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July 30, 2024 - Babylon Bee
48:38
Is The Church Going Woke? | The Babylon Bee Podcast

Megan Basham is finally on The Babylon Bee Podcast to talk about woke leftist agendas that are infiltrating the church. She is the culture reporter for Daily Wire, a church lady, and a keeper of receipts.  Check out Megan Basham's new book on this topic, Shepherds For Sale: https://a.co/d/1zruhhE This episode is brought to you by American Financing: http://AmericanFinancing.net/Bee

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A lot of big billionaires who want access to churches.
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The Babylon Bee Podcast.
Hey guys, welcome to the Babylon B.
This is our interview show.
Today with us, we have one of my favorite people in pop culture right now, Megan Basham.
She's doing some amazing stuff.
She's an author.
She's a reporter for the Daily Wire.
She used to work for World Magazine, right?
Didn't you work for World Magazine forever?
That's right.
And The World and Everything In It, which is one of my favorite podcasts for a long time.
We used to listen to that every day.
And you are known as the keeper of receipts.
That's me.
That's what I do.
So you like follow the money.
That's it.
You're like a money trail investigator.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of that and, you know, keep track of all the insane things that you hear pastors and ministry leaders saying.
And then you follow the money and find out, oh, maybe that's why they're saying those things.
That is so interesting because I've been in ministry for a lot of years.
I know Travis has been in church forever.
You've done ministry too.
And it's just, we've watched a lot of these things get said and we're baffled.
Non-plussed even.
Non-plus.
I know.
Sometimes I do wonder, why does no one try to buy me?
I could be viable, but no one tries.
Yeah, it's like you want, you'll say no, but you just want to be asked.
Right?
Like it's a little nice to be wanted.
Offer to sell me a Hunter Biden paying or something.
You have a new book out too, right?
So you're doing Shepherds for Sale right there.
That's it.
Right there.
By the way, this is Travis and I'm Jarrett.
Oh, yeah.
I don't know if my name is Travis.
So your book, Shepherds for Sale, it's very interesting because it's about selling shepherds instead of goats.
Right, exactly.
It's about selling shepherds.
So it's deep investigative work on the shepherd market.
But it is kind of actually.
It is a deep investigative work on the shepherd market because there's a lot of big billionaires who want access to churches.
They want access to the people in those churches.
And so they're coming at them through the shepherds.
What's a shepherd going for these days?
Like it depends on the shepherd.
If you look at some of the antics that the National Association of Evangelicals are into, they're involved in foundations that are getting millions from left-wing foundations like Open Society, which is Soros and the Tides Foundation and the Clinton Foundation.
And so you will constantly see all of these sort of AstroTurf campaigns and evangelical front groups taking really obscene amounts of money from the guys who founded eBay, for example.
You're the Daily Wire's culture reporter.
Can you report to us what kind of culture is the Daily Wire?
I'm going to be honest with you.
The Daily Wire is a fast-paced, very testosterone-fueled culture.
Sometimes I'm like, I'm like the only mom, like suburban mom type in the room.
But I kind of enjoy that.
I kind of enjoy all the guys, you know, just doing their boiler room.
Sometimes it's a little like, you remember that speech in Glen Gary, Glenn Ross?
Yep.
Coffee is for closers.
That's right.
A lot of times that's kind of the environment of the Daily Wire.
So I'm a closer, though.
So I have survived.
You're like a mom closer.
So I feel like Michael Knowles is pretty young.
Would he come to you and just be like, did you pack my lunch today?
I could see Michael doing that.
It would be more like, have you packed my cigar today?
So it's not a family.
It's not a hierarchy.
It is kind of a hierarchy, though, too, right?
Interesting structure.
Yeah.
I think it's fair to say that it's, you know, I don't think that if you, anybody who has watched Jeremy speak, I think gets the vibe that he is into hierarchy.
You don't, you don't name yourself the small G God King if you're not a guy who likes hierarchy.
That makes sense.
So as a culture reporter, like what exactly does a culture reporter do?
So what I tend to essentially asked for that title because I wanted to report on religion.
I like to report on the social issues, abortion, LGBTQ movement, what they're up to.
All of those things, entertainment also falls into that.
So culture is kind of the things that don't typically fall under economics.
It is less Washington focused.
It's less DC focused and more just on all the culture issues that we all talk about.
So, I mean, you could also probably look at it as social issues, but it does also involve entertainment and religion, all of those things.
Well, in this particular book, you are, you're talking about the church.
And so there's a bit of a crisis going on in the church right now, and it's being driven by a lot of left-wing groups.
We kind of, we've, you know, you may think it's less insidious than it actually is.
You know, when you hear some of these things, you're like, oh, it's some of these woke.
It's, oh, it's just coming from the universities.
But it's actually maybe even more specific and intentional than that, is what you're saying.
It's actually, yeah.
