Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's part of why I started writing about this, because I experienced it on such a personal level, professionally, personally.
So it was like my husband said, by the time you left and went over to daily wire, you were so pent up about this subject that it was like, you know, I was just constantly talking about it, writing about it, tweeting about it, because I'd been living it in such a visceral way for several years.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Your book, Shepherd's for you, can give me the correct quote on this if I'm butchering it. But MacArthur, who's a huge. You know, we're a huge fan of MacArthur. He said it was one of the most, if not the most significant book in this generation in Christendom. That's a big statement.
Where do you think that came from?
[00:00:52] Speaker A: It is. And I think part of it was that everyone's sort of been tiptoeing around this issue for a number of years. I think we all sensed that there were forces and there were personalities that were attempting to use the church for secular reasons, but also to undermine doctrinal soundness. And we all knew that was going on. But I think the 11th commandment held pretty strong for a long time and for some good and sincere reasons, but it allowed it to continue to a breaking point that when I finally started documenting, here are the organizations that are doing it, here is specifically how they're doing it. I think that was important to do, but I think it hadn't been done. And that was. Why is that? It traced not just these were the tactics that were used, but these are the people, some very well known, previously revered personalities that were involved in some things that I think were undermining the church in significant ways that we needed to talk about.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: When Julie and I were going to this year's SBC in Indy, which we met you, our paths crossed on the plane.
But on the way there, I'm not sure at what point it came up, but at some point, I told her, I said, the numbers just don't line up. And at this point, we didn't really understand the content, content of your book, but we said, our numbers keep trending down, numeric like, in attendance, but the giving's going up in our entities. And I said, julie, I've just done this for, you know, 30 years. I know that's not how it works. So when we heard some of the content of your book, it was like, bingo. That must be contributing to what's going on here. And at what point did that get on your radar as something worth investigating?
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Well, I think part of it was that we saw initiatives that did not really seem to be part of the core mission of the church. And if you talk about the ethics and religious Liberty commission, when you look at what they're supposed to be doing, which is representing the interests of southern Baptists to legislators, you started seeing them work on projects and with groups that weren't necessarily aligned with the broad swath of southern baptist opinion.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: And you are Southern Baptist?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: I am, yes.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: As are we. And so this is home turf. This is your tribe.
I think most of us knew that what was coming out of that entity in particular was bizarre.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Right? Or at least debatable. Let's say that. I mean, you take an issue like immigration, which is complex, and it has complex ramifications. But what we knew is that all Southern Baptists would agree that, yes, we are to spread the gospel to everyone, no matter how they come to this country. We certainly want to share the love of Christ with them. We want to minister to their material needs. If they're in real want, that's something that we want to do. But we don't all agree on what our immigration policy should look like. And biblically, there's a lot of room for debate about what that should be. And so you saw the ERLC heavily involved with this group, the evangelical immigration table, that argue strenuously for things like keeping amnesty claims high.
They work with and not. They don't work with. They are part of the National Immigration Forum, which is, I think we can say, a left wing group that is known for pushing open borders policies. So when I started looking at that, I went, okay, all Southern Baptists don't agree on this issue, and yet this is an issue that the ERLC has prioritized. And then you look at who not just the evangelical immigration table was getting money from for a program that it was involved in called Bible's badges and business, which I just tell people so they can go look it up, but the entity that is the umbrella group over them taking money from people like George Soros, I don't need to tell people who George Soros is. And the Hewlett foundation, which if you are not familiar with them, they are the second largest funder of Planned parenthood in the country. So other secular left foundations. So I think there was a lot of reason for people to go, why are we involved in this? It feels like you are representing the interests of elite Washington to southern Baptists, rather than the other way around. And that's just one example I could go through a number of other policy priorities where they've been doing that.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: It's interesting, was that the first issue that kind of got on your radar was the immigration issue?
[00:05:45] Speaker A: You know, it's funny to go back and see how messy everything was between 2019 and 2020.
I was, you know, to use the colloquial term, I was a normie, and I was working in evangelicalism, went to our very Normie church.
We didn't really get involved in this kind of thing. Our school, you know, typical christian school. And then it felt like right around 2019, 2020, in part because of COVID but also because of what you might call the racial reconciliation movement, we started to notice things coming in on all of these christian fronts. So my whole world for a number, many, many years has been evangelical on every front. So we noticed this before 2020 in the COVID lockdown. But I think that was when it was really thrown into high relief, where I started noticing, okay, I am getting emails from our children's ministry director at our church about how we can talk to our kids about their white privilege.
Yeah. So that was astonishing to me. And I would never have guessed that our church was a church that would buy into that kind of thinking and narrative. And so then at the same time, we saw similar related things happening at our kids christian school, where I saw them just promoting pastors like Eric Mason's woke church and basically saying the church needs to repent for systemic racism. And it felt to me like, hold on a minute. We have skipped some steps. You are assuming an agreement that I don't feel, and I have a lot of reasons that I could lay out for this disagreement. And so when I saw all that happening, I think I was like the average person who went, well, hang on a minute. What's happening in the church right now? And then at the same time, when Covid happened and we saw so many of these entity heads and institutional leaders and pastoral leaders pushing policy prescriptions and priorities that were not biblical things like, you must get this experimental vaccine to show that you are obedient to Christ. I went, this is phariseeism of the highest order. And I think at that moment, that was when I knew something was so rotten that we needed to talk about it openly.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Your instincts are more attuned than mine. So when all that was going down, we gave a lot of benefit of the doubt. We thought, surely not. I mean, we expect that out of, you know, the Democratic Party. We expect that out of left wing entertainment and media, but we didn't expect it out of the Southern Baptist convention at all. So I always, the 11th commandment, I always kind of operated with, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, you know, not, not believe any of this stuff. And, you know, we were on Twitter and at the time, and, you know, following all of it, but not really buying it. Then our church group was caught in Israel when Hamas attacked. So I'm over there, we're trying to negotiate how to get home. And the first thing we, that I do, I start getting all these media contacts.
