September 17, 2025 • 22 mins
Daily Wire Culture reporter and author Megan Basham joins Karol to reflect on her path into journalism, her experiences within the evangelical community, and how wokeness has reshaped church culture. She unpacks the changing landscape of evangelical leadership, stresses the central role of marriage and family, and voices her concerns for future generations. With a call for greater accountability and a return to enduring values, Basham highlights what’s at stake for faith and culture today. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Markowitch Show on iHeart Review.
My guest today is Megan Basham, Daily Wire culture reporter
and best selling author of Shepherds for Sale.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So nice to have you on, Megan.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Thanks for having me, Carol, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I don't feel like we've ever met, because I now
that I see you face to face, I'm pretty sure
we haven't. But I've been a fan of your work
for a very long time and I think you're just
a fantastic writer and thinker, and I'm really glad to
have you on.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
It's weird, Like the thing that's weird about like the
online social media world is I do feel like I know.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, well, I know we're avatar really well.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Exactly, yes, And you've been very open about your fight
with correctoral cancer.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
How are you doing now.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, doing good.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
So I had surgery a little about a month and
a half ago and we got clean margins, which if
you know anything about cancer, that's a very good thing.
And so just had my first scan and no evidence
of disease as right now, So we're really happy about that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So glad to hear that. I've been praying for you
I'm really thrilled to hear that. So tell me about yourself.
How did you get into this thing of ours that
we do, this media world.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
You know, it was kind of an accident.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
I was at Arizona State University during the years that
it really earned its reputation as a party school, and
I did a lot of contributing to that, and I
kind of I was an English lit major. I didn't
really know what I wanted to do with that, but
I started working on my student newspaper. Enjoyed that, enjoyed
hanging out with, you know, the student reporters. And so
(01:37):
when I graduated, I my husband and I got married
and he was a broadcast journalist, which, if you know
anything about that world, you move a lot. So you
start in small markets and you move up, and so
you know, it wasn't really conducive to my holding down
a full time job because you know, I'm moving to
places like.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
El Paso and Tucson with him.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So I started freelance writing, you know, and I was
a conservative for National Review and Weekly Standard and places
like that Wall Street Journal, and then I just kind
of fell into evangelical magazine writing because you know, I'm
an evangelical and it made sense. And I met some
friends on some junkets who were working for World Magazine,
(02:17):
which is a pretty well known magazine in the evangelical world,
and they just gave me a perfect little niche to
just hide away in For years. I could work part time,
I could write as much as I wanted or pull
back when I needed, and so as I was having kids,
for you know, ten to fifteen years, I was just
very comfortably writing at World Magazine in the evangelical space.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And that's how Shepherd's for Sale came about.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
It did yes.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Then, you know, write about twenty nineteen when the Woke
Wars started, they very much came into the evangelical world too.
So I experienced it in my personal life at our
church and some of these big ministries that you know,
I worked in was familiar with and did it work.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
A little bit.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
And it's actually how I ended up going to the
Daily Wire because it was really hard to write about
from the inside because there's so much associational networking and
nobody wants to burn someone that they know or be
critical of someone that they know, and it felt like
I couldn't say what I needed to say in house.
So I happened to do an interview with Andrew Claven
(03:21):
at the Daily Wire.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That's so awesome. He's been on a show and.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I love him and he just painted this picture, and
I kind of on a whim, I was like, Hey,
you guys think you have any room.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
For me over there?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
And like the next day I knew they were offering
me a job, and so I'm like, you know what,
I'm going to go And probably my only stipulation, because
you know, they really wanted me to write about culture
and entertainment, which I wanted to do, but I was
my stipulation was can I also write some church articles?
I would like to write about what's going on in
the church. And they were like, yeah, okay, sure, And
that's how it started.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
So what do you trace down in the book? What's
the path you take?
Speaker 4 (03:56):
So you know, for those who aren't super familiar with
the evangelical subculture, it's obviously really important to American politics.