And I think for a lot of people, for me in particular, COVID years is what really sort of pulled the curtain back on that.
I think so many of us kind of had a disquieting sense that something was off in the church.
We would see, you know, mega church pastors saying things like, I have a bag of white privilege that I take with me wherever I go, and I can reach into that bag and pull things out.
And people are like, that's kind of weird.
Yeah, that was a weird thing.
And that was, I remember that was Matt Chandler.
Matt Chandler, that's right.
And you would hear things like this, or you would hear like another mega church pastor, J.D. Greer, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, proudly proclaim that he was instituting racial quotas in his committee appointments and in his hiring.
And you knew that was off, but I think a lot of people weren't willing to confront this sort of thing openly until COVID happened.
And then it was like what these churches did was so egregious that I almost look at it as a blessing because suddenly people realize, okay, who are you serving here?
Because it feels like you're not serving the sheep.
It feels like you're representing the interests of the federal government or some left-wing foundation or whatever the dominant cultural narrative is to the church.
And you're just repackaging it with churchy slogans and trying to sell it to us.
So I think that was really the moment, at least for me, where I went, oh, you know, I don't think that this is just influence in the sense of they're being, you know, impacted by the same culture that we are.
There's a very deliberate effort to bring some of this into the church.
So, you mentioned COVID being that moment that kind of, I guess, woke everyone up for lack of a better term.
Do you think that's because it essentially hit like a reset button because people had to stand back from church for a while when everything closed?
And then they, I mean, why do you think COVID played a part in that?
Well, a big part of it was the fact that you saw churches just fold like that to government narratives.
Like suddenly, it was one thing to close for a few weeks while we were figuring out what was going on.
But I mean, you had churches who were directly saying, well, we're not loving our neighbor if we're opening our doors to the community.
And that was a shocking thing when we have a command not to give up gathering together.
So, and at the same time, you had them welcoming guys like National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins, who has an abhorrent record on pro-life issues and on sexual morality and things of that nature.
And he was being presented as, here's this evangelical voice you can trust in the halls of power.
And based on his advice, we're going to tell you that if you don't get vaccinated, you're not loving your neighbor.
And that was so legalistic that I think even people who were willing to be really charitable up to that point suddenly went, this is way beyond the bounds of charitability.
You are now being as Pharisaical as one could possibly be when you are taking something that should be a matter of personal conscience, like whether or not I should get this experimental vaccine and telling me that I'm not following Jesus if I don't get it.
Yes.
No, it's funny because we all lived through this.
I was in church.
I was alive.
We lived through this.
We were alive.
I lived.
I was a pastor at the time when all this kind of went down.
I wasn't a senior pastor and nobody approached me from anyone, anywhere to pay me for any of this.
So maybe that's why I didn't fall into this trap.
But yeah, no, we got to see all this stuff.
You did mention some names.
I'm interested in more names.
Who is it that's infiltrating the church?
Let's figure out if we can take a crack at it.
We can name people or things.
Right.
And then you can say yes or no, or you can expound depending on.
Yeah.
So your book obviously goes into some details, but I'm sure it's not exhaustive in terms of what is infrastructure.
And actually, that's huge.
I want to point that out that I could have written volumes and volumes and volumes, and I really just had to take representative examples because there's so much.
And not to bum everybody out, but that's kind of what I do is bum everybody out is that it was really just little slices of examples.
Okay.
So the first one that we're wondering if this is infiltrating the church or not, POGS.
OGs?
POGS.
Like what is no P-O-G-S.
POGS.
You're going to have to tell me what POGS are.
Well, they're little paper discs and you get a slammer and then you throw them down to try and flip over as many POGs as possible.
And that's how you play POGs.
No, not to my knowledge.
And I'm going to be glad about that because as a mom, that sounds like a nightmare.
That sounds like the exact sort of thing that I want to keep out of my house.
Aren't you a night?
You're a 90s kid, right?
Aren't you a 90s kid?
Yeah, I feel like you and I are pretty much the same age.
And I, so, and you did not know what pogs are.
That's interesting.
Were you homeschooled?
I wasn't homeschooled.
I went to a public school.
Did you, do you know what a hacky sack is?
Maybe I was a little, I know what a hacky sack is.
Maybe I was a little too cool for pogs.
I don't know.
Yeah, you probably were way cooler than me.
All right.
Like, actually, I kind of give my testimony in the book.
And I wish pogs were what I had been into in high school.
I was a theater kid.
Anyway, second, second thing, Pokemon.
Pokemon is Pokemon infiltrating the church.
Yeah, you know, probably in the kids' ministries.
You know, it's a, doesn't Matt Walsh say that, I don't know, that kind of anime stuff is like porn adjacent?
Don't know.
I think, I think he's right, by the way.
Anime is some dark stuff.
I'm going to say it right now.
Anyway, see, and I'm so ignorant about that whole culture.