I mean, everything from Fox News, inside Edition, everybody was reaching out, wanting to interview this group stuck in Israel. And so I looked out of curiosity to see what the ERLC would say, thinking, well, they kind of give us some talking points to work from, and it may be a place to just educate myself a little bit. And this is three or four days into it, nothing, not a single tweet. So that's the first time I went. They're having to think too hard about this to figure out if this is a problem or not.
And so I tweeted to Brent and said, please, for heaven's sake, say something. You know, he reached out to me. We had a good dialogue, but I just told him, I said, this does not, what I'm hearing from your organization does not represent any Southern Baptist that I know personally. And this is a really easy decision. And if you're going to be the head of our ethics and religious liberty commission, why is this not a quick answer? Why do you have to nuance this one? You know, and so that was the first time, I think, that I began, and that's relatively recently to go, oh, my goodness, this may be true, some of the things I've heard from for years.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Well, and I think you could look at any number of issues that way. You know, certainly gun control and what are appropriate firearms laws that we should look at? What kind of restrictions should we look at? Again, a very debatable issue. I would say a lot of different opinions in the Southern Baptist convention if we're going to stay focused on the southern Baptists. And yet that is an issue on which they have gotten out in front of it in Tennessee and taken a position that a lot of Southern Baptists don't agree with. Now, I think on a personal level, if Brent Leatherwood or someone else as well, you know, I think these red flag laws are really important. I can respect that. The issue is using a tithe funded entity to push policies that the general Southern Baptist convention doesn't have consensus on. So these were the kind of issues that made me start looking into it and going, why are they doing this?
[00:11:22] Speaker B: I asked why you started with immigration. Because the first issues that really kind of rattled my cage were the abortion laws in Louisiana and then trying to stop the manifesto in Nashville after the school shooting. Those were two issues that just, you know, he should have known, or they should have known that we would have a problem with both of those decisions. So, you know, as I'm unpacking it to our congregation, that's where I went first. And in telling about your book, I'm just showing them some of the things that they would be concerned about. And one of the first questions that they asked was, what are they doing with immigration? So I found that interesting that you led with that, and that was the first thing that they asked.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Well, it's such an important issue to the american electorate. I mean, I think it's right now the number two issue of concern right after the economy. So a lot of people see a very negative impact, and that is why.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: And do you think it, do you think ultimately it's because it will change the electoral map or what are you thinking about?
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Well, I think that's a legitimate conversation to have. You know, I think you've had the ERLC and some other SBC leadership and broader christian leadership suggesting that it's somehow xenophobic to talk about how importing a new class of voters might change the electoral map. But that's a legitimate conversation to have. If you have a political party whose interest is in trying to win elections by bringing in new voters, we should be allowed to talk about that, particularly when there are people who maybe aren't as culturally assimilated and they are not as invested in the american project as founded. I think we can say when people are coming in illegally, we know that they're not being vetted in the same way as people who are going through the legal process are. So, you know, I always object to when they suggest that there's, you know, something, frankly, they will say, well, it's racist, it's xenophobic, it's great replacement. Well, no, these are legitimate conversations to have. And I think that's a way to wave people off of having those conversations. And then we see other negative impact, like wage suppression at the blue collar level. We see housing prices being driven up, we see crime, we see an increase in the drug trade. So all of these things are legitimate conversations, and none of them do I see some of these.
And let's broaden out from the ERLC because it's not just them. If you go look, for example, at the evangelical immigration Tables website, you will find all kinds of not just Southern Baptist leaders, former presidents, JD Greer, I think the head of the North American Mission Board, Kevin Ezell, have all signed on to their project. But you will also find all kinds of well known christian leaders like the National association of Evangelicals, the Christian Council for Colleges and Universities, which represents 185 member schools, including schools like Biola. So all of them are involved in something that, you know, your broad swath of rank and file evangelicals would say, hang on, we don't agree with the positions that you're staking in our name. And that is where you asked me about. Okay, let's talk about this funding. Well, these groups are getting funding not from Christians. They're getting funding from outside secular groups. And I think that's why.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: And the difference between the conspiracy theorist approach and what you've done in your book is that you've shown the receipts and you've tracked down, followed the money, so to speak.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: How difficult was that?