We represent roughly twenty five to thirty percent of the
American electorate. The Atlantic has rightly called evangelicals America's most
powerful voting block, but because they tend not to be
(04:17):
in the elite intellectual spaces. A lot of times people
don't think about them. I started writing about it because
as I was noticing this wokeness come in. And by
that I mean things like in my denomination, which is
the Southern Baptist Convention, it's the largest Protestant denomination in
the US, second denomination only to Catholics.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I saw things like suddenly they were promoting a resolution.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And that kind of sets the tone.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
We have this big meeting every year, resolutions are brought
up and promoted and voted on. And a resolution was
brought up to adopt critical race theory as a helpful
analytical tool.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I remember this, Yeah, and that was kind.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
That was in twenty nineteen, and at that point I
was still at World and that was when I really
noticed it and what's going on? And you saw it
trickle down in small ways to I mean, what you
have to understand is that these seminaries in the Southern
Baptist Convention educate a plurality of Protestant pastors. So even
if you're Presbyterian or Anglican or something else, your pastor
(05:18):
may be getting educated in these seminaries. So these things
do set the tone for you know, culturally what they're adopting,
and so these are the things I was seeing. I mean,
we had our president of the Southern Baptist Convention at
that time institute racial hiring quotas, basically saying, I want
to ensure that sixty percent of the people that I
appoint to committees or hire are women or minorities. So
(05:41):
all the things you saw happening in the culture were
happening in the evangelical subculture, which at least doctrinally is
supposed to be conservative, right right, So you know, I
was going, what's happening here? And as I started reporting
it out, then COVID happened.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
And I wrote an article on how all.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Of these influential evangelical platforms and personalities were promoting lockdowns,
church closures, masks, even vaccines, like to the point where
it was, you know, there was a push to say
love your neighbor, get the shot. You didn't get the shot,
you didn't love your neighbor, like Jess says. And so
when I did that story, it went very viral, and
(06:21):
at that point a publisher approached me and said, hey,
have you thought about doing a book on some of
these things you're writing about and that gave me the
opportunity for like a year to just dig deep. And
then you know, you come to find out, oh, there's
a reason that some of these big ministries are doing
things like promoting open borders policies when it comes to immigration,
and it's because they're in bed with groups that are
(06:43):
funded by George Soros or the Clinton Foundation or the
Gates Foundation. So you started to find out there's actually
all this big money coming in from the secular left
and it's being used to move that all important evangelical
voting block.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Absolutely, And you know, it's very reminiscent of you know,
when I hear people in red states or red areas
say like, oh, the teachers in our community are not
going to be crazy leftists, And I'm like, they all
get taught at the same teachers college, you know, they're
all getting the same kind of curriculum and indoctrination. So
I don't know, I don't think you should feel particularly safe,
(07:19):
But do you feel like there's been a shift in
the right direction in the evangelical world in the last
few years, Like, I mean, there's definitely been a vibe
shift culturally right. Has it kind of seeped into the
evangelical world as well.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
But what's funny about it is what you're hearing now
is this conversation about the rehab tour.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
So you have a lot of guys who push this stuff.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
For example, the former president of the SBC Convention was
one of the guys, like I said, who was promoting
the CRT, promoting the racial hiring quotas, and it was
like they kind of went silent for a while, and
now they're speaking again from a much more conservative viewpoint,
and it's kind of the pretend that didn't happen. And
you're seeing friends who maybe didn't go as far as
(08:04):
they did or weren't out as front as they were
in those years, but they're kind of helping them to go, oh,
look at this great material that JD. Greer or someone
you know is promoting now, and there's an internal discussion
amongst us going. So these are guys who are trying
to reassert the status quo of saying, you know, we're
the leadership without being held to any accountability for what
(08:26):
they promoted during that time by sort of just burying
it and pretending like that didn't happen. So it's there's
definitely been a vibe shift, but not in the sense
that anyone's coming out and saying.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Hey, I own that I screwed up there. We shouldn't
have done that.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
It's more like, let's just have amnesia and pretend that,
you know, those COVID years never happened.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Is this a battle that's being kind of pushed down
the road or is this going to be a fight internally?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, I think it's an ongoing fight.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
So, I mean, it feels like the peak of the
fight was maybe last year, but the ongoing debate about.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It hasn't stopped.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
And in a certain extent, you know, I have sort
of counseled friends like, look, when you see some of
these guys who are known as weather vanes politically, so
even though they're pastors, they may bend with the winds
of the culture, and suddenly they're striking a much more
conservative tone. You kind of have to take that as
a win, like, Okay, yes, we notched a win here
that we have moved the overton in a different direction.
(09:23):
But at the same time, understandably, there's a lot of
lack of trust of saying, okay, but are we going
to leave these people in these positions of leadership that
really do matter, that really are influential in some of
these large institutions. So that's kind of the debate that's
going on now, is what is accountability going to look
like and are we going to have any Do.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You feel optimism? Do you think it's going to turn around?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
You know, I do in the sense that I don't
think those institutions are going to change. So if you
look at like large publishing platforms like something called the
Gospel Coalition, which were a lot of pastors in the
previous era really relied on it as a place to
exchange ideas to you know, dive into thinking that maybe
(10:06):
they were going to use in their own teaching. Or
Christianity today, which you know is still kind of known
as the flagship magazine of evangelicalism.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It was founded by Billy Graham.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I think that there's been a total lack of trust
now in those institutions. I don't think those institutions are
going to change. They've kind of gone that way. I
think they're going to continue to go that way. But
I think you have a new generation that just kind
of sees them as irrelevant. So I mean, it's interesting
to see how the same debates that we're having on
a national political level are playing themselves out in this
(10:36):
little subculture. Because aren't we doing this politically as well?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Going right? Are we going to have any accountability?
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Is any?
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Why not? So that's why I go, I don't really
think that we will.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
But I do think that the positive is that I
think a lot of people no longer put their trust
in those institutions, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, that's I guess, as hopeful as we can be
about it. We're recording this I record these a few
weeks in advance, but we're recording this week that the
New York Times ever so casually dropped that crime rates
kind of developed from the COVID lockdowns and maybe the
anti social stuff that we pushed during COVID wasn't actually harmless.