I don't know why.
I just never had any interest in Pokemon, Japanese, animation, any of that.
But who is your favorite Pokemon?
Is it Squirtle?
I only know one.
I only know that big yellow one.
Oh, isn't that Pikachu?
Right?
That's its name, Pikachu.
Right.
So, okay.
So, by default, you are going on the record and saying Pikachu is your favorite Pokemon.
It just seems demonic.
I'm just going to guess it's demonic.
I don't know.
Okay.
I'm with you.
All right.
And what about the orange curriculum?
The orange curriculum?
Yeah.
That's a thing that's on a note that I've never heard of.
Look it up.
Is this what it feels like to be a homeschooler?
To be like, I don't know any of these references.
No, orange curriculum is a curriculum that's being introduced into churches that is sort of a cover for a lot of the progressive ideology.
Okay, now I actually want to ask a question.
Tell me about, give me the quick background on orange curriculum.
I don't know much about it other than we were considering it as a church and there's a lot of stuff behind it.
So just look it up.
Look up Orange Curriculum.
It looks really good on the outside because it's got a lot of nice graphics and super cool stuff.
But it's really kind of a way to introduce climate change and things like that.
It sounds like the Orange Catholic Bible from Dune.
Oh, I don't remember that.
Yeah, it's basically all their religions rolled up into one.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Catholic meaning universal.
Yes.
I get it now.
Not like Catholic, Catholic.
Okay.
But Catholic, as in Catholic.
So what do you think about it?
It sounds a little like the after party, which that one I do know, which is, if you're not familiar with that, it's Russell Moore, Christianity Today, editor-in-chief, and David French put together this political Bible study curriculum that churches are using to show them how to be less politically polarized because those are the guys that you want to learn from on not being politically polarized.
The way I see it is Jesus was a fairly polarizing figure.
And we're supposed to follow his example.
That's right.
That's my understanding of basic Christianity.
Yep.
That's right.
We recently, I saw Phil Visher recently at a thing and he was like, you guys hate me.
He like came over because he's connected to those guys.
And we're like, we don't hate you.
You just got to stop hanging out with those jerks.
Yeah.
Like David French and Russell Moore.
Right.
Okay.
Donald Trump.
Is he infiltrating the church?
You know, that's an interesting question.
I would say, and I do feel this way.
I do feel that some church leaders are far too sycophantic to Donald Trump.
But I like that word.
Yeah.
I mean, so they try to curry favor.
They downplay his shortcomings and his character flaws, which he obviously has.
But at the same time, I don't see Donald Trump trying to be subversive or deceitful in how he's approaching evangelicals.
So it's not the same thing in a way.
Like when you look at what the left-wing foundations do or like what evangelicals for Biden do, they try to kind of cover up their approach and it's very covert.
Whereas Donald Trump, everything he does is out on the surface.
So I would have to say no, just because in no way is he ever subtle about what he's doing.
If he's making an appeal to evangelicals, it's a very clear and obvious appeal.
And you can accept it.
You can reject it.
You can debate it, but you have no question that that's what's happening.
Whereas if someone like George Soros is coming into the church, you will never know that he is the one who's behind the curriculum or whatever the front group is.
Sure.
So Donald Trump's more like, you know, Martin Luther outside the church hammering on the door and he's saying stuff and you're like, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good or not.
But he's not sneaking in like George Soros.
Yeah, I'm well, there's a part of me that's like, oh, I don't know if I want to compare Donald Trump to Martin Luther.
But I mean, in the sense that he just boldly proclaims things, and sometimes there are things I disagree with.
Like, I think probably we're all pretty disappointed in what the GOP did at the convention last week, where they dropped the pro-life plank of the platform.
That was super disappointing.
But on the other hand, they're not being secretive about it.
It was an open debate that we were all having.
And that I can at least respect that, look, if we're going to have a debate about how evangelicals are engaging politics, then let's just do it out in the open.
Don't try to manipulate us through back channels.
Did they convince you to give your life to Wanahaguru?
No.
So, do you know what's so funny is I missed that moment and I saw it online like the next day and went, I didn't even know that was the name of a God.
But if I were going to imagine the name of a false God, that would be one.
I thought like Joe Boo would have been a better name.
Well, I mean, probably there's tons of names you could pick.
The ones who got Joe Boo.
That's from anyway.
Who else is taking over?
Travis?
Classic Rock.
Well, I mean, classic rock is practically Christian.
So that's so true.
Megan Basham.
Megan Basham, are you taking over the church?
I'm trying.
I'm giving it my best effort.
The National Rifle Association.
I don't even see them having any real influence anymore.
They were such like a non-entity when I was doing the research on this book.
And that's interesting because I think they, like a lot of kind of other right-wing groups, you brought up Donald Trump.
I think they don't even think of trying to access churches in the same way that the left does.