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Not difficult at all.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Pretty public knowledge.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's as simple as going and looking through Ir's nine hundred ninety s. I mean, they have to disclose this information. And a lot of times, if you go on to, let's say, the democracy fund, which is Pierre O'Midyar, he is the founder of eBay. He is very much a man of the left. He's a Buddhist. So, you know, doesn't even pretend to be remotely Christiane. If you go look on their website, you will see them explaining, here's why we gave $100,000 to the ERLC. It's because we want to support their ongoing efforts after the MLK 50 conference in, I think it was 2018 or 2019 to combat America's white supremacy problem. So they were very transparent. Here's why we're funding this. And you.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: That was shocking.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can find that sort of thing on, on any number of these secular left foundations. They'll tell you. Here's why we're doing it. I mean, I looked through reports from a think tank called New America that is funded by the Gates foundation and Soros foundation, open society and all the big billionaire names you would expect. And they did a sort of an autopsy in 2015 on their failure to co opt evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention in particular, to sign on to fossil fuel regulations. And they were studying it to say, here's why we failed before. So let's look at how we regroup now in 2015 and try again to do better in the future. And so these organizations are telling you very specifically, here's how we're intending to target Southern Baptists and evangelicals. So it really wasn't difficult. It was just, you know, somebody going around and picking up all of these little breadcrumbs left out in the open everywhere.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Right. We, as a church, I don't know how long ago, probably back around Covid, we voted to no longer fund the ERLC, and many of our sister churches have done the same. I know this year at the convention, it was, you know, a very close vote to at least hitting the brakes and trying to decide if that was something that needed to be dissolved altogether. And, you know, going forward, obviously, that's where our biggest concern is. Are there other entities that you would say you need to look very closely at from your research?
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think that you need to look closely, for example, about what's coming out of some of the seminaries. I think some have sort of reformed.
I spent a lot of time looking at southeastern, and I will say transparently between Summit church and southeastern, there seems to be a lot of collaboration and a lot of what has been pushed within the Southern Baptist convention from two very high profile leaders, JD Greer and Danny Aiken. They have sort of been ground zero for what you might call the woke infiltration into the SBC. They have very much pushed the racial grievance narrative, the idea that the SBC needs to institute racial quotas. JD Greer openly said that what we need to do is start reforming our committees so that we have a particular number of minority and female representation on those committees. At the same time you had southeastern, it's disappeared now, but it still exists on the wayback machine. If you're not familiar with that, I go into it in my book, but they were very openly promoting not something like critical race theory, but openly promoting critical race theory on formal seminary pages, on their Kingdom diversity page, and in their Kingdom diversity program. So before people became aware of what CRT was, they were pushing it. Same thing with the environmental issue. I spent a lot of time looking at how southeastern got very involved in promoting environmentalist activists who are demanding climate change legislation and suggesting that you have to be a climate change activists in order to be faithful to the gospel. So, you know, this is not to just bash people, but it is to show that there are real people pushing this. And I do think we have to talk about who they are and how they're doing it.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Let's suppose so, Doctor Aiken, I followed the conversations on x, and when people would kind of tell you, oh, there were three people in the room, that was nothing. And then you would show the receipts.
It shocked me. And he's an intelligent guy. He's a sharp guy. Have a lot of respect for him in many ways.
But we've never really, in my generation, we haven't dealt with this. You know, our forefathers dealt with it with their conservative resurgence. But in our generation, it's not been, we've not had to call out entity heads to this degree. And so I find myself asking, what would a reform or a repentance look like for that entity?
How might he respond? How would I respond? I can see with something that large things are going to creep in. You know, even if you're as diligent as you can be, things are going to creep.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Well, if I can interrupt really quickly, I would say, and I respect your respect for Doctor Aiken.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: I'm giving the benefit of the day.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: I do. But I also want to point out that, you know, his signature was on baptist statements for pursuing climate change, how we reformed, and how do we get Southern Baptists involved? So I think it was called the Southern Baptist Climate Change Initiative.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: So this was more intentional. This wasn't just.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: I can't say. I mean, I think at some seminaries we did see that. Like, if you look at Southern Seminary, my, when I went into it and the people that I spoke to in the background, there was a sense of, look, some of this came in and it was allowed to go on too long and was eventually addressed. But I think there are other situations where the top down was involved. So the top of this, of the leadership at Southeastern was involved in this.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: When the critical race theory issue came up at Southern, I spoke to Doctor Mohler directly about that. And every person that's interviewed on that staff had been asked that question, where are you at on this issue? And that was a deal breaker. If they were going to push the critical race theory motif, then they were no longer considered for faculty at that school. Nevertheless, it happened, you know, and in any organization that can creep in, something can creep in or people change.
But you're saying at Southeastern it was more than that?
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Yes. I mean, I think if you look at the history of the Kingdom Diversity Initiative, it very deliberately promoted critical race theory documents, encouraging people to adopt critical race theory as a lens for how they viewed cultural issues was promoted. So I don't think that something like that happens without the executive class of that school signing onto it. So it wasn't one professor making comments in an interview. And the same thing, like I said, goes for some of these climate change issues. It was that. And I always want to preface that by saying, I am not saying that christians of good faith can't have different views on that issue. I always stress that because my opinion is that there is maybe a small degree of human activity that is slightly impacting temperatures, possibly. But my understanding is it is a very small amount. It is not catastrophic. So when I say that if you think that it is something that is a very large issue and it is an existential crisis, then we can debate about that. The issue is bringing it into seminary education, presenting only one view, and then demanding that students and other christians sign on to that view to show that they are being faithful to scripture, and specifically, in this direct quote, faithful to the gospel.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Wow. What would you say from studying this with other movements, other denominations, what would you say the path ahead looks like for conservatives? Because we have so many instances where we get close with votes or whatever it might be, we might win one or two out of ten, but never just a glaring victory.
From your observation, what would you say the path forward looks like?
