How much more do you understand that doctrine today?

so much more you know when when you you understand sovereignty you tend to think of it as a positive thing and it is a positive thing of course but when you think of god works all things for good you imagine just good things happening to you and then suddenly cancer happens and you know intellectually you would have always said that god works all things for good including my cancer but it's a very different thing to experience it and still believe it when you're going through it right and that's been the thing that i have worked and labored and wrestled with the Holy Spirit the most on is that I am, as my surgical oncologist would say, I'm a high anxiety patient.

And he kind of jokes about it.

You're a high anxiety patient.

And I am.

And I think that there are probably differences in how men and women even experience a diagnosis in this.

And that's part of what I've seen with them.

Would you please take the comfort that you have received and give that comfort to them?

Can you talk a little bit about what the scope of what your book found?

Yeah, I mean, really, when we talk about the left-wing march through the institutions, and in many cases, the Marxist march through the institutions, it makes sense that after they had captured Hollywood, because it's hard to remember, right? There was once a time that there were a lot of, you know, actually conservative studio heads.

And Ronald Reagan, and he was a Democrat at the time, but he was a very, you know, blue dog conservative Democrat who moved.

And so you had people like that in the golden age of Hollywood.

And over time, it became more and more left.

as they took control of that institution, took control of academia.

And then you have the church.

And it was like, what is going on here? We missed something bigger going on in culture.

That's the only approach you can take as a consumer.

Exactly.

And because they couldn't deny the thesis and they couldn't deny the clear, broad truth of these claims, what they did was they kind of would pour through my footnotes to find some small error.

And it would be something that didn't in any way undermine the claim that I made, the argument that I made, or the overall thesis of the book.

But it would be something like...

You know, I cited the wrong page or, you know, on one chapter, I said someone went to the wrong college.

They went to a different college.

Or is it still where we're at?

Mm

... have we made these assumptions based on Christianese terms that are not actually scriptural terms? And so, you know, that was so much of what I wanted to examine.

And then what was interesting is when you quoted people directly, um, and some of them, you know, were leaders that I benefited from in other ways, but if you take someone like the late Tim Keller, who, you know, had some good teaching, but also, you know, when he wrote for, say, um, The New Yorker that, uh, evangelical witness was being destroyed because we voted for Trump, that was a very political statement.

And it was so strange to me to have this evangelical establishment that was saying the people who are saying that, um, making the most moral choice that they can with their vote, meaning I'm going to make the choice that protects babies, that protects, you know, gender-confused children, that this was destroying our witness.

I went, that is a level, to me, of being politicized, not the people who are making a pragmatic but also faithful decision with their vote to say, "I'm going to do the best that I can as a, a, a representative," because we are.

We're in charge of the government in the United States, so as a, as a, a very small representative of this government, I am going to do the best that I can with my vote.

And, and I was really bothered by seeing all of this guilt and shame heaped on ordinary Christians in the pews-

Yeah.

I

know.

Well, I'm Megan Basham and I am a cultural reporter for the Daily Wire.

And, um, author of Shepherds for Sale, which made me a little bit notorious.

And that is not fiction, but I am working on a novel now.

So I'm trying to sort of enter the ranks with Stephen, though this is my first time, so it's taking me a while, but should be out next year.

So this will be my foray into fiction.

Lewis liked marriage even before he was married.

So what do you think?

Yeah.

Um, you know, it is a really complex topic, but when you start to listen to some of the rhetoric we're hearing, uh, it's very similar to the debates that were had over nuclear alarmism and also over climate change alarmism.

So you have a camp that is saying, uh, "This is an existential crisis, and therefore we need the government to step in and to create sort of an oversight board that will regulate and oversee everything that's happening in this industry." And then you have other people, like President Trump, uh, like, uh, the man that he's appointed to sort of be his point person on this, David Sacks.

A lot of people are familiar with him from the All-In Pod.

You know, he's a well-known venture capitalist in the tech world.

And they are arguing that, yes, this, that there's a free market solution to this.