So you have all of these gun control efforts coming into various ministries, like the ERLC, which is the political lobbying arm, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant denomination.
But you don't see that on the right.
And it's interesting that I think there is a default assumption that Christians tend to be on the right.
So there's a real false assumption that that is always going to be the state of play and that no one needs to make an argument to conservative Christians anymore for their policies.
And so, no, I don't think they are.
I think they've been totally absent.
That's very interesting that you say that.
I think that now, I mean, this is a question that we can get back to this, but now that we are, it seems like we're transforming into the big tent, the big tent of the Republican Party.
Yeah.
When I say the Republican Party, it's turning into the big tent catch-all party now.
Is that going to, is that going to change things?
Like, how, how is the, are people going to assume now that Christians are going to be in other places?
Like, where are we going to, where do we fit?
Where do we fit in this new world?
Well, I mean, the one thing we do is you always, as a Christian, have to argue for your place at the table in any political constituency.
And we're seeing that right now with the Republicans.
And I feel like everybody kind of forgot that, look, pre-Reagan, they weren't real excited to have social conservatives in the GOP then either.
And so there was an effort through the moral majority, through other efforts in the 80s and 90s to demand a seat at that table.
And you can kind of remember that Rush Limbaugh always used to talk about how he had this famous dinner party where some of these people from Capitol Hill, some of the big donors in the Republican Party came to him and were like, how could we get rid of these social conservatives?
And he was enraged because he was like, they are the heart of the party.
We shouldn't be trying to get rid of social conservatives.
But the point is that this is nothing new.
And we're just reaching a new place once again because I think everyone, when Roe happened, when it was overturned, they weren't quite ready for what that meant as far as the political landscape.
And so we're just finding that for the first time since those Reagan years, we're having to argue for our presence in this party, and that work's going to go on.
And you've got people like me who are going to continue to argue for it strenuously.
And, you know, at the same time that I'm going to steward my vote well, because God has entrusted all of us with the blessing of a representative government, I'm still going to hammer my own party and try to insist that they recognize my interests.
We're going to sit back and make fun of everybody.
That's what our job is.
We're like the court jesters.
What do you think about the Jesuits?
Are they taking over the church?
Do you want to know the funniest thing?
So I am not Catholic, obviously, and have very little institutional knowledge of Catholics.
And my only understanding of Jesuits is that I think they're kind of like the progressive evangelicals, right?
And I had to give this speech at an ecumenical event, and I made what I thought was kind of a funny Jesuit joke.
And I don't even remember what it was now.
It was something about because I always hear Michael Knowles saying that I regret to inform you the Jesuits are up to their tricks.
And I tried to make some reference to that and it totally fell flat.
And I went, you know what?
I clearly don't know enough about the Jesuits to be making Jesuit jokes.
So I'm never going to do that again.
Do you think that Michael Knowles is possibly an undercover Jesuit?
He is shifty, isn't he?
All that Latin knowledge.
And I don't know, maybe.
Yeah.
Next book, I will investigate the subversive tactics of Michael Knowles.
That's great.
But what about surge soda?
How is that infiltrating the church today?
Okay, this is another thing I literally did not know existed.
Is this like a high caffeine type of soda?
It was kind of like a higher caffeine version of Mountain Dew.
Okay, as a 90s kid, it was Jolt.
That was like our Jolt Cola.
Do you remember Jolt?
Yeah, I remember Jolt.
We used to get Jolt and Twinkies at the local 7-Eleven.
You can't drink up all night.
What about the Committee of 300?
Okay, what is the Committee of 300?
Okay.
This is like the World Economic Forum.
Oh, okay.
Committee of 300.
It sounds like the World Bank, the Jesuits.
It's all kind of part of the same thing.
You know, I think she unintentionally admitted that Rush Limbaugh was part of the Committee of 300 dinner party.
Oh, we had one of those weird dinner parties.
Yeah.
Like, maybe he was like, oh, no, this is terrible.
But have you ever been to one of those weird dinner parties?
I'm waiting to get invited and then I'm going to totally flip sides and I'm going to take the check and run.
So yeah.
Yeah.
That's good.
Like Andy Stanley did.
Yeah.
Suddenly on a dime, people are going to, and I'm going to come up with, you know, some big justification and David Frenchian justification on how I have completely evolved my position.
Yeah.
Why it's the Christian thing to do to be un-Christian.
Yeah.
That's the David French op-ed.
Yeah.
So finally, lizard people.
Who?
Lizard people.
Lizard people.
Yeah.
So can I tell you, I did not realize that that is a legitimate conspiracy theory until I was getting my hair done one day.
And you saw a lizard?
I didn't see a lizard, but I didn't know that this was a thing that people really believed, which I'm hoping she doesn't see this.
She's very sweet.
But I was at a new salon.
My old hair girl had left because she was having a baby and didn't want to work anymore.