It's like, yeah, yeah, it wasn't okay here.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
But there's no apology or anything.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
There's no like New York Times being like, and it.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Was our fault. We are the ones who actually pushed that.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
They're like, yeah, somebody pushed this anti social stuff. I
don't know how it happened. So I'm not waiting for
an apology. But as somebody, you know, I'm Jewish, and
in the Jewish world, they two parts of the Jewish
world of the three have like veered very, very heavily.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
To the left.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I hope that the Evangelicals don't follow us off of,
you know, off that cliff, because I've always had a
lot of hope in evangelicals, you know, like they were
always kind of the voice of sanity for conservatives in America,
and they were doing things their way, and they didn't
care about popular opinion, and they didn't care about being
liked by the New York Times. And if you guys
(11:59):
are heading in a bad, bad place, like, what does
that mean for.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
The rest of us?
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Yeah, And I don't think that you will see that.
I mean, I think, you know, there was a moment
where there was maybe this sort of grasping at elite
respectability at the top of these institutions. But I think
that's why they have lost so much of their credibility,
because they went along with the New York Times and
all of these other second organizations that were happy to
you know, light a bonfire to their credibility.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
So, you know, I really don't see that.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
In fact, I think part of the reason my book
became a bestseller because I'll be honest. When I was
working on it, we thought it would gain an audience, right.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
We thought it was kind of a niche topic.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
And when it turned out to have wider interest, I
think it was because it wasn't like I was telling
people something that they didn't know.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
It wasn't like they went.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Wait, what you're saying that our leaders are compromised and
aren't representing our views?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It was more like I was just.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Coming along and telling them, here's what's been going on
in the background of this thing that you already noticed.
And so you know, for that reason, I think you
see the rank and five all just choosing new leaders,
and I mean, look, in.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Some ways it's good.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
It's also going in kind of a weird, fractious direction
right now, and I don't know how it's going to
play out. Like you've got a lot of little tribal
skirmishes happening right now. I don't know if you saw,
like on CNN they're interviewing, you know, Doug Wilson, who's
known as the Christian nationalist pastor, and will people get
behind that or will they get behind you know this
(13:27):
more normy, mainstream vision of maybe twenty years ago or
what does this look like? So, I mean, that's a
debate that's playing out. But what's interesting is to see
that these guys who were not a part of that
elite circle before are suddenly gaining a following in a
way that they didn't, right, And you know, I don't
(13:48):
know what the endgame of that is, but I'm entertained
sitting back and watching it.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well, I'm rooting for you guys. More coming up with
Megan Basham. But first, it was nearly two years ago
the terrorists murdered more than twelve hundred innocent Israelis and
took two hundred and fifty hostages. Today, it seems as
if the cries of the dead and dying have been
drowned out by shouts of Antisemitic hatred, and the most
(14:13):
brutal attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust has been forgotten.
Yet as the world looks away, a light shines in
the darkness. It's a movement of love and support for
the people of Israel called Flags of Fellowship, and it's
organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and
on October fifth, just a few weeks away, millions across
America will prayer fully plant an Israeli flag and honor
(14:36):
and solidarity with the victims of October seventh, twenty twenty
three and their grieving families. And now you can be
a part of this movement too. To get more information
on how you can join the Flags of Fellowship movement,
visit Fellowship online at IFCJ dot org. That's IFCJ dot org.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What do you worry about?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
You know what's funny?
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Okay, So I'm a Christian, I'm a person of prayer,
and one of the number one things in my prayer journal,
like every night, is I worry about who my girls.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I have two daughters. I worry about who they're going
to marry.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Because I because I cover the culture beat, I spend
a lot of time on this dysfunction between young men
and young women and how they're not finding each other.
And you know, you and I spend a lot of
time on X and it's just like yes, and I
used to feel like back in the day, you know,
the gender wars were kind of almost a cute, flirtatious
(15:34):
thing that we all did. And now it feels like
there's something very real and angry underneath it from both sides.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And so I worry that.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
I'm like, are our young men even going to approach
them to pursue them for you know, relationships and marriage,
because you know, the other thing I know is the
research that I've done on a lot of these marriage
and family topics is this is so important to women's
happy that if they don't have husbands and children, whatever
(16:04):
they do in their professional lives, they're not going to
achieve that same level of happiness most likely that they
would have if they had had those things. So I
mean that's probably what I worry. I mean, I literally
pray God just bring them good husbands someday.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Absolutely yeah, I mean I'm absolutely concerned about that as well.
And I think the message to women in a lot
of mainstream ways is like you no longer need a spouse,
you no longer need a partner, and I think that's
just so corrosive. And this is where again religion comes
into play. Right, if you have stronger, tighter religious bounds,
(16:38):
then you're kind of all heading in the same direction
where you understand what kind of spouse you're supposed to
be and what kind of marriage you're supposed to have,
and that you are supposed to get married, and that
you know, don't listen to the liberal media saying that
it's so amazing to be single and that's really what
you want to do.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
But if you don't have that strong religion, it all.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Kinds of falls apart, and it's filled in by these
other sources that are not reliable and not trustworthy, you know.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
And I've wondered if and I don't know if this
is happening in the Jewish subculture, but I can tell
you in the Christian subculture. We're talking so much about
how young people are coming back to church and they
suddenly have an interest in religion that they didn't have before.
