Review: Shepherds For Sale

Shepherds For Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

By Megan Basham (Broadside Books)

Memory fails to recall a recent book that has created such an immediate backlash among evangelicals as Megan Basham’s new and purposefully provocative title, Shepherds For Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. The publication of this title (released July 30) started a firestorm of online debate. Several prominent figures mentioned in the book immediately began self-defense campaigns on their various social media platforms.

Basham writes in an easily accessible style. She frankly admits she does not qualify as a theologian, nor does she make many attempts at describing the theological ramifications of her claims. She sees her task as reporting the facts—a task she executes through both anecdotal narratives and hardline receipts.

That combination makes Shepherds for Sale a compelling read. By intertwining real-life excerpts and concrete data, Basham helps the reader not only understand the leftward drift of evangelical leaders, but also the ramifications for those seated in the pews. These narrative elements prevent her book, which easily could have been overwhelmed with charts and data, from devolving into a dry repetition of statistics.

More importantly, the narratives remind her reader that ideas carry consequences not only for those who believe them, but also for those around them. It’s a message every believer needs to hear as the cultural tides continue to swell ever higher around the church.

So why then the controversy? Basham is not nice. She is not generous. She reports the facts. Her book names all the names. As a Baptist herself, Basham does not give her church a pass.

Furthermore, the book is well researched. While the book contains eye-opening passages, especially as she exposes the “money trail” behind so many of the forces influencing churches, Basham’s crime is not laying bare secrets. Her guilt or value, depending on how her reader will judge her, lies in the fact that she documents these trends. She prints them in a book. She makes them concrete.

The author accuses evangelical leaders of doing the natural thing during a cultural shift: putting away their “oars of resistance and floating off with cultural tides” (p. 79). She claims evangelical leaders’ motivation centers on seeking “respectability with the world” and treats them as bad actors trying to play the role of a “Christian that the world would love” (p. 81).

Basham extends no olive branches to these leaders. Instead, she throws a life preserver to those who have been tossed overboard by the cultural swells. Perhaps Basham writes hard things, or perhaps George Orwell was right after all, “The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

J.R. Watkins, student pastor

Lake Tyler Baptist Church, Tyler

EDITOR’S NOTE: Some journalists and victims’ advocates have accused Megan Basham of an ethical violation, because she exposed the name of Johnny Hunt’s alleged sexual abuse victim in her book after discovering it in an unredacted court document.