And a new girl was doing my hair.
Yeah.
Well, the second I sat in the chair and she heard I was from the Daily Wire, she came up and she's like, You're from the Daily Wire?
And I go, Yeah, yeah, I am.
And then she just started opening up about true belief in lizard people.
And I literally thought I was experiencing a James O'Keefe moment.
I'm like, there's the camera.
Somebody is going to get me saying some Daily Wire reporter believes there's lizard people.
I was like, oh my God.
No, I've run into a lot of those folks.
I think at the Babylon B, we get those types of people too.
They're like, no, no, guys, it's really these people.
You need to write a headline on this.
And so we have to sort of filter through that kind of stuff.
And Travis is one of them.
So I'm not a lizard person.
He's not, you know, you're a believer.
I'm just kidding.
You're not a girl, so you won't get it.
But you're also like, on the other hand, I don't want to reject your premise here and have you like angrily mess up my hair.
Did you just assume his gender?
So a couple of other questions for you.
Can you just, we've kind of talked through a couple of things, but can we trade, who is trading the truth for the leftist agenda that we can all kind of look out for?
So essentially, you're talking about large churches.
I mutually mentioned Matt Chandler.
So the National Association of Evangelicals looms pretty large in my book for doing this, whether it's trying to get cap and trade climate change legislation passed, whether it's trying to get open borders policies passed.
They are heavily involved in all that work.
The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities has just gotten up to all kinds of bad stuff.
So if you're not familiar with them, they represent 185 evangelical colleges and universities, including schools like Biola.
And they have done things like try to get the fairness for all bill passed.
Thankfully it failed, but the point of it was that it would have restricted religious liberty by enshrining gay marriage, not just in a SCOTIS decision, but in law so that it would have created all kinds of headaches for parachurch ministries who didn't want to recognize gay unions and things of that nature.
So they're bad news.
I do point to Russell Moore and Christianity Today a lot, did a lot of reporting on, you know, because everyone always asks what happened to Christianity Today.
And one, tracing what happened, but also showing here's where they are today, where, you know, between 2015 and 2022, they had 74 political donations on their staff and every single one went to Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, hard left candidates.
So I think, you know, part of what I wanted to do with this book is show people here's the extent of it.
This is not a small problem and some really big institutions with some really big tentacles and influence are partnering with the same people who support Planned Parenthood, support trans and kids and all of that good stuff.
Now, do you think that some of this is like basically done in the name of Christianity by people who mean well and just misunderstand what Christian love is and think they have to be accepting?
Or do you think there's something more nefarious behind it?
Like they're intentionally doing this to get their agenda across.
I mean, I think both.
And what I try to do in the book is I can't read the motivations of the heart of the pastors and ministry leaders who are doing these things.
But what I can do is show you the receipts on the hard left secular foundations who are saying, here's how we're going to target evangelicals.
So when you have a George Soros funded think tank putting out a report saying, hey, we made really strong efforts to make inroads into the Southern Baptist Convention.
And we used these particular Christian leaders like Rick Warren, like the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, like some of these other schools, in order to gain access to evangelicals.
Well, it's pretty unquestionable then what's going on.
So, I mean, we also have Rick Warren who kind of openly brags about, hey, I'm on the Council for Foreign Relations.
I have been invited to Davos.
I'm a good friend of Francis Collins.
And so he kind of openly parades the fact that he's running in these extremely powerful circles.
And at the same time, he's signing on to all of these letters to do things like demand climate change legislation that will make your gas and your groceries more expensive and will diminish the capability of third world nations to bring themselves out of poverty by utilizing their oil deposits and things of that nature.
So, you know, it's hard because I can't read the heart.
And I go, I don't want to say that you're deliberately selling out, but I can show the sequence of events and what has been said on the record.
Wow.
So, so this is something that's happening all over the place.
Rick, Rick, what do you think about Andy Stanley?
Is he on the payroll?
So he is not on the payroll in the sense that he's not taking money from foundations, but you can look at how his book sales, his attendance at his church, he's sort of slowly turning himself into Joel Osteen in a way.
And he's bankrolling some of these extremely bad initiatives.
For example, his church, North Point, has been financially supporting a church curriculum called Embracing the Journey that is fully LGBTQ affirming.
And it's being brought into small groups at churches like Saddleback and other churches around the country.
So he's actually one of the people doing the bankrolling for some really bad teaching and curriculum.
Yeah, see, that's the thing.
We got to know what to look out for, though, too.
So the Christians that are in the seats need to know what to look out for.
So are there buzzwords?
Like I was thinking like pronoun hospitality.
It's like we take the Bible seriously, but not literally.
Like what can the average person, average Christian be looking out for in their own churches?
Yeah, okay.
So another one of those is creation care, right?
