Slander for Sale - Book Review of Megan Basham's "Shepherds for Sale" Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Climate Change

In this series of posts, I intend to review Megan Basham’s book Chapter by Chapter to show why it’s an unhelpful, fear-mongering, conspiratorial, slanderous tirade undeserving of the attention of Christians or any fair-minded reader. It is the sort of book which, when put to the test of rigorous thought, will convey the illusion that Christians are the sort of shallow-thinkers represented by Basham’s ilk. If Basham represented the depths of Christian thought and “discernment”, I’d have never become a Christian having been a former agnostic.

So expect me to be rather blunt. When (presumable) sheep bite the Shepherds with a mouth of lies, they deserve nothing less than stern rebuke.

Is Climate Change a Trojan Horse?

The basic thesis of this book is that evangelical leaders and pastors have capitulated to a left-wing agenda, using the pulpit to advance that agenda. Basham claims this is widespread and deadly. Her first exhibit for this alleged capitulation is a discussion on Climate Change.

Megan’s argument in this chapter is that concern for climate change is a kind of buzzword, through which the agendas of the left are brought in subtly and disguised by Christianese-sounding language. For instance, if a pastor says “we should care about how our activities as human beings are harming God’s good world and affecting the poor”, Megan hears the pastor using key buzzwords that are tagging a whole leftist agenda. Leftists, after all, pair climate change and racial justice and LGBTQIA+ issues. Hence, the turn of environmentalism into creation care is a kind of trojan horse in which evangelical churches are made into pundits for leftist thinking. Any pastor who therefore says “caring for the environment is a matter of Christian witness” is thus branded by Megan as a kind of useful idiot (though she doesn’t, to my recollection, use this term)—an unwitting (or witting, in some cases) tool of the left by which the church is infiltrated by leftism.

And that’s it. That’s the whole argument. Along the way she slanders folks like Gavin Ortlund, who has exposed this sort of thing. I point you to his video here.

This is the sort of fear-mongering argument unbecoming of any sane person. It essentially takes the form of the following:

X supports Y cause.

Z supports Y cause.

Therefore, Z supports X’s agenda of issues.

That’s just obviously fallacious. Now, it’s true that many who support environmental justice also support things like transitioning-for-minors or child-hormone-replacement-therapy and such. But it is an utterly childish and asinine way of thinking to claim that since Pastor Bob supports something leftist-Libby supports, that somehow leftist-Libby has infiltrated Pastor Bob’s church with her entire agenda.

But don’t some pastors find common ground with secularists over these issues? Sure. That’s called natural theology. It’s called finding a place of common ground, using that common ground to build some good will, and dialoguing through disagreements from there. CS Lewis once wrote that friendship begins when another person says, “ah! Me too!”—that is, when people recognize a mutual concern or interest.

Of course, sociologically, some believers who find themselves in groups that are concerned over environmental justice may find themselves linking arms with those who do support such things as transitioning-for-minors, and they may become swayed by those things, but that has little to do with being concerned for creation care and more to do with being persuaded by other things people in those circles say (even if wrongly persuaded). Unfortunately, this whole chapter’s argument can be reduced to “guilt-by-association”.

While Megan mentions a number of scientists who have shown skepticism towards the scientific consensus that human activity has caused climate change, she fails to mention their actual arguments. In other words, rather than demonstrating that evangelicals are uncritically swallowing leftist talking points, Megan never examines the actual arguments put forth by each side. I suppose she might say “well I’m not a scientist!”, but then she is making the claim that the scientific consensus is dubious or shaky (often only pointing to funding sources or associations rather than examining actual arguments). And so it would have been more helpful to show how creation-care and its endeavors are either theologically premised on falsities (rather than vaguely suggesting that creation-care advocates are saying environmentalism is part of the gospel, when most are saying it is an implication of the gospel of the kingdom—insofar as the good news of atonement restores us as image-bearing human beings to steward God’s good world), or is scientifically suspect. She cannot hide behind the fact that she is not a scientist.

But then, given the lack of actual structured argumentation in this book, it’s clear that Megan Basham is no logician either.