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Well, you asked me, and I think I dropped the question a little bit, what these entities would need to do now in order to make this right. And that's an important piece of this, because I think, and I understand it, but to paper things over, none of us wants to be seen as combative or divisive or disreputable, is the big one to me. And so I think what happens is there are not mea culpas issued, but there are. What you suggested is, ah, we didn't quite realize this was happening, and so we're just gonna quietly remove these things from the website, or we're not going to talk about that issue anymore. And then what we're going to do is hope that everyone else in charity will also not talk about it. And what I am saying is, I don't think that's charity.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Go beyond that.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: I think it's a kind of cowardice and passivity. I think that's what we're seeing. And we're at a point where that has to stop, where once these receipts are laid out and once we can actually see the activities that people were involved in, there needs to be a real acknowledgement that positions were misused, authority was misused, and that hasn't happened. And when there's repentance, I also think there needs to be attendant consequences. So we have leadership that I believe needs to step down, step back and turn the reins over to those who will truly operate in a doctrinally, theologically conservative fashion. Because I think the instinct at this point is so ingrained. Because I want to say, I don't know that the impulse comes from someone like Doctor Aiken is really passionate about the issue of climate change. I don't know that that's the case, but I know this. Whatever is the dominant cultural, respectable corporate position to take when you look at whatever Walmart's position is or what the DC class, what they want to stake as their position, they tend to drift in the direction of power. And that is the problem. And so at that point, I think we need some people to be willing to sacrifice their reputations in order to clean up this mess and in order to look distinct from the world. Because all of this is an effort to not look distinct. We are trying to, as much as possible, blend and then baptize that blending with whatever kind of christianese terms we can come up with to defend the fact that we're getting involved in all sorts of areas where the Bible doesn't tell us that, you know, we must back cap and trade legislation.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Well, and we're, you know, I'm speaking as a Southern Baptist. We are remarkably gullible at times. You know, I remember when Doctor Moore made his big shift.
I don't know now that it was a shift, that it wasn't something that was there earlier. But I was in his class, you know, I was in his classes at southern, and I've never heard a more passionate, zealous defender of conservatism and a conservative interpretation of scripture. I mean, across the board, things that would shock anybody now to hear what he defended and trained us in. I brought him in my church, he preached a phenomenal sermon that I would encourage anybody to listen to. And then one day it radically changed. And was that there all along? Was he faking it before? Did he have a heart change, a mind change? God only knows. But it's, you know, it's a respectable thing, at least if someone sincerely holds those beliefs to say, here's where I'm at. I'm going to Christianity today. You guys have fun.
It's respectable. If a leader gets honest and says, this is where I sincerely stand. I think a lot in the SBC, we want to be at the cool kids table so bad. And, and anytime something comes along that's getting traction, we really want to be associated with it. And sometimes, and I hate to say that for somebody with the clout of a seminary president. But sometimes I think that's the temptation that we can all kind of fall to.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: I absolutely agree. But I would also say this.
Maybe this is a bit of a defense for some of the institutional leaderships is that. But the cool kids are targeting us as well. And that's something to understand is, and I don't know how well some of the institutional leadership knew that at the time because I don't know what it looks like in those rooms when the Hewlett foundation or whoever these other organizations are, are calling and saying, hey, we really want to support this initiative.
I don't know what those conversations look like. And maybe there's a certain naivety there in, well, hey, we feel like maybe this is something that we could align with. So I do want people to know that is, it's. I don't believe that our institutional leadership is going out looking for these partnerships. I do believe that these partnerships are in very specific, targeted ways coming to them. And we're talking about people who are pretty sharp and they know how to get in the rooms and they know how to make the pitch. So maybe in that moment you convince yourself, hey, it's okay to partner with an organization that. That supports abortion up to birth, that is also funding efforts to make sure that youth, quote unquote, so children have access to gender affirming care, because at least we align on this one issue. And at that point is when I go, you have now let Satan in the door.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Well, and I think, too, there has to be that in the back of your mind. There's not a Megan Basham who's gonna research this and have the freedom to write a book on it. And that was something they didn't count on.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Neither did I.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: So this book is getting incredible attention. And part of it's because your publisher hooked you up with some really leading evangelicals who spoke very highly of the book.
With the attention that it's receiving, your schedule must be insane right now.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: It is. And I will say we are very unused to this in our house. So my husband and I are kind of going, okay, it's just for a few months. We can get through this. So it's been fun navigating.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Are you a native of North Carolina? I know that's where you live now.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: No. So my husband and I are both from Arizona with a small sojourn into central California. Both of us born and raised in Arizona. And he's. He now works with World magazine. He started a broadcast department with them. But when we got married, he was in mainstream broadcasting. So if you're not familiar with that industry, you typically start in a small market, which for us was El Paso, Texas, which was why I know a lot about, on a personal level, immigration issues, because we lived right there on the border for three years, and then you move up into larger markets, and so kind of traversed the country, spent a little time in Tucson and Memphis, and then settled in North Carolina with the intent of going to Phoenix. And that was going to be always our goal. We're going to get back to the great big market of Phoenix, Arizona, once he was seasoned enough. And then when Phoenix, Arizona, came calling, I didn't want to go, and he didn't want to go. And we just. We loved the south and broke a few family hearts, but said, you know, we really think this is where we belong and we're going to stay here.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: Did you have a family history of journalism or you something new?
[00:32:31] Speaker A: No, not at all. Now, it was just providential that my husband and I both worked in journalism because we did not meet that way. We met at church, but he got his degree in broadcast journalism. I was an english lit major, but worked on my college paper. And when we came out of college, for me, with all of that moving, it was something that I could do on the side while we were trying to have kids that allowed me to kind of use my skills, but at the same time, I didn't have to have a nine to five job. So I started pitching outlets like National Review and the Wall Street Journal, and I did a journalism fellowship with the Novak foundation and just really enjoyed working on that while he was moving up the ranks in broadcasting.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: What year was that?