Which now essentially just means we believe in human-caused climate change and we want to help the WEF bring down global regulations that from people who are not responsible to voters in order to retard your ability to purchase cars and run your air conditioning and all of those good things that we as by God, good grace, Americans have a right to do.
So one thing I talked about a lot in the book was if they're distilling their entire argument down to why you should support something as a Christian to just love your neighbor, like that to me is a huge red flag because there are all kinds of complex arguments we could have as the church about, okay, why should we support certain immigration regulations, for example?
Because on the one hand, we do want to be a charitable nation.
But on the other hand, if we do not protect the citizens that we have and the way of life that we have, we will no longer have anything to be charitable with.
And a government's first order of business is to see to the needs of its own citizens before it sees to the needs of the world.
So you can have all of these debates, but if they're not having them and they're just trying to distill it down to this legalistic idea of love your neighbor, that to me is always a red flag.
And you see it constantly to the point that Gavin Newsom eventually borrowed that to just throw it at abortion.
Like, I don't know if you guys remember, but he put up those billboards when Texas enacted its abortion restrictions and said, we're basically we're open for business for abortion here in California because we love our neighbors.
And that was so appalling.
It was like such a blasphemous use of that verse.
So that would be another big red flag.
And then the other thing is, I'm going to be honest with you, if your church is bringing in curriculum, like Bible study curriculum that is specifically political in nature, that in itself is a red flag.
Like, I don't know.
I think it's weird for a church to go, okay, now we're going to do a six-week study on immigration.
That's weird.
Why are they doing that?
Because if you're just studying the Bible, biblical principles are going to inform your view of all of these issues.
Sure.
And so it really seems like the Bible is correct yet again that we should be worried about wolves in sheep's clothing infiltrating the church.
But wolves are kind of cool.
So what do you think best describes the progressive infiltration of churches?
What sort of animal?
What sort of animal?
Like I might like.
I like turtles, for example.
Okay.
How about it's got to be something really stealth, right?
Like maybe those weird iguanas that just kind of blend in.
Like the second you put them on like a red piece of paper, they turn red.
The second you put them on a blue wall, they turn blue.
I feel like that's kind of what they would be or whatever that lizard is.
So chameleon.
Be aware.
Oh, thank you.
Did I say iguana?
Yes.
I was going to say, beware of chameleons in sheep's clothing.
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, they're pretty easy to spot because they can't use their chameleon powers when they're wearing sheep's clothing.
They just look like a weird, invisible cotton ball floating around.
I've always liked frogs.
I feel like a frog would be a good one.
Like Professor Umbridge.
She looks like a frog.
Yeah, I feel like it all comes through like a bunch of bureaucrats, you know, like people that love the rules.
Like these are the people that end up sort of bringing terrible things to bear in life.
Don't you think?
It seems like the umbridges of the world, you know.
Yeah.
And if the position that your church is taking or your ministry leaders or whoever it is that you're listening to happen to be identical to the same priorities as Fortune 500 companies, as Disney, maybe you should step back and go, I don't know, are we being distinct as the church when Disney and Nike and our church all have the same priorities?
Because I don't know.
That feels like we're really kind of blending.
Yeah.
So speaking of frogs, did you know that the Alaskan wood frog can survive being frozen solid and their breathing and heart rate completely stops, but they can build up high concentrations of glucose in their body and survive so they could thaw and spring?
Did you know that?
I didn't.
It's the glucose.
I'm not sure what to do with that information.
Put it in your next book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you think that Christians, Christians are supposed to love immigrants, though?
Right?
Yes.
So why wouldn't we just want an open border?
Right.
Because at a certain point, we would have to say that it would no longer be loving to immigrants or to our citizens to just have no rule of order at all.
You have chaos and God is a God of order.
And, you know, it's funny when you look at this immigration issue, that would be another red flag is if your church is really pushing specific legislation, like they're not just talking about it as a subject, but they're going, we really want to talk about the Senator Lankford bill and why we should support the Senator Lankford bill.
That's the kind of thing too that you should go, huh?
I don't know.
That seems like a little weird for my pastor to be pushing a particular piece of policy.
But isn't this what people have gotten nailed for and lost their tax exempt status over on the right?
Like, how is it that it's okay to do it on the left, but you can't do it on the right?
You can't talk about specific political stuff on the right in church.
Well, I mean, there's ways around it, right?
So your pastor might join the evangelical immigration table.
And so technically, he wouldn't be doing it in the role of your pastor.
He's just, as your pastor, also involved with this other group and therefore signing a letter to back a specific piece of legislation.
Yeah.
So is the pro-life movement being infiltrated, do you think?
So not necessarily just the church, but like, is that movement itself being infiltrated by people who are trying to normalize the occasional baby sacrifice?
Yeah, the occasional baby sacrifice.
I feel like with the pro-life movement, what's more happened is that they became a victim of their success in a lot of ways.