And I have wondered how much of that is being
driven by this sense that, you know, the secular professional
(17:25):
world isn't offering these deeper things of home and family,
and the only way you're finding other people who want
that in the same way you do is to come
back to church, come back to synagogue.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, Yeah, it's different in the Jewish world, but I mean,
I would say that marriage was always why people turn
to religion, not not why, but that played a big role.
But it is interesting because I don't think that there
are a lot of other ways for people who are
marriage minded young people who are marriage minded.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
To meet each other. So I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I you know, when I talk about what I want
my kids to be or what I want them to do,
I'm always like, I want them to get married.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
And have children.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Like career or whatever is a distance second to that.
And I get surprised takes from people. People are like,
you know, don't you want them to succeed? Don't you
care about what they do? You know, professionally, I do,
but not even in the same realm as I care
about them getting married and having kids.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Yeah, And I I mean, and I feel like I'm
the we're the opposite is that most people think and
the family and marriage stuff will work itself out.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
It's the career you got to focus on. I'm like, actually,
I don't think that's true at all.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
And you got to focus on the family and marriage
and the professional stuff. You'll figure out what you're good at,
you'll take things in college, you'll work that out totally.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, And it gets much easier to do that when
you have a stable situation.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
You know, I talk about it a lot on this show.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
But married men, I've made more money than all other men,
you know, for years and years, and now married women
make more money than single women. It's because you have
this comfort and and security that you can take chances.
You could take professional risks and you don't have to
do you know, the thing you went to college for.
You can take chances because somebody is rooting for you
(19:09):
and somebody's able to kind of support you should it
not work out.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
No, I think that's absolutely true. And I was just
listening to like an episode of the All In Pod,
I think, and you know, they were talking about kind
of the economics of it and home buying and how
part of the reason that we're seeing this new generation
that one they are being priced out of the housing market,
but also if you don't have those two incomes combined,
it may feel a lot harder to buy a home.
So they're not getting in, and as the home prices
(19:35):
are going up, it's too late for them to get in,
and they're single and they can't afford it, and that's
part of the bitterness that's growing. And you know, that's
part of what we have to address. And you can't
really extricate the marriage and family component out of that.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
It almost feels like tough love saying that to people,
you know, you have to pair up in order for
your life's economics to work.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
But it's not.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's true and it's real, and that's so we should
tell people.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
So I know, I know, and sometimes you know, they
get mad at you for saying it, But like, I
want the best things for you. That's why I'm saying, right,
it's because I want the best for you that I
think that you should take the most obvious, best path
and take.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It from there.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Absolutely, What advice.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Would you give your sixteen year old self? What would
Megan of sixteen years old need to know?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
I would tell her, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I would tell her to take her ambitions and skills seriously.
I think when I was that age, and I think
I probably all the way up until like practically thirty,
I just kind of always felt like whatever I was
doing was not really that serious, or whatever I was
pursuing was just kind of a lark. And I think,
you know, it wasn't until probably my thirties that I
(20:47):
started to go, no, you know, this thing that I'm
interested in this is serious and I should take myself
and what I'm working on seriously.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And I don't know why I didn't, but I you know, you.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Sometimes like imposter syndrome.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I mean, I guess it is a little bit like
imposter syndrome, but more in the sense that I didn't
pursue it with the intensity that I wish I would
have some of these things that I wanted to write about,
because I think I felt sheepish, for example, writing about
marriage and family or church things, because these those didn't
feel like serious. They're not economics, it's not foreign policy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Which turns out to be like the biggest joke topics.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Ever, right, And so I think I kind of felt
like the things that I was interested in weren't that serious.
And now I, you know, with the hindsight of years,
I no, these are actually the most important things, and
I should have never been embarrassed that this is what
I'm interested in.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Actually, like telling your younger self, like, take yourself seriously
and what you're interested in matters. It's I haven't gotten
that answer before. It's a question I asked all my guests.
So I really enjoyed that. I've loved this conversation. I
think you're a beautiful writer, and I just I love
following you on X. I think you're really smart and
so much about what you do is just ex and
(22:00):
excellent work.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Leave us here with your best tip.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
For my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Same to you, Carol, thank you best tip on I'm
going to do the church lady thing because that's in
my bios.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
So I'm going to say, go to church. Start going.
If you're single.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
It will you know, you may find your person there,
and you'll certainly find someone who's hopefully more like minded
than swiping.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Left on some app. You're married, it'll strengthen your marriage.
So go to church.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
She is Megan Fasham. Check her out of The Daily Wire.
Buy her book Shepherd's for sale. Thank you so much
for coming on, Megan. Thanks for having me, Carol,
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Markowitch Show on iHeart Review.
