Baptist News Global’s dismissal of Megan Basham as a “flame-throwing Gonzo journalist” represents not a substantive critique but rather an exercise in rhetorical evasion—a transparent attempt to discredit through caricature what they apparently cannot refute through argument. This is the methodology of those who have abandoned serious engagement for the comfort of tribal signaling.
The invocation of “Gonzo journalism”—a term associated with Hunter S. Thompson’s drug-fueled, first-person immersion reporting—is not merely hyperbolic but fundamentally dishonest. Basham’s work in *Shepherds for Sale* is meticulously footnoted, extensively researched, and relies on documentation, financial records, and publicly available information. To compare this to Thompson’s hallucinogenic accounts of the Kentucky Derby is not a critique; it is slander dressed in literary reference. One suspects Baptist News Global knows this distinction perfectly well, which makes the comparison not ignorant but cynical.
The “flame-throwing” accusation is equally revealing. It presumes that forceful argument constitutes journalistic malpractice—a position that would disqualify virtually every prophet in Scripture and every Reformer in church history. When did American evangelicalism become so enervated, so therapeutically neutered, that pointed criticism of documented compromise became equivalent to arson? The metaphor betrays a movement more concerned with maintaining collegial networks than confronting uncomfortable truths.
What Baptist News Global cannot seem to stomach is that Basham has done what much of the evangelical establishment will not: she has followed the money. She has documented the flow of funding from progressive foundations into evangelical institutions and traced the subsequent shifts in theological and political messaging. This is not conspiracy theorizing; it is basic investigative journalism. If her findings are false, they should be refuted with evidence. Instead, we receive ad hominem theatrics.
The real flame-throwing here is not Basham’s research but Baptist News Global’s rhetoric—designed to generate heat rather than light, to rally the faithful rather than engage the argument. They offer no substantive rebuttal of her claims, no alternative explanation for the patterns she documents, no accounting for the financial entanglements she exposes. They simply apply a pejorative label and trust their audience will not demand more.
This is intellectual bankruptcy masquerading as moral sophistication. The evangelical world deserves better than dismissive name-calling from outlets that position themselves as guardians of thoughtful discourse. If Basham’s work contains errors, identify them. If her conclusions are unwarranted, demonstrate why. But to simply paint her as a reckless provocateur while offering no counterargument is to concede the debate while pretending to have won it.