So that you go, okay, here's how we continue to maintain our donation roles and how we manage to have these big fundraisers.
And part of the way you do that is by not confronting the really thorny issues that make people uncomfortable.
Like the fact that a lot of women recognize that they're doing something sinful and wicked when they murder a baby.
Instead, we maintain this charade that women are so simple-minded that we have no idea what that is growing inside us.
And we were completely fooled and never recognized that this was an actual life.
And so they don't want to grapple with the moral implications of that because that makes donors uncomfortable.
And so they avoid it.
And at the same time, I do think you've seen progressives infiltrate the pro-life movement to change what pro-life means so that it no longer means let's not murder babies in the womb.
Now it could mean, well, let's establish a social safety net where there are larger welfare entitlements so that women won't want to get abortions.
Or it kind of means buying into this social justice, racial grievance narrative.
And we're saying that pro-life isn't necessarily just about babies.
It could also be about George Floyd.
That's also a pro-life issue now.
So they just dilute it by throwing all of these things into the pro-life basket so that now it means nothing.
So sneaky.
Yeah.
So are you suggesting that politicians care more about getting votes than about the pro-life movement?
That's really the headline.
I know that's shocking information.
I am shocked.
Absolutely.
Surprised.
Yeah.
So non-plussed.
Right.
So is using the pro-life movement for like George Floyd and stuff like that?
Is that how BLM is infiltrating the church?
Well, BLM, I don't know that they set out to infiltrate the church.
That was an occasion where I would say the church just wholeheartedly glommed onto them without even being invited.
I mean, BLM was pretty clear about what they were doing.
They said, we want to destroy the nuclear family.
We stand against traditional sexual morality and these things.
And yet the church was so eager to be a part of that movement that you saw huge mega church pastors, again, J.D. Greer and others who were saying, well, we don't necessarily support, you know, the Marxist part of that, but we still support the movement and what it's trying to accomplish.
Or in the midst of COVID saying, well, we agree that your churches should stay locked down, but we're going to go ahead and go march with thousands and thousands of people in the streets in honor of BLM and wave that BLM flag.
So in that case, I don't even think I can blame BLM.
That was really the church leaders, some church leaders, couldn't rush fast enough to join up with that movement.
They were almost sycophantic.
Almost sycophantic.
Yeah, that was a good word.
I'm glad you used it.
Okay, so Joe Biden is out of the 2024 race.
Your thoughts, 10 seconds.
My main thought is that in no way did Joe Biden do this out of some sense of civic virtue or responsibility.
He was obviously politically assassinated.
And the idea that so many of these Christian leaders are out right now saying that they are commending Joe Biden for his selfless act is absolutely sickening.
Yeah, it's stupid, isn't it?
What are your thoughts on Kamala Harris?
You know, my main Kamala Harris impersonation, it seems like you could.
Are you suggesting I could cackle?
Is that what you're suggesting?
I don't know.
I mean, I'd like to.
I think only witches can cackle.
Oh, that's true.
It's one of the tests.
Umbridge.
Anyway, sorry.
What are your thoughts on this?
Well, no, my main thought is, you know, I find this whole thing in no way surprising and unpredictable that they're cheating in essence.
They had a primary.
Their delegates cast their votes.
And now they see that their candidate, who they lied about for months, covering up the true state of his mental fitness, once it was clear that he wasn't going to win, they're now swapping him out.
But if they're going to do that, I would at least say she looks like about the best choice Republicans could have in terms of an opponent because she has to be the weirdest, most unpopular politician in the country.
So at least well done there, Democrats.
Yeah, well done.
Did you listen to Scamala?
Scamala.
Scamala Harris by Ben Shpiro.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't watched it yet.
Both of you.
Yeah, I'm interested.
It's very good.
Go check it out if you guys haven't listened to it.
Our listeners too.
I want to direct traffic over there because it was really, really fascinating.
I am.
We were at the RNC.
The Morning Wire team was all at the RNC last week.
So I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.
So you guys are going to get me in trouble.
Sorry.
Well, this won't come out for a couple of days.
You'll have some time.
Yeah.
So we'll redact that.
So we'd like to, we thank you first of all for your time, taking the time with us.
But we'd like to close out by asking 10 questions.
And the same 10 questions we ask every guest on the program.
First of all, have you met Carmen?
I have never met Carmen, but I enjoy Carmen.
I loved that video when I was a kid.
The, you know, the one where Satan or where Jesus like beats up Satan.
That was awesome.
Oh, the champion.
The champion.
Thank you.
Specifically, Satan bite the dust.
Also, one of the best things that's ever been countdown.
Yeah.
The countdown.
Yeah, there you go.
Are you a Calvinist or an Arminian?
I'm a Calvinist.
Please don't tell Seth.
I know.
Yeah.
It's good.
We won't.
Secret Safe.
You can add one book to the Bible.
What is it?
One book to the Bible.