My guest today is Megan Basham, Daily Wire culture reporter
and best selling author of Shepherds for Sale.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So nice to have you on, Megan.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Thanks for having me, Carol, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I don't feel like we've ever met, because I now
that I see you face to face, I'm pretty sure
we haven't. But I've been a fan of your work
for a very long time and I think you're just
a fantastic writer and thinker, and I'm really glad to
have you on.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
It's weird, Like the thing that's weird about like the
online social media world is I do feel like I know.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, well, I know we're avatar really well.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Exactly, yes, And you've been very open about your fight
with correctoral cancer.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
How are you doing now.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, doing good.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
So I had surgery a little about a month and
a half ago and we got clean margins, which if
you know anything about cancer, that's a very good thing.
And so just had my first scan and no evidence
of disease as right now, So we're really happy about that.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So glad to hear that. I've been praying for you
I'm really thrilled to hear that. So tell me about yourself.
How did you get into this thing of ours that
we do, this media world.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
You know, it was kind of an accident.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
I was at Arizona State University during the years that
it really earned its reputation as a party school, and
I did a lot of contributing to that, and I
kind of I was an English lit major. I didn't
really know what I wanted to do with that, but
I started working on my student newspaper. Enjoyed that, enjoyed
hanging out with, you know, the student reporters. And so
(01:37):
when I graduated, I my husband and I got married
and he was a broadcast journalist, which, if you know
anything about that world, you move a lot. So you
start in small markets and you move up, and so
you know, it wasn't really conducive to my holding down
a full time job because you know, I'm moving to
places like.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
El Paso and Tucson with him.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So I started freelance writing, you know, and I was
a conservative for National Review and Weekly Standard and places
like that Wall Street Journal, and then I just kind
of fell into evangelical magazine writing because you know, I'm
an evangelical and it made sense. And I met some
friends on some junkets who were working for World Magazine,
(02:17):
which is a pretty well known magazine in the evangelical world,
and they just gave me a perfect little niche to
just hide away in For years. I could work part time,
I could write as much as I wanted or pull
back when I needed, and so as I was having kids,
for you know, ten to fifteen years, I was just
very comfortably writing at World Magazine in the evangelical space.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And that's how Shepherd's for Sale came about.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
It did yes.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Then, you know, write about twenty nineteen when the Woke
Wars started, they very much came into the evangelical world too.
So I experienced it in my personal life at our
church and some of these big ministries that you know,
I worked in was familiar with and did it work.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
A little bit.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
And it's actually how I ended up going to the
Daily Wire because it was really hard to write about
from the inside because there's so much associational networking and
nobody wants to burn someone that they know or be
critical of someone that they know, and it felt like
I couldn't say what I needed to say in house.
So I happened to do an interview with Andrew Claven
(03:21):
at the Daily Wire.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That's so awesome. He's been on a show and.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I love him and he just painted this picture, and
I kind of on a whim, I was like, Hey,
you guys think you have any room.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
For me over there?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
And like the next day I knew they were offering
me a job, and so I'm like, you know what,
I'm going to go And probably my only stipulation, because
you know, they really wanted me to write about culture
and entertainment, which I wanted to do, but I was
my stipulation was can I also write some church articles?
I would like to write about what's going on in
the church. And they were like, yeah, okay, sure, And
that's how it started.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
So what do you trace down in the book? What's
the path you take?
Speaker 4 (03:56):
So you know, for those who aren't super familiar with
the evangelical subculture, it's obviously really important to American politics.
We represent roughly twenty five to thirty percent of the
American electorate. The Atlantic has rightly called evangelicals America's most
powerful voting block, but because they tend not to be
(04:17):
in the elite intellectual spaces. A lot of times people
don't think about them. I started writing about it because
as I was noticing this wokeness come in. And by
that I mean things like in my denomination, which is
the Southern Baptist Convention, it's the largest Protestant denomination in
the US, second denomination only to Catholics.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I saw things like suddenly they were promoting a resolution.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And that kind of sets the tone.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
We have this big meeting every year, resolutions are brought
up and promoted and voted on. And a resolution was
brought up to adopt critical race theory as a helpful
analytical tool.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I remember this, Yeah, and that was kind.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
That was in twenty nineteen, and at that point I
was still at World and that was when I really
noticed it and what's going on? And you saw it
trickle down in small ways to I mean, what you
have to understand is that these seminaries in the Southern
Baptist Convention educate a plurality of Protestant pastors. So even
if you're Presbyterian or Anglican or something else, your pastor
(05:18):
may be getting educated in these seminaries. So these things
do set the tone for you know, culturally what they're adopting,
and so these are the things I was seeing. I mean,
we had our president of the Southern Baptist Convention at
that time institute racial hiring quotas, basically saying, I want
