Basham has named names and provided copious footnotes detailing public comments, tweets (or now “posts”), and other bits of the record. She goes after powerful and popular figures like Tim Keller, J.D. Greear, and Rick Warren. I really have no reason to believe, however, that any of it is done in bad faith, despite accusations to the contrary. I have every reason to believe that she cares about Christian witness and the translation of the faith into a faithful response to the challenges of the world. But as it stands, her critiques are not all that helpful in terms of calling American Christians into a posture that truly allows them to be a durable and sustainable force for the preservation of civilization.

In the introduction to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses the image of a hall leading to various rooms to explain the relationship of the various Christian communions and traditions with one another and with the fundamental and indispensable commitments that define the contours of Christianity. The hall, according to Lewis, is the entryway to the faith defined by the ecumenical creeds. The rooms astride the hall represent the Anglicans, the Roman Catholics, and the Methodists. These rooms are where “there are fires and chairs and meals.” The hall, according to Lewis, “is a place to wait in … not a place to live in.”
That illustration is one that was probably quite tidy in a place with relative cultural and social homogeneity like England when Lewis made the observation. American Christianity has always been complex and more diverse in ways that are foreign to Europeans, especially the English. From its inception as a nation, America has lacked an established church, so unlicensed shamans and holy men and evangelists and cult leaders have thrived in the U.S. in ways that would be impossible in the Old World. As a result, Lewis’ hall, at least in America, has become a tent city. There are abandoned lean-tos, burned-out campfires, and assorted refuse scattered among tents that are often mistaken for rooms. There is not much order in the hall, and many of the campers appear not to know very much about why they are there, not to mention where any of the doors lead.
Enter now Megan Basham’s controversial book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. Basham’s work has landed in the tent city like a bomb, and the reactions to the book could not be more polarized. The book has elicited impassioned screeds that cannot be taken seriously, but equally unserious hagiographic tributes disguised as reviews. I am not, for the sake of this essay or otherwise, chasing Basham’s footnotes. I don’t have any basis to form an authoritative opinion as to whether she is a “real journalist.” All of that was taken up elsewhere at Religion & Liberty Online. What I do know is that she gives voice to many valid critiques of evangelicalism that are intuitively obvious to any honest observer—the political, social, and theological left has more influence in evangelicalism today than it did 20 or 30 years ago. And even those who most vociferously defend themselves cannot escape the fact that they did say the things she claims, even if they want to argue about context. Are there conspiracies? Maybe. Read the book and follow the footnotes. Are there bad-faith actors inside of evangelical churches and institutions? Almost certainly, but again—read the book and follow the footnotes.
My concern is that Basham has not really struck at the root of the problem with evangelicalism. In many ways, it is like a firefighter entering a burning home, only to be horrified that the plaid on the throw pillows clashes with the floral sofa. Those who are praised and the people who are critiqued in the book share more in common with one another in terms of their approach to ecclesiology, authority, and personal piety than they will ever admit. They just differ with regard to their postures toward and positions on social and political issues. In Basham’s defense, a definition of “evangelicalism” has proved to be elusive. This is because “evangelical” has morphed from being a descriptor of groups within Lewis’ various rooms to being a pseudo-tradition in itself that is squatting in the hall. It lacks the doctrinal or confessional substance to be itself a tradition. At best, “evangelical” is a label that describes the cultural character of a church rather than the content of anything that members believe. This includes worship styles and music, but also things like vocabulary and lingo. A church that calls a Sunday service a “mass” probably has little in common culturally with one that calls their service “The Gathering,” with the “t” stylized as a cross.
Irun the risk of oversimplification to make the claim that evangelicalism is the first expression of Christianity that is neither doctrinally nor ethnically driven. While other expressions of Christianity have been influenced by various aspects of modernism, evangelicalism itself is the modernist expression of Christianity. People moved from asking, “How do we respond to what we know to be true?” to asking, “How do we know what is true?” The shift from metaphysics to epistemology as the “first philosophy” that marks modernism has led to a lot of subjectivity in the interpretation of Scripture, theological method, and the dynamics of personal faith. The Christian “testimony” up until yesterday was “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”—along with the implicit or explicit acknowledgement that the confessor was part of the community awaiting his coming again. But starting today, that testimony is the recounting of a subjective experience unique to each person.
Please note: I am a fan of discerning the “plain meaning of Scripture,” but a “Jesus, me, and the Bible” approach to theology simply will not produce a durable, reliable, and consistent theology. The Christian faith is about conformity to Christlikeness in thought, word, and deed, and not inner peace, personal confirmation in our “heart of hearts,” or any other appeal to a subjective feeling or impression. Subjective feelings and impressions are subject to all types of influences, but the virtues that are defined by Christ’s example are stable and fixed.
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Don’t let an unrealistic expectation of perfection keep you from doing the things that are most good for your soul and most glorifying to God. Pick up your Bible, pray, evangelize, encourage the church, and follow God wherever He leads. If it’s worth doing, be willing to put in the awkward reps of early attempts. Do it badly, and pray for God to help you do it well.

