The following is an edited excerpt from the new book “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda,” by Megan Basham (Broadside Books/HarperCollins, July 30, 2024).
Not long ago, I received a text from my childhood pastor Randy Brannon, wanting to know what had happened to Christianity Today. Brannon had retired some years earlier from his large Southern Baptist church, and it had been awhile since he’d picked up a copy of the magazine Billy Graham founded in 1956. The character and emphasis of its coverage has ebbed and flowed over the years, as all publications tend to do under the leadership of different editors, but it had generally reflected the broad outlook of a traditional pastor like him. Or, at least it had the last time he’d paid attention to it. What he’d read while leafing through a couple of back issues early in 2023 shocked…