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Broadly, starting in about 2004.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: So it's pre Twitter.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Pre Twitter, yes.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: And I think that's where, you know, you came on our radar. I think some of the ladies discovered your tweets. I remember we were with Brad and Vicki one night, and they got to, my wife, Julie and Vicki got to talking about this Megan Basham and just loving some of the things you had said. And so I think I went and followed you after that and got to know a little bit about what you were all about prior to all of the SBC stuff. And so that's probably been maybe five years that we've been kind of tracking what you were doing. And, you know, it was just a sister in Christ that, it seemed, shared a lot of our perspectives on things that were happening in the world. And so, you know, to see you kind of your platform and your profile kind of come into the spotlight. It kind of felt like that's one of our girls, you know? And so it's been fun to watch, but we've also been, like, praying for you and knowing that the things that we go through as a pastor's family that can be a little bit feast and famine, it can be a little bit insane and then totally chill for a while. Has to be some of what your family's going through at this time.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And we, you know, there was no plan to start to do some of this work. I, on a very personal level, experienced a lot of it. So I came out of evangelical media and my husband jokes, you know, as far as my Twitter Persona is, it was like I was restrained for good reasons for a long time. But I was seeing all of this. I was experiencing it personally. Also on the job front in evangelical media, I was, I saw some of these actors coming in to trying to move the organization that I'd been with. And by the time I got to the daily Wire, Brian jokes, it was like you were so pent up, it just needed an outlet. And it started to come out on Twitter and then also daily Wire. You know, they weren't really aware of this subject. But when I came to them and said, okay, I need to be able to do some reporting on this, I know it's a little niche. Are you open to that? They said, yeah, you know, write up some stories and we'll take a look. And the first big one was this Francis Collins report on during COVID how all of these ministries and high profile pastors were promoting and platforming Francis Collins and knowing what I did about his background and some of the things he'd been involved in and disagreeing vehemently with some of the statements that he was making and the policy prescriptions he was pushing. When I wrote that story and I gave it to my editor and it had so many, you know, very high profile evangelical names, he went, whoo. I mean, so even for daily wire, he's like, let me think about it for a couple.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: And as a conservative platform, people consider daily wire, you know, a conservative media platform that's sort of their tribe as well, in many ways.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: Yes, very much. And understandably, they also wanted to check the work and go, okay, if we're going to talk about people like Tim Keller and Rick Warren and Ed Stetzer, we need to make sure that you have got, you know, we are fact checked up one way and down the other. So we went through that process. And so, grateful to their credit, you know, editor came back and said, you know what? Yeah, it's. It's newsworthy, and it's important, and we're gonna run it. And so that kind of was what flipped the switch, I think, for me. And so many people became aware of me. And then I started writing on this subject in other ways because, again, it was just so pent up, and I knew so much at that point, and I just couldn't stop. And I was providentially in a position where I was no longer inside the evangelical house. I had many, many christian colleagues, but I was working for a secular conservative media outlet where there weren't some of the sensitivities. I think, you know, once I was kind of standing on the outside being able to write about it.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Back when you began and you were independent journalists, basically. What was the first big break that you got?
[00:38:02] Speaker A: Probably that Robert Novak journalism fellowship.
You know, I had been writing for a number of conservative political outlets, like National Review, like, surprisingly, Weekly Standard, which, you know, now it's defunct, and its leadership has gone in a very surprising way, if you're not familiar with Bill Kristol, Stephen Hayes, some of those guys. But there was a network there in that first class that I was in, in the Novak journalism fellowship that included Molly Hemingway, who was then Molly Ziegler. Mark Hemingway was also in that class, Ryan Anderson, who heads the ethics and public policy center. So there were just so many people who were doing such great work. And even though I was kind of quietly doing my own thing as mostly as a wife and mom and a little bit of writing on the side, I was able to draw on them. So when I had ideas or when I wanted to pitch something, I suddenly had this great network that I hadn't had before.
Yeah. And by that same token, I ended up writing a book in 2008, thanks to someone in the fellowship. I said, I have this idea. What should I do? And someone said, well, I have this great agent. You should talk to him. And from that, was able to get a book deal through.
At that time, it was just random house. It's Penguin Random House now. But.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: So you were, you were english lit major.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: And you found yourself in journalism.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: By that time, did the bug bitten you to where you said, okay, I am a journalist. This is what I'm gonna do with my life?
[00:39:43] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was. I don't know how to describe these things other than a compulsion.