to ensure that sixty percent of the people that I
appoint to committees or hire are women or minorities. So
(05:41):
all the things you saw happening in the culture were
happening in the evangelical subculture, which at least doctrinally is
supposed to be conservative, right right, So you know, I
was going, what's happening here? And as I started reporting
it out, then COVID happened.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
And I wrote an article on how all.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Of these influential evangelical platforms and personalities were promoting lockdowns,
church closures, masks, even vaccines, like to the point where
it was, you know, there was a push to say
love your neighbor, get the shot. You didn't get the shot,
you didn't love your neighbor, like Jess says. And so
when I did that story, it went very viral, and
(06:21):
at that point a publisher approached me and said, hey,
have you thought about doing a book on some of
these things you're writing about and that gave me the
opportunity for like a year to just dig deep. And
then you know, you come to find out, oh, there's
a reason that some of these big ministries are doing
things like promoting open borders policies when it comes to immigration,
and it's because they're in bed with groups that are
(06:43):
funded by George Soros or the Clinton Foundation or the
Gates Foundation. So you started to find out there's actually
all this big money coming in from the secular left
and it's being used to move that all important evangelical
voting block.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Absolutely, And you know, it's very reminiscent of you know,
when I hear people in red states or red areas
say like, oh, the teachers in our community are not
going to be crazy leftists, And I'm like, they all
get taught at the same teachers college, you know, they're
all getting the same kind of curriculum and indoctrination. So
I don't know, I don't think you should feel particularly safe,
(07:19):
But do you feel like there's been a shift in
the right direction in the evangelical world in the last
few years, Like, I mean, there's definitely been a vibe
shift culturally right. Has it kind of seeped into the
evangelical world as well.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
But what's funny about it is what you're hearing now
is this conversation about the rehab tour.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
So you have a lot of guys who push this stuff.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
For example, the former president of the SBC Convention was
one of the guys, like I said, who was promoting
the CRT, promoting the racial hiring quotas, and it was
like they kind of went silent for a while, and
now they're speaking again from a much more conservative viewpoint,
and it's kind of the pretend that didn't happen. And
you're seeing friends who maybe didn't go as far as
(08:04):
they did or weren't out as front as they were
in those years, but they're kind of helping them to go, oh,
look at this great material that JD. Greer or someone
you know is promoting now, and there's an internal discussion
amongst us going. So these are guys who are trying
to reassert the status quo of saying, you know, we're
the leadership without being held to any accountability for what
(08:26):
they promoted during that time by sort of just burying
it and pretending like that didn't happen. So it's there's
definitely been a vibe shift, but not in the sense
that anyone's coming out and saying.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Hey, I own that I screwed up there. We shouldn't
have done that.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
It's more like, let's just have amnesia and pretend that,
you know, those COVID years never happened.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Is this a battle that's being kind of pushed down
the road or is this going to be a fight internally?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, I think it's an ongoing fight.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
So, I mean, it feels like the peak of the
fight was maybe last year, but the ongoing debate about.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It hasn't stopped.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
And in a certain extent, you know, I have sort
of counseled friends like, look, when you see some of
these guys who are known as weather vanes politically, so
even though they're pastors, they may bend with the winds
of the culture, and suddenly they're striking a much more
conservative tone. You kind of have to take that as
a win, like, Okay, yes, we notched a win here
that we have moved the overton in a different direction.
(09:23):
But at the same time, understandably, there's a lot of
lack of trust of saying, okay, but are we going
to leave these people in these positions of leadership that
really do matter, that really are influential in some of
these large institutions. So that's kind of the debate that's
going on now, is what is accountability going to look
like and are we going to have any Do.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You feel optimism? Do you think it's going to turn around?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
You know, I do in the sense that I don't
think those institutions are going to change. So if you
look at like large publishing platforms like something called the
Gospel Coalition, which were a lot of pastors in the
previous era really relied on it as a place to
exchange ideas to you know, dive into thinking that maybe
(10:06):
they were going to use in their own teaching. Or
Christianity today, which you know is still kind of known
as the flagship magazine of evangelicalism.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It was founded by Billy Graham.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I think that there's been a total lack of trust
now in those institutions. I don't think those institutions are
going to change. They've kind of gone that way. I
think they're going to continue to go that way. But
I think you have a new generation that just kind
of sees them as irrelevant. So I mean, it's interesting
to see how the same debates that we're having on
a national political level are playing themselves out in this
(10:36):
little subculture. Because aren't we doing this politically as well?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Going right? Are we going to have any accountability?
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Is any?
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Why not? So that's why I go, I don't really
think that we will.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
But I do think that the positive is that I
think a lot of people no longer put their trust
in those institutions, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, that's I guess, as hopeful as we can be
about it. We're recording this I record these a few
weeks in advance, but we're recording this week that the
New York Times ever so casually dropped that crime rates
kind of developed from the COVID lockdowns and maybe the
anti social stuff that we pushed during COVID wasn't actually harmless.