Precisely

... self-identified libertarians, and we see it a lot with self-identified Christian leaders.

Yeah.

A- and you know, so much of, um, the debate that we had seen over the last 48 hours over the infamous Beau French tweet, like to me it was kind of the pattern that we have seen s- from so much of the establishment, both the political establishment on the right and also the evangelical establishment, because so often they walk arm in arm.

And it's that, you know, we can debate something like that post, like was that the most effective way to communicate frustrations about the fact that the demographics in Texas are changing so rapidly? Like you can say, okay, taking this particular photo from a football game maybe wasn't the best choice, because we don't know what the circumstances were, uh, to bring those particular students into that particular part of the stadium.

Maybe they're part of a South Asian club at the, on the campus or something, so who knows? But the immediate rush to condemn from John Cornyn and these other candidates was exactly what you see, and by the way, from a lot of evangelical leaders too.

I think I saw, um, Daniel Darling of the Southern Baptist Convention was one of those who kind of weighed in and said, you know, "This is despicable." And none of them wanted to grapple with what is the sentiment behind this? What is, you know, what are the frustrations that are being projected onto this picture? And so instead you got this virtue signaling, rather than a serious discussion of okay, what's motivating that sentiment? And what's motivating it is, you know, and we can look at the demographics of Texas and look at some of these school districts and say, okay, why has, um, the Coppell School District gone from 18% Asian in 2006 to 57% Asian in 2026? Same thing with Frisco.

You know, it's gone from 16% Asian to 44% Asian.

... by this stuff? Why are they so susceptible of, to, to the sob stories, to pastors parroting this open borders garbage, p- uh, parroting all the stuff that allows this to happen? It gives them the moral license to do this.

... self-identified libertarians, and we see it a lot with self-identified Christian leaders.

Yeah.

A- and, you know, so much of, um, the debate that we had seen over the last 48 hours over the infamous Beau French tweet, like to me it was kind of the pattern that we have seen s- from so much of the establishment, both the political establishment on the right and also the evangelical establishment, because so often they walk arm in arm.

And it's that, you know, we can debate something like that post, like was that the most effective way to communicate frustrations about the fact that the demographics in Texas are changing so rapidly.

Like, you can say, "Okay, taking this particular photo from a football game maybe wasn't the best choice," because we don't know what the circumstances were, uh, to bring those particular students into that particular part of the stadium.

Maybe they're part of a South Asian club at the, on the campus or something, so who knows? But the immediate rush to condemn from John Cornyn and these other candidates was exactly what you see, and by the way, from a lot of evangelical leaders too.

I think I saw, um, Daniel Darling of the Southern Baptist Convention was one of those who kind of weighed in and said, you know, "This is despicable." And none of them wanted to grapple with what is the sentiment behind this? What is, you know, what are the frustrations that are being projected onto this picture? And so instead you got this virtue signaling, rather than a serious discussion of, okay, what's motivating that sentiment? And what's motivating it is, you know, and we can look at the demographics of Texas and look at some of these school districts and say, "Okay, why has, um, the Coppell School District gone from 18% Asian in 2006 to 57% Asian in 2026?" Same thing with Frisco.

My question for you, though, Megan, is why is the church so susceptible to being hoodwinked by this stuff? Why are they so susceptible of, to, to the sob stories, to pastors parroting this open borders garbage, p- uh, parroting all the stuff that allows this to happen? It gives them the moral license to do this.

Wow.

Um, and I remember at the time asking them, "Should I...

I'm, I'm getting these infusions in a cancer center.

We don't, we really can't figure out why I'm so anemic.

Do I need to be concerned that there's some sort of cancer, um, relation here?" And they very strongly, without testing me, without doing anything, told me, "No.

No, you're too...

You, you, you'd be too young for that.

Did you ever feel guilty that your illness had in some ways taken over your husband's life, too? How did you process that?

And it- when it starts, you know, coming in- into a collision course with our institutions, we're gonna take note, maybe more than we should, but maybe more than we did 10 years ago.