People will sometimes ask you for career advice, and I always go, I don't know if this is a very good answer, but it was like I couldn't not do it. I felt very passionately about a lot of issues then. I still do. And so it's a great job for someone who maybe has a bit of a magpie tendency where you just see shiny things that you get very obsessed with for brief periods of time until you pick up that shiny thing and you get to know everything you can about it and write about it. For someone like you, who you also want to become obsessed with the topic. So, yeah, it was just, I think it's just in my DNA.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Okay. At that point, when it got on your radar and you started kind of developing a vision for what this could look like, who did you see? As if I'm gonna be a journalist. That's the kind of journalist I wanna be.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: So, one, even though we came up at around the same time, she outdistanced me so very quickly that I was able to look to Molly Hemingway and watch her career trajectory and think. Not that I necessarily wanted to copy every aspect of it, but in spirit, she was so unafraid and her truth telling was so unflinching. And I thought, I want to do that. I never felt when I watched Molly's work, like she was trying to ingratiate herself to someone. It felt like she was just on a mission for the cause of truth. And that was what I wanted to do. And part of what's so great about being in the position of a journalist, mom, is that we weren't relying on my income in any way. It was all just kind of bonus so I could do those things and there was no fear of, oh, gosh, if we anger this person, then I might not have a job tomorrow. It was fine if I didn't have a job tomorrow, so I could do that.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: One of the things I'm curious about, and I don't really know how to ask it, but to what degree. You know, we kind of, there was the shock jock kind of journalist, there was the gonzo kind of journalist, and then there's kind of your more, you know, black and white traditional. I don't consider you a black and white traditional journalist, but I don't know which other camp to put you in.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Well, and it's funny because I'm curious.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: About the influences there.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And as we were driving in currently, I, you were listening to, I think, an interview with someone, and Matt Tybee.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: From, well, it's Tucker, and, you know, his new platform since he's left Fox it's just been. It's been fantastic. Are we rolling? So it's been fantastic. Everything.
I really was not a huge Tucker fan when he started his own work and did his own interviews. They have been, like, really interesting. He's done a great job. And so probably the Putin interview is my least favorite. But he's done some fantastic interviews, and so picked up a book, read about him again, it's just a fascination with people who've done that. And so I'm curious from you, so I'm curious, what are your influences outside of.
Outside of your circle at daily wire now and the people that you've worked with? Who are the people that have kind of put ingredients in the recipe for you?
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Well, early on, you know, one of my definitive shaping influences as far as my political thinking was Rush Limbaugh. Absolutely. I could not think more fondly of my years growing up as the original rush baby. Just loving listening to him being a weirdo in high school. Cause I would be like, no, this is what we're doing.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: So in high school, you were listening to him.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I loved Rush Limbaugh.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Did you get mad when you listened to him?
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Yes. But I also felt reassured, because what I always loved about Rush was that, if you remember, he would say, when is it time to panic, rush? And he said, I will tell you when it's time to panic. And then, you know, very close to when he died, he said, it's never going to be time to panic because we don't panic and we don't give up on this nation, and we believe in Providence. So it's never time to panic. It's always time to be optimistic and of good cheer. And people try to pretend like he was always this very dark voice, but he was not. They don't remember that part of it.
And I think when I think about him, I think about how I never felt like he was trying to be the smartest guy in the room, trying to know more than other people. So what that gave him was an ability to always cling to first principles in a way that I think some of these, you know, machiavellian architect types don't. It's like they're too smart by half and they end up no longer representing their audience or their constituencies. And that never happened with Rush. He was always a mere conservative, if we want to borrow that term, for that purpose. And that is because he was always so confident in the american people. And I think he was always so confident that they had common sense and their instincts were good, and he was representing those instincts. He wasn't trying to transform them.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Do you see yourself in that type of role long term?
[00:45:25] Speaker A: I don't know. You know, I spend so much time in prayer going, I don't even know how this happened, Lord. So I don't really have, and maybe I should, but I don't do a lot of planning in terms of these things. I just kind of whatever the next shiny thing is that I pick up and work on.
And I think I really do leave it to Providence. And I will say my other major influence. Seems strange to say it journalistically, but other than my actual father, my spiritual father is very much John MacArthur. And I think that I just kind of absorbed his thinking on. I don't really need to worry about that. What comes next, that's God's problem.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah, he had a big. I came to Christ through radio so early on. He was one of maybe five pastors, came to Christ early in college, heard a radio preacher, heard the gospel, really heard it for the first time. I'd grown up in church, but it got through to me and went through drop ad, dropped everything, listened to radio preachers five days a week, and really was discipled through those guys. And I think that's part of the attraction to media that causes us to want to do things like this, because I know it can be a powerful platform for life change in the gospel. How did you come to Christ?
[00:46:53] Speaker A: So it's funny, I have one of those stories where I go, I don't know for sure the exact moment, but I think I know it.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: I think a lot of people are more there than they get on, you know?
[00:47:03] Speaker A: So I'm like, if I had to guess, Lord, here's when I think it is, but only you really know the moment I was sealed. But. So I grew up in a christian home. Both my parents are christians. We grew up going to church. But I think you could certainly say that up until my early twenties, there was no fruit in my life. So my guess is that I was not a believer then, though if you had asked me, I would have professed Christ.
And when I got to college, I think the real fallen nature of my spirit showed itself. And, I mean, I was just lost. I was lost as long as could be. In college.