Shepherds for Sale, maybe.
Actually, I'm going to append.
Yeah, so I probably append my book.
Yeah, but then I remembered about the curse in Revelation.
And I realized that if I give into this temptation, I will be cursed because that is what scripture says.
You cannot add or take away from this book.
So then I slowly backed away and went, I will add nothing.
That's good.
Okay, but what, coincidentally, what is your favorite book?
Favorite book of all time?
Yeah.
If I went by the book I probably read the most, it would probably be, I don't know if you're familiar with Susannah Clark, but Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
I love that book.
I've read it.
I read it like five, six times.
Have you really?
I read that book.
Yeah, I love that book.
And I enjoyed that book a lot.
I felt, I had an interesting, strange feeling reading that book.
Yeah.
Hey, so I could never figure out what drew me to that book.
And then a weird providence, I ended up at HarperCollins.
And one of my editors is a girl named Hannah Long.
And years ago, I had read a piece she wrote about that book about how the Raven King is the Holy Spirit.
And she did this whole sort of analysis on how the Raven King represents the Holy Spirit.
And it totally explained to me why I find that book so compelling.
Yeah, that's really an interesting take.
Okay, well, we'll add that book to the Bible then.
Revelation, Jude, Revelation, Jonathan Strain's mission.
Okay, cigars or pipes?
I don't know, pipes.
I just feel like I would look cooler with a pipe.
Everyone does.
You know, do you think Michael Knowles can switch to pipes?
I feel like when he reaches a certain age and he loses that baby face, when he becomes like Michael the Gray or Michael the White, that maybe it will be time then for him to switch to a pipe.
Okay, so Michael the what?
You have the chance, you have the chance to hang out with any three people, living or dead.
Who do you choose to hang out with?
And it can't be Jesus.
Yeah.
And it can't be Jesus.
And it can't be Michael Knowles.
Okay.
Napoleon.
He seems like a good hang.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a language barrier.
I just feel like there's a lot I could learn from Napoleon.
I want to say C.S. Lewis, but I feel like that's so obvious.
Plus, I'm worried, like, what if he didn't like me?
That would ruin my life for the rest of my life if I felt like C.S. Lewis didn't like me.
So I probably wouldn't, I would probably not meet C.S. Lewis.
I'm sure he would like you.
Yeah.
You think so?
I hope so.
I feel really.
I have it on good authority.
C.S. Lewis would like you.
All right.
Well, then I'll go with Napoleon, C.S. Lewis.
And I feel like I need to pick a biblical character.
Probably Solomon, right?
I mean, if the Queen of Sheba was willing to travel all those miles in order to learn from him, I'm like, yeah.
I don't know.
That seems a good character recommendation.
Sure.
That's true.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, you'll end up with his Ecclesiastes scenario.
So that's right.
All right.
So whiskey or beer?
Neither.
I'm a teetotaler.
Are you really?
Baptist.
Yeah.
Good Baptist.
Oh, that's great.
Travis, that's great.
Yeah.
He is too.
He's a teetotaler.
Yes.
First thing you do as president.
Shut down the Department of Education.
Based.
Good answer.
Have you ever punched anyone or been punched?
Yes, to both.
So I was in high school.
Yeah.
This girl who was dating my ex-boyfriend came up to me at a party and took a swing at me.
And she was really drunk and I wasn't.
And I swung back.
And I think my, what I think happened is I just happened to hit her right at the moment that she fell.
But it was probably the coolest moment of my life because all the guys in the room immediately did that all thing.
It really did look like I laid her out.
So I don't know if that's what really happened, but I'm going to go ahead and claim credit for that.
So nice.
Is that why you're a teetotaler?
Because you didn't want to be drunk like her?
Maybe.
And I realized, you know, that really, you know, probably saved my face or something.
So one concert, any band in history, who do you see?
Queen.
That's a good, good answer.
It's a good answer too.
Good answers today.
Well done.
Okay, last question.
Very, very important.
The most important question.
Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
I have for many, many years.
So Jesus and I are all good.
Got it.
Got her.
Got her.
Check.
We finally did it.
Finally got her in.
All right.
Well, thank you so much, Megan, for your time.
We really appreciate you.
Yeah, thank you for coming out.
I'm a huge fan of yours.
I've been listening and reading your stuff for a long time.
And thank you for doing what you do and for continually sort of calling out the craziness in the culture.
She didn't come out, though.
She's not here right now.
Thank you for coming out.
Thank you for stepping up to your computer screen.
Thank you for going on to cyberspace and transmitting your miniature voice through the tubes.
It's been a pleasure.
It's been fun to be here.
I appreciate it, guys.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
And good luck with this book.
We're going to sell a bunch of copies.
Check out Shepherds for Sale by Megan Basham.
Go check it out.
Read this book.
I'm going to read it.
I'm very excited.
I read some of it.
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