Yeah.

I, I think, you know, what we can do is look at what's happening in Europe and the UK in particular.

Uh, I just got back from the UK, and you do see, you know, par- parts of London where the street signs are now written in Arabic, where old, historic, you know, London buildings have been taken over by Islamic centers and mosques.

So you're not gonna be able to ignore the fact that we now have fair warning about where this goes, and I think that's why you're suddenly seeing alarm bells where maybe people wouldn't have noticed so much before because we- we're getting a little glimpse of our future in what's happening over in Europe.

And, you know, one of the things you noted there about the Girl Scouts is that they said, "Well, we, we have always served all faiths." Well, [laughs] here's the, the little contextual piece they don't offer, which is that the Girl Scouts were established in an assumed Christian environment.

So Juliette Gordon Low, who established the Girl Scouts, was a very, very strong Christian, and part of the reason that she insisted that one of the, um, key oaths and commitments that a Girl Scout makes is service to God and country.

What did you see happening from the left and the right in the immediate aftermath of Dolly Parton, and why does it matter to you if both sides are claiming her or if one side's claiming her?

And when it starts coming into a collision course with our institutions, we're going to take note, maybe more than we did 10 years ago.

Yeah, I think what we can do is look at what's happening in Europe and the UK in particular.

I just got back from the UK, and you do see parts of London where the street signs are now written in Arabic, where old historic London buildings have been taken over by Islamic centers and mosques.

So you're not going to be able to ignore the fact that we now have fair warning about... about where this goes.

And I think that's why you're suddenly seeing alarm bells where maybe people wouldn't have noticed so much before because we're getting a little glimpse of our future and what's happening over in Europe.

And one of the things you noted there about the Girl Scouts is that they said, well, we have always served all faiths.

Here's the little contextual piece they don't offer, which is that the Girl Scouts were established in an assumed Christian environment.

What did you see happening from the left and the right in the immediate aftermath of Dolly Parton, and why does it matter to you if both sides are claiming her or if one side's claiming her?

Tell us about it.

Yes.

And, you know, it ended up, I thought, you know, I got kind of angry about some stuff I saw online.

I expected it to be kind of short.

And, you know, at this point, I'm well over a thousand words in and I still have a few things to say.

But largely what we're seeing is, you know, for anyone who was a fan of Dolly, as I am and as I was, She is someone who deliberately chose to take a nonpartisan, nonpolitical stance in the public sphere.

She did this stridently.

When she was living, what did she say to that?

But to start us off, why is, uh, Mark Ruffalo, the actor, now in the middle of all this?

Yeah, so Ruffalo has been an outspoken critic of Paramount's attempt to buy, uh, Warner Brothers, and that's still pending quite a number of legal challenges.

But he's also been a well-known opponent of Israel, and then on Friday in an Instagram story, he essentially merged these two issues.

So David Ellison's father is Larry Ellison, founder of the tech giant Oracle.

Ruffalo posted a 2024, uh, interview panel that included the former CEO of Oracle, Safra Catz, and in that clip, she discussed the assistance that Oracle offered to Israel in the wake of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks.

And we need to remember the context of that was that 1,100 civilians were killed and, uh, more than 200 taken hostage and tortured.

So this is what she said at that panel

So have we seen Ruffalo back down at all?

that

was astonishing to me because I went, okay, so now what you have done is you have added a man-made law.

And what do we call that? That is legalism.

And what is it that Jesus called out the Pharisees for? That very kind of legalism, adding man-made laws to God's word.

And that is what they're doing when they say, in order to be faithful Christians, we have to take up this issue of climate change.

So that's one.

The other issues that I see when we talk about this is that there have been studies showing that there is... true anxiety and panic from the younger generation about this issue.

But it was really

What do you make when you read these details?

I mean, what I get from this, Cabot, is that this is essentially what we should have expected when we opened the Pandora's box over Burgerfell.

Because what that did was it didn't just redefine what a marriage is, it redefined what a family is.