I was abusing drugs, I was abusing alcohol. I kind of joke that the politest term is party girl, but when I came to Christ, I mean, I just crawled. And so I was an english lit major, as I talked about, and it was an unusual story. I was so miserable, though I probably didn't know it at the time. And I was back living at my parents house, but still in college at Arizona State. And I was taking in one of my english lit classes. We were studying the quest of the Holy Grail, so also known as the Vulgate cycle. And I had this professor who very postmodern and, in fact, had written books on the Bible and how it is more of a literary work than something that we can invest our lives in and take as historical fact. And you could not have found a professor whose purpose was more in undermining biblical Christianity. And he was teaching some of these texts that formed Christendom. And so he had assigned this term paper where we were to compare Thomas Mallory's version of the quest to this older Vulgate cycle. I'm gonna go deep in the weeds here for just a second, so hang with me. But the assignment was in the original Vulgate cycle. It is a very christian work, and there are all of these hermits that come out and confront Lancelot about his adultery with Guinevere, and there's nothing romantic about it, and there's nothing sort of beautiful about their story. It very much paints Lancelot in base, sinful ways, and he is challenged again and again to repent. And the point of the term paper was that we were supposed to write about how Thomas Malory stripped all of those lectures from these religious hermits out of the book and made something enduring and beautiful. But here I am, hungover in my parents house, reading the original text. And I was thinking, as I was reading it, this is me like these. These rebukes of Lancelot for his gross, debased sin, even though he had been raised with the knowledge of the Lord and given every advantage and every good thing. And the Lord expected him to provide a return on all of those blessings like a faithful servant. And instead, he was living this wastrel life with Guinevere. I went, this is me and all of my, you know, fellow students on Arizona state campus. And I actually went into the bedroom, and I got down on my knees at that moment, and I was just like, help me, Lord. I mean, here I am, you know, like I said, just living a lifestyle of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, nothing of spiritual significance in my life. And right after that, I started going back to church, and I continued to struggle for a couple of months. And I say that so people understand. It wasn't like a light switch for me where I immediately went, well, no, I'm not sinning. And living this sinful lifestyle. There was a period of a few months where it was kind of a mix up that I don't remember it that well, but I was trying to go to sort of christian therapy, and I was stumbling along thinking, well, it's because of all of these traumas of my past. And there were a lot of traumas, because when you live a lifestyle like that, a lot of really awful things are going to be attendant to it. Things like sexual assault, things like problems with the law, things like, you know, continuing dependency on drugs because it's what you're used to. And so I kept looking to sort of christian therapy as a way to deal with those problems. And I was at that time starting to listen to John MacArthur. And a pastor at my church, Christchurch of the Valley in Phoenix, Arizona, gave me his book, the Vanishing Conscience.
And that book was like a light switch when I read it. And he said something that all of this christian therapeutic language would have rejected, which is stop sinning. You can choose right now to stop sinning and fix your eyes on Christ, and that is not, whatever traumas you have in your background are not an excuse for you to continue sinning. And the answer to it is to stop fixating on yourself and your traumas and to fix your eyes on Christ. And I did that. And it was almost like a magic formula.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: He has a gift to speak truth in a way that when he says it, it's like nobody's ever said it before.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: And then you hear it and go, I've listened to him long enough that I don't write anything off. If he says it, I'm gonna. I'm gonna at least chew on it. And so then eventually you go, I think he's right.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: And the next thing you know, your instincts are being shaped by that, that way of approaching the text as well.
You're not that different from him in this sense.
Your Persona, your public Persona is. Is a little bit.
It could be a little bit intimidating. That's so clear to me because you speak so straightforward.
[00:53:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: And so if you listen to. If you listen to MacArthur Preach, he's that way. He. He can be a little intimidating. If you disagreed with him, I'm not sure, you know, who would. Who would have the guts to go up and say anything? But he's the nicest guy.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: Outside of the pulpit when he's operating in his gift. It's a gentle song. Right. But you talk to him offstage. He is the nicest. I've had staff members that say he is such a pushover, you know, that if somebody comes up and they're looking for a job, young preacher boy, he'll just give him a job. And then a friend of mine said I had to be the guy who went back to him and say, you know, by a job, he meant, we're going to volunteer, you know, and kind of clean it up. But it's, it really is neat. And I think that's part of the reason I wanted to do this interview, is to let people see both sides.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: Well, and I think I want to emphasize that that is part of why I am so passionate about the church and that the church's mission is to rescue souls out of the fire, because I was one of those souls. And when I see all of this other extraneous stuff or even elements that are undermining the gospel work, I do get angry. And I think that's part of why I get angry. And I think people think like, oh, I'm trying to dismiss the women's trauma or something like that on some of the subjects that we've gotten involved with in the SBC. And that is not it. It's because I know from personal experience, I don't think you're helping people with this. I think you're building up your own public profile, and maybe some of you have really good, sincere reasons, but I think it's damaging to women or victims. I think it's damaging to encourage people to live in this stuff and marinate in ithood. I'm so grateful to John MacArthur because I think about that tough talking, if we want to call it that. I wouldn't have my husband, my children, the life that I have, the relationship with my family, my extended family that I have, if it hadn't been for his ministry. And so maybe that's why I don't suffer a lot of this sort of worldly, therapeutic influence, is because I know that it didn't help me.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: I hear you. The real life balance from being a mom, a wife, and at the same time being given a profile that you can't manage. As you said, you're riding a wave, so to speak.
How do you deal with all that? How do you cope with all that?
[00:55:52] Speaker A: I feel like I should come back and answer that in a few months when we've thought it through a little more, because right now we're a little bit catch as catch can.
But, I mean, part of it is through a lot of prayer, frankly, and some trial and error. And, you know, there have been moments where my husband and I have sat down and gone, okay, we've overcommitted, you know, the things that you're doing. Or it's also, you know, we have a conversation, and we're praying through it, and we recognize this is a limited season. It's gonna be a little bit nuts for mom for three months, and then we're gonna dial way back, and, you know, she's not gonna be available for these kind of things for the next few months.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: You have two girls. Are they old enough to comprehend what's happening?