It's like, yeah, yeah, it wasn't okay here.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
But there's no apology or anything.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
There's no like New York Times being like, and it.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Was our fault. We are the ones who actually pushed that.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
They're like, yeah, somebody pushed this anti social stuff. I
don't know how it happened. So I'm not waiting for
an apology. But as somebody, you know, I'm Jewish, and
in the Jewish world, they two parts of the Jewish
world of the three have like veered very, very heavily.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
To the left.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I hope that the Evangelicals don't follow us off of,
you know, off that cliff, because I've always had a
lot of hope in evangelicals, you know, like they were
always kind of the voice of sanity for conservatives in America,
and they were doing things their way, and they didn't
care about popular opinion, and they didn't care about being
liked by the New York Times. And if you guys
(11:59):
are heading in a bad, bad place, like, what does
that mean for.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
The rest of us?
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Yeah, And I don't think that you will see that.
I mean, I think, you know, there was a moment
where there was maybe this sort of grasping at elite
respectability at the top of these institutions. But I think
that's why they have lost so much of their credibility,
because they went along with the New York Times and
all of these other second organizations that were happy to
you know, light a bonfire to their credibility.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
So, you know, I really don't see that.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
In fact, I think part of the reason my book
became a bestseller because I'll be honest. When I was
working on it, we thought it would gain an audience, right.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
We thought it was kind of a niche topic.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
And when it turned out to have wider interest, I
think it was because it wasn't like I was telling
people something that they didn't know.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
It wasn't like they went.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Wait, what you're saying that our leaders are compromised and
aren't representing our views?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It was more like I was just.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Coming along and telling them, here's what's been going on
in the background of this thing that you already noticed.
And so you know, for that reason, I think you
see the rank and five all just choosing new leaders,
and I mean, look, in.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Some ways it's good.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
It's also going in kind of a weird, fractious direction
right now, and I don't know how it's going to
play out. Like you've got a lot of little tribal
skirmishes happening right now. I don't know if you saw,
like on CNN they're interviewing, you know, Doug Wilson, who's
known as the Christian nationalist pastor, and will people get
behind that or will they get behind you know this
(13:27):
more normy, mainstream vision of maybe twenty years ago or
what does this look like? So, I mean, that's a
debate that's playing out. But what's interesting is to see
that these guys who were not a part of that
elite circle before are suddenly gaining a following in a
way that they didn't, right, And you know, I don't
(13:48):
know what the endgame of that is, but I'm entertained
sitting back and watching it.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well, I'm rooting for you guys. More coming up with
Megan Basham. But first, it was nearly two years ago
the terrorists murdered more than twelve hundred innocent Israelis and
took two hundred and fifty hostages. Today, it seems as
if the cries of the dead and dying have been
drowned out by shouts of Antisemitic hatred, and the most
(14:13):
brutal attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust has been forgotten.
Yet as the world looks away, a light shines in
the darkness. It's a movement of love and support for
the people of Israel called Flags of Fellowship, and it's
organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and
on October fifth, just a few weeks away, millions across
America will prayer fully plant an Israeli flag and honor
(14:36):
and solidarity with the victims of October seventh, twenty twenty
three and their grieving families. And now you can be
a part of this movement too. To get more information
on how you can join the Flags of Fellowship movement,
visit Fellowship online at IFCJ dot org. That's IFCJ dot org.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What do you worry about?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
You know what's funny?
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Okay, So I'm a Christian, I'm a person of prayer,
and one of the number one things in my prayer journal,
like every night, is I worry about who my girls.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I have two daughters. I worry about who they're going
to marry.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Because I because I cover the culture beat, I spend
a lot of time on this dysfunction between young men
and young women and how they're not finding each other.
And you know, you and I spend a lot of
time on X and it's just like yes, and I
used to feel like back in the day, you know,
the gender wars were kind of almost a cute, flirtatious
(15:34):
thing that we all did. And now it feels like
there's something very real and angry underneath it from both sides.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And so I worry that.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
I'm like, are our young men even going to approach
them to pursue them for you know, relationships and marriage,
because you know, the other thing I know is the
research that I've done on a lot of these marriage
and family topics is this is so important to women's
happy that if they don't have husbands and children, whatever
(16:04):
they do in their professional lives, they're not going to
achieve that same level of happiness most likely that they
would have if they had had those things. So I
mean that's probably what I worry. I mean, I literally
pray God just bring them good husbands someday.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Absolutely yeah, I mean I'm absolutely concerned about that as well.
And I think the message to women in a lot
of mainstream ways is like you no longer need a spouse,
you no longer need a partner, and I think that's
just so corrosive. And this is where again religion comes
into play. Right, if you have stronger, tighter religious bounds,
(16:38):
then you're kind of all heading in the same direction
where you understand what kind of spouse you're supposed to
be and what kind of marriage you're supposed to have,
and that you are supposed to get married, and that
you know, don't listen to the liberal media saying that
it's so amazing to be single and that's really what
you want to do.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
But if you don't have that strong religion, it all.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Kinds of falls apart, and it's filled in by these
other sources that are not reliable and not trustworthy, you know.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
And I've wondered if and I don't know if this
is happening in the Jewish subculture, but I can tell
you in the Christian subculture. We're talking so much about
how young people are coming back to church and they
suddenly have an interest in religion that they didn't have before.