Because, of course, the main reason that the state has had to take an interest in regulating marriage at all is so that we can acknowledge the importance of that nuclear family unit in raising the next generation of citizens.

So that's why that became such a live and important debate.

So there was never a point at which we were going to be able to say, okay, we're going to sanction gay marriage, and that was necessarily going to lead to we now have to sanction... gay couples, obtaining children and forming these families through non-natural means.

And that I think is where we always have to come back to that natural law question.

First, what exactly have they been targeting for removal?

If you would, walk us through the kind of convoluted history of the Southern Baptist Convention on the subject of the ordination of women.

Yes, and convoluted would be the right word.

So when the battle over what's been known now as the conservative resurgence started from really the late 1970s to the early 2000s, that was one of the key issues that was a point of debate.

you had a progressive wing that increasingly wanted to allow women pastors in the sbc and there's been a a little bit of a misunderstanding from usually the broader public who may not be familiar with the inner workings of the southern baptist convention but that at one point women pastors were allowed.

Now, they weren't ever technically allowed.

It was just something that started to develop as a progressive wing of the SBC became more aggressive in asserting themselves.

And there were other issues in that era too, like biblical inerrancy was one of the key points.

Who is this?

So could you tell us a little bit about what you were doing on that? And for those who aren't familiar with the book, maybe introduce them to the themes.

Yes, and I will say that I knew of you, Glenn, long before you knew of me, because I remember going to a couple of conferences, accompanying my dad and listening to you speak.

He is a Wilberforce fellow.

So we got the opportunity to hear from you quite a bit, and he was giving me Glenn Sunshine books long ago, when I was at World.

Yes.

So, yeah, so I was at World Magazine.

You know, I probably started writing for them around 2007, had been out of college a few years and had been freelance writing.

And I feel like the pressure just to ignore those fundamental realities, it's everywhere.

So could you tell us a little bit about what you were doing on that? And for those who aren't familiar with the book, maybe introduce them to the themes.

Yes.

And I will say that I knew of you, Glenn, long before you knew of me.

Because I remember going to a couple of conferences, accompanying my dad and listening to you speak.

He is a Wilberforce fellow.

So we got the opportunity to hear from you quite a bit.

And he was giving me Glenn Sunshine books long ago, when I was at World.

And I feel like the pressure just to ignore those fundamental realities, it's everywhere.

So what is the conference about?

Yeah, so the conference that I'm at is, so the overall company is Answers in Genesis.

So they put on various conferences throughout the year, and one of them is their women's conference.

So I am at that, and I'm speaking on the subject of this year's topic, which is being faithful on matters of sex and sexuality.

And in particular, with the talk that I gave, focused on, and you and I have talked about this before, the efforts from outside groups, from outside secular groups to try to move evangelicals in particular, but I mean, they're certainly targeting all denominations and all faiths, but to come in and move them on what the Bible says about marriage and sex and gender.

And so as I covered in my talk, there are groups like the Arcus Foundation, which was started by a man named John Stryker, who inherited a $100 billion surgical supply company.

And he has used some of that money to try to move evangelicals, Christians, but also Muslims, Jews.

And I guess what I'm wondering is how alert are the churches now, now that you wrote this book, now that they're having conferences like this, how alert are they to this happening?

what about that hymn, What God Ordains is Always Good, changed things for you?

Well, I think the first thing it did was that it reminded me that God did ordain this, that it wasn't a surprise to him.

Because when you get a diagnosis like cancer, you start looking back at, well, what did we miss? And in my case, there was actually a lot that doctors missed.

I had been pressing for months about feeling like there was something wrong with me.

You know, I had actually in March, 2024, gone to the emergency room and told them, I am having these digestive problems.

I was having an attack of bowel cramps when I went to the emergency room that I had never experienced pain like that before outside of maybe childbirth.

And so when we got there, I asked them specifically, could this be cancer related? Because I had had that in my family.

