’s book or not.
The Mormon Glen Beck plants seeds of doubt in the minds of his Christian audience by platforming Basham and asking, “Is your church for sale?”
Ortlund has arisen over the last few years to become probably the most effective evangelical apologist alive today. That he was smeared as a sellout — or, at best, a useful idiot — by Basham and then slandered by Chase Davis and belittled by Timon Cline is a tragedy.
The irony that they did it, while insinuating that Ortlund is a mere platform builder, seeking only clicks, likes and subscribers, is bitter. They attacked him because in their clique, it was the thing to do. I know Ortlund some. Besides being a winsome communicator, he’s a serious scholar who consulted me while researching for his videos on icons. He checks his sources, the very thing multiple sources complain Basham did not do. Ortlund has more integrity in his little finger than all his bashers put together.
Megan Basham has been unapologetic about documented critiques of errors and misrepresentations in her book, but she commends Donald Trump for heeding the rebuke of evangelical voters on abortion.
After posting two videos in which he painfully and regretfully defended himself from Basham’s misrepresentations, he immediately returned to his authentic apologetic work, releasing his new book, What It Means to Be Protestant. Meanwhile, Chase Davis, after having viciously attacked him, wondered on X why so many Protestants are falling away, thus showing a complete lack of self-awareness.
Basham’s targets don’t want an evangelical civil war. But open war is on them whether they want it or not.
Against being mild-mannered
Probably the single thread that ties those targets together is not any “receipts” showing they are “for sale” but a mild-manneredness, what has come to be derided by Bashamites as “winsomeness,” as if being attractive to unbelievers is a bad thing. That is, Basham’s targets are all Christians who are unlikely to defend themselves or, if they do, they’ll do so in the softest, most understated terms, like J.D. Greear’s soft self-defense.
A TGC editor told me they’ve decided not to respond to Basham, reasoning that any response of theirs would be dismissed as a self-serving “Big Eva” conspiracy to silence her. It’s easy to hit a target you know won’t hit back. But I believe if the civil war is to end, it will end when the Bashams and Davises and Clines get a taste of their own medicine. Not that that they should be misrepresented or slandered or mocked. They should get hit (rhetorically) straight, with truth.
Greear was right in his much criticized and now retracted claim that God “whispers” about some sins. He was wrong about the whispering, as he now admits. But his main point was right. He was right that God shouts about some sins, often the same sins we whisper about. God shouts about lying. God says he “hates” lying lips. One of his top 10 commandments forbids defaming people.
Just because you don’t like someone’s view of climate change or you’re suspicious when a pastor is too charming and successful doesn’t give you the right to defame him, to claim he’s “for sale” or been duped by those who were for sale.
God is so angry at dishonesty, he will damn “all liars” to the lake of fire, according to Revelation 21:8. That fact alone ought to inspire all believers to be very careful before issuing accusations. Greear was right that God shouts about some sins. God shouts against the sins unleashed by Shepherd’s for Sale, and that shout alone should end the civil war.
John B. Carpenter serves as pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, Va., and is the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church and the Covenant Caswell on Substack.
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