[00:56:33] Speaker A: Yes, definitely. So I have an almost 15 year old and a ten year old, and, you know, the ten year old's not that interested. So, you know, she's kind of. Oh, yeah, I kind of get what mom does, but my almost 15 year old, she is definitely in the age, and she is. She is a chip off the old block. I will say she's very feisty, and so she will hear my husband and I talking about things, and she very much wants to be a part of that conversation. And she's like, well, did you tell them this? Did they think about this? And sometimes I'm like, that is a really good point. I'm gonna jot that down. Yes, that is an important point that you just made. So I love having her as part of the conversation.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: Do they ever talk, your haters, or.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: They don't have. They're not online at all. So, I mean, you know, they get online for school, but they have no social media. So to the degree that they hear us talk about these things, they're aware of it, but they have no, like, real firsthand interaction with it.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: If there is a young person who's considering kind of following your path here that says what you're doing resonates with them. Any advice you would give them?
[00:57:45] Speaker A: One. Just be very careful not to measure what you're doing by the reaction. I would say just dig down and make sure that your facts are correct, that you've triple checked all of your research and then put it out in the world. And this is difficult, stand by it if you believe it's true, don't get apologetic about it.
You have to stand by it. Because there were some moments where, I mean, the blowback was immediate when that Francis Collins report came out. I mean, after a couple of weeks, I feel like there were more people going, hang on a minute. She has a really good point, and we should talk about this. But the immediate reaction was outrage. And some of the positions and things that I wrote regarding the hash metoo movement were very much that way as well. And so I think since that time, I believe that there have been developments that bore out what I wrote, but it was painful at the time, and my husband kind of had to go. You still think it's true? Yes, I do. Okay, well, then you're going to stand strong behind that and also be. Walk away at a certain point, you know, you don't have to defend yourself, because I think I did that very much at the outset. I felt like any critic of note, you know, that people followed or knew I had to get out there and answer them, and I went overboard at times. So if you followed me on Twitter, if I could go back and do it again, I would have just let my work, in some instances, stand for itself, and I didn't need to come in and defend it to the degree that I thought I did.
[00:59:26] Speaker B: Are there practical barriers in all that where you just say, okay, I'm gonna shut off at this time? Because in, you know, in a instant information age, it's always happening.
[00:59:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:59:41] Speaker B: So how do you. How do you do that? Like, when do you shut down and say, it's happening? I'm not responding to it right now.
Or have you.
[00:59:51] Speaker A: No, we have. And it. That was part of the trial and error. And I would say, you know, that was very much my husband who would go, you're getting a little lost in this, and I need you to just put that down and leave it alone. And also, I mean, he directly told me there were some people who I think if we're going to use the common term troll, he's like, stop answering that person. This is not a person of good faith who is actually trying to understand what you reported. Or, you know, he was like, these are people who are deliberately just needling you.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: They live for this.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And you need to just don't interact with that person at all. And I really appreciate that because it was hard for me, you know, and part of it is pride. Right? You're like. And you had to recognize that at a certain point. You're like, I am reacting out of pride right now, not for the cause of joy.
[01:00:44] Speaker B: Are you guys opposites personality wise?
[01:00:46] Speaker A: So opposites. Well, I mean, it's good. We're a good mix. We matched, like, enough ways that it's, you know, we're so. I mean, he really is, you know, it's a cliche, but he's my best friend and constantly talking about everything. But he is. I joke. He is like the sunshine. He is mister amiable. I think people who know Brian and his work, then discover we're married. And they go, you guys are married? But convictionally, convictionally, we are 100% aligned. James Carville and I learned so much from him. No, we are not James Carville and Mary Matlin. We are convictionally, which is funny, because people who only know his sunny public Persona, which he is very sunny behind the scenes, too. But I go, oh, if you think my views are extremely conservative, you should hear Brian's views.
But what he does is he's just very even keel. He doesn't tend to get emotionally invested in things to the degree that I do. And that's really helpful.
[01:01:56] Speaker B: You guys are in the same general line of work, but you're not working together per se. You're not with the same platform. Could you ever see that happening?
[01:02:06] Speaker A: I definitely could. And we talk about it sometimes, and that's part of Providence that I go, let's see if that's something that the Lord has for us or if one of us, you know, starts to feel really a compulsion that I often feel is that spirit driven thing that's happening to go, I don't know what it is, but I feel like I gotta work on this and I gotta make this happen. And in the meantime, we're constantly talking about each other's projects and work.
[01:02:31] Speaker B: And my parents worked together growing up, so Julie and I worked really closely together. And it works for some people, it seems like. Yeah, not others. Okay, so if somebody is new to Megan Basham and they want to go deeper and just kind of learn everything, they can, get your content, where should they follow you at?
[01:02:50] Speaker A: Well, definitely daily wire. And I am on our Morning Wire podcast. If you're not familiar, it's a 15 minutes news podcast.
[01:02:59] Speaker B: Is that on, like, podcast services anywhere?
[01:03:02] Speaker A: So, I mean, we are in the top.
It's audio only, right? I. Right now it's in the top ten of both Apple and Spotify's news podcast. So if you go look in the news category, you will see the New York Times daily news podcast, NPR's daily news podcast, and usually us right there, too, in the top ten.
And so, unlike many of our other products, we are not an opinion program. We are three top stories in and out. We will give you the context you need in 15 minutes.
I do a lot of my work there, so I write stories and report stories there at least three, four times a week.
[01:03:41] Speaker B: Well, Megan, thank you so much for your time. I can't wait. We're going to release this the week that your book comes out. And so wish you the best. And just know you have a friend here on this salty piece of land called Amelia island.
[01:03:54] Speaker A: Oh, it is a beautiful piece of land. And thank you so much for having me.