Learn more and register at issuesetc.org or by giving us a call 618-223-8385. welcome back to issues etc i'm todd wilkin we're talking with megan basham of the daily wire about a christian facing a cancer diagnosis megan you say that trusting in god's love and providence does not remove fear or grief what do you mean

So, so what is the, the conference about?

Yeah, so the conference that I'm at is, um...

So the, you know, the overall company is Answers in Genesis.

So they put on various conferences throughout the year, and one of them is their women's conference.

So I am at that, and I'm speaking, um, on the subject of this year's topic, which is being faithful on matters of sex and sexuality.

And in particular, w- the talk that I gave focused on, and you and I have talked about this before, the efforts from outside groups, from outside secular groups, to try to move evangelicals in particular, but, I mean, they're certainly targeting all denominations and all faiths, but to come in and move them on, um, what the Bible says about marriage and sex and gender.

And so as I covered in my talk, there are groups like the Ar- Archos Foundation, which, um, was started by a man named John Stryker who inherited a $100 billion surgical supply company, and he has used some of that money-To try to move, um, evangelicals, Christians, but also Muslims, Jews, I mean, really any religious faith that is standing in the way of total domination of all of the predilections represented in that pride flag.

[laughs] Okay, okay.

Yeah.

She has three kids, yeah.

This is not somebody who, like, immediately was like, now embrace me as a Christian influencer.

I mean, she's, she's shown repentance, and she's shown fruit in keeping with repentance, so I'm like, this is not that kind of story.

And I understand the resentment of young guys going, "Okay, so the second you say, 'I'm a, a Christian now,' even though five minutes ago I was on OnlyFans, I'm gonna keep all the money, and in fact I'm going to continue to make money now on my reform story." I get the suspicion of that.

I get the cynicism.

That's not this woman.

[laughs]

Yeah

... that God decreed that women are primar- primarily focused on, on raising and nurturing children, because He gave us those hearts that feel for people.

We do tend to prioritize people's emotions and people's feelings over the rules and over questions of justice.

And that is why I think you see so many of these, for example, the protesters interfering with ICE, they tend to be women because they have been successfully convinced that what they're doing is, um, initiating a protective instinct against these, you know, innocent, maligned, vulnerable immigrants.

Now, we know that's not true, but that's the picture that they've accepted, and I think that's why they are out on the streets, and instead of at home mothering their family, they're trying to mother illegal immigrants.

I think that's what we're seeing.

And, um, yeah, it is a problem that pastors won't talk about this fact, and I think we can look at a couple of things in the news just this week.

Are they, are they, are they one?

Why, Megan, is it that you think you're seeing this riled up so much on the left?

Yeah, I mean, a big part of it is the famous meme, right? They don't have much understanding of Christianity, but they want to tell us how to apply a proof texted verse that they just pulled out of context entirely.

So when Christ is giving that command, he is giving it to individuals to love the person right in front of you.

And he says, begin with the house of the Lord.

So we are, of course, to have those ordered loves.

And it is to begin with our immediate family.

And then with those of the house of God, our Christian neighbors.

And James Tariq is a great example.

Can you walk us through what he said and how it's affecting things in the state?

Yeah, Georgia, so this was really the first time that Homan stepped up to the podium since he was first sent to Minnesota to, let's say, clean up a little bit of a mess there, and he really made it clear that his aims here are twofold.

So first, he said that he wants to be absolutely crystal clear that law and order are going to be restored, and he pledged to remain on the ground until, quote, "The problem is gone." So presumably referring to illegal immigration in that city.

So clearly putting Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on notice there that his insistence that Minneapolis is going to remain a sanctuary city is not going to stand as far as Homan is concerned.

And then Homan also made it clear that despite the bad press that has come from the deaths of anti-ICE activists Rene Good and Alex Predi, he's not going to be deterred from investigating those activist networks.

Homan also made it clear that while he doesn't feel that the strategy of federal authorities has been perfect, and he does believe that there are improvements needed on the ground, he's putting the blame for the bloodshed at the feet of the agitators.

Why do you think she's announcing now with all of this going on?

Yeah, I mean, we know that she's probably been planning this for a while.