And I have wondered how much of that is being
driven by this sense that, you know, the secular professional
(17:25):
world isn't offering these deeper things of home and family,
and the only way you're finding other people who want
that in the same way you do is to come
back to church, come back to synagogue.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, Yeah, it's different in the Jewish world, but I mean,
I would say that marriage was always why people turn
to religion, not not why, but that played a big role.
But it is interesting because I don't think that there
are a lot of other ways for people who are
marriage minded young people who are marriage minded.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
To meet each other. So I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I you know, when I talk about what I want
my kids to be or what I want them to do,
I'm always like, I want them to get married.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
And have children.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Like career or whatever is a distance second to that.
And I get surprised takes from people. People are like,
you know, don't you want them to succeed? Don't you
care about what they do? You know, professionally, I do,
but not even in the same realm as I care
about them getting married and having kids.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Yeah, And I I mean, and I feel like I'm
the we're the opposite is that most people think and
the family and marriage stuff will work itself out.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
It's the career you got to focus on. I'm like, actually,
I don't think that's true at all.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
And you got to focus on the family and marriage
and the professional stuff. You'll figure out what you're good at,
you'll take things in college, you'll work that out totally.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, And it gets much easier to do that when
you have a stable situation.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
You know, I talk about it a lot on this show.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
But married men, I've made more money than all other men,
you know, for years and years, and now married women
make more money than single women. It's because you have
this comfort and and security that you can take chances.
You could take professional risks and you don't have to
do you know, the thing you went to college for.
You can take chances because somebody is rooting for you
(19:09):
and somebody's able to kind of support you should it
not work out.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
No, I think that's absolutely true. And I was just
listening to like an episode of the All In Pod,
I think, and you know, they were talking about kind
of the economics of it and home buying and how
part of the reason that we're seeing this new generation
that one they are being priced out of the housing market,
but also if you don't have those two incomes combined,
it may feel a lot harder to buy a home.
So they're not getting in, and as the home prices
(19:35):
are going up, it's too late for them to get in,
and they're single and they can't afford it, and that's
part of the bitterness that's growing. And you know, that's
part of what we have to address. And you can't
really extricate the marriage and family component out of that.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
It almost feels like tough love saying that to people,
you know, you have to pair up in order for
your life's economics to work.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
But it's not.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's true and it's real, and that's so we should
tell people.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
So I know, I know, and sometimes you know, they
get mad at you for saying it, But like, I
want the best things for you. That's why I'm saying, right,
it's because I want the best for you that I
think that you should take the most obvious, best path
and take.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It from there.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Absolutely, What advice.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Would you give your sixteen year old self? What would
Megan of sixteen years old need to know?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
I would tell her, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I would tell her to take her ambitions and skills seriously.
I think when I was that age, and I think
I probably all the way up until like practically thirty,
I just kind of always felt like whatever I was
doing was not really that serious, or whatever I was
pursuing was just kind of a lark. And I think,
you know, it wasn't until probably my thirties that I
(20:47):
started to go, no, you know, this thing that I'm
interested in this is serious and I should take myself
and what I'm working on seriously.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And I don't know why I didn't, but I you know, you.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Sometimes like imposter syndrome.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I mean, I guess it is a little bit like
imposter syndrome, but more in the sense that I didn't
pursue it with the intensity that I wish I would
have some of these things that I wanted to write about,
because I think I felt sheepish, for example, writing about
marriage and family or church things, because these those didn't
feel like serious. They're not economics, it's not foreign policy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Which turns out to be like the biggest joke topics.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Ever, right, And so I think I kind of felt
like the things that I was interested in weren't that serious.
And now I, you know, with the hindsight of years,
I no, these are actually the most important things, and
I should have never been embarrassed that this is what
I'm interested in.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Actually, like telling your younger self, like, take yourself seriously
and what you're interested in matters. It's I haven't gotten
that answer before. It's a question I asked all my guests.
So I really enjoyed that. I've loved this conversation. I
think you're a beautiful writer, and I just I love
following you on X. I think you're really smart and
so much about what you do is just ex and
(22:00):
excellent work.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Leave us here with your best tip.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
For my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Same to you, Carol, thank you best tip on I'm
going to do the church lady thing because that's in
my bios.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
So I'm going to say, go to church. Start going.
If you're single.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
It will you know, you may find your person there,
and you'll certainly find someone who's hopefully more like minded
than swiping.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Left on some app. You're married, it'll strengthen your marriage.
So go to church.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
She is Megan Fasham. Check her out of The Daily Wire.
Buy her book Shepherd's for sale. Thank you so much
for coming on, Megan. Thanks for having me, Carol,
Host
Karol Markowicz
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What Are We Even Doing? with Kyle MacLachlan
Join award-winning actor and social media madman Kyle MacLachlan on “What Are We Even Doing,” where he sits down with Millennial and Gen Z actors, musicians, artists, and content creators to share stories about the entertainment industry past, present, and future. Kyle and his guests will talk shop, compare notes on life, and generally be weird together. In a good way. Their conversations will resonate with listeners of any age whose interests lie in television & film, music, art, or pop culture.