You’ve probably heard it said, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.” Generally, I agree with that statement. If a thing is worth giving our time for, we should strive to do it with excellence. That’s biblical: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23-24). As Christians we should be those who work most excellently, because we are serving a better, more worthy, Master. And yet, I’m afraid this ideal of excellence often causes well meaning Christians to stop “doing” altogether. They turn the adage into, “If it can’t be done well, don’t do it at all.” And that is unbiblical. I’ll explain.
There are so many areas in our life where we are commanded to do something by God. We are commanded to read our Bibles, pray, evangelize, encourage one another, etc… and very often, our efforts at obedience are embarrassing at first. We struggle with consistency in our Bible reading time. “Sweet hour of prayer” often looks more like “Sweet 5 minutes of prayer before my mind wanders to a dog on the street.” We bumble through evangelism and encouragement like a four-year-old trying to explain how a microwave works. To say it bluntly, we do not do it well.
And yet, I am convinced these things are worth doing.

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Psalm 119:9). Oh how good of an endeavor it is to know and read God’s word. Through it we know God, His commands, our purpose, and most importantly His Son.
“You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). To pray is to speak with the Almighty. I know Him through His word, and I speak to Him through prayer. I worship Him and draw down power from on high as I lift my voice to Him.
“Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2).

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God is always and ever prior to us. He was here before us, and before there even such a thing as “before”. The drama of the Gospel begins in his movement of grace toward us. Even the Law, read to us in the Sentences, is a gift of grace arising from the profound priority of God (cf. Jn 1:16). Our arrival to worship–whether at home on a weekday, or at church on a Sunday morning–only occurs because God first moved and called us.

Recently here at Ad Fontes, Sam Bray wrote an excellent two-parter on the logic and dynamics of the opening sentences of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (which Sam recently co-edited in a gorgeous new International Edition, which everyone should buy and use).
The 1662 BCP begins Morning Prayer with sin and confession, offering eleven short Scripture passages–known as “The Sentences”–to be chosen from and read to begin the service (whether in private or public use, Morning Prayer being something for every day). Rather than a call to worship, the service begins with an announcement of our sinfulness and need for forgiveness (which is then followed by a call to worship, in both Morning and Evening Prayer). But the 1662 BCP makes a point of placing the Sentences first. Why? Sam explains:
Over and over the Scriptures teach that human beings cannot just waltz into the divine presence. God is holy, but we are not. Among the many implications of that truth is one about worship. Before the priests could offer sacrifices, they had to be cleansed in the laver (Exodus 40). Before Isaiah could receive the divine commission, he had to be cleansed with the burning coal (Isaiah 6). Before Jesus’ disciples could eat the Passover with him, he washed their feet (John 13). This is the logic of starting with sin and forgiveness at the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer.
This is, of course, bang on the money in many ways. We cannot just waltz into God’s presence, even as Christians. In our day and age–which minimizes guilt and sin, and teaches us that all of life can be tailored to our preferences with a few taps of the screen–it’s not hard to see that the seriousness of the Sentences is a necessary tonic. The logic of the Sentences is not aping that of Roman Catholic confession, as if we need to be cleansed of accrued venial sins. We certainly should repent of recent or ongoing sins as we come to worship (as part of our progressive sanctification), but not as if they’ve built up to the endangerment of our souls. Rather, the logic of the Sentences is more of a replay of how our sins were once and for all washed away in salvation (as part of our initial sanctification). Such a practice honours the way the verb “to sanctify” is used in both past and present tenses in Hebrew 10:10-14 (see the ESV).
And yet, I felt the need to offer a brief, good-hearted rejoinder to Sam (which I am aware equates to a brief rejoinder to the whole of the 1662 BCP–something I am distinctly unqualified for. Maybe I should have paid more attention to John Ahern’s recent piece on the site about being reluctant to speak).
In short: I don’t think you should start worship with repentance.
Well, not quite. That’s the hard form of the argument. To soften and elaborate: I think there are good reasons not to start worship with repentance and that, in our current context, these reasons edge out the benefits of the 1662 approach.
Let me lay out my chief theological reason first, followed more briefly by a contextual one.
Everything Starts With God
As we’ve touched on: worship services reenact, in myriad ways, things which have already happened. They are not self-contained, entirely occasional events, concerned only with what has happened since we last worshiped. The 1662 service, via the Sentences, replays the drama of the Gospel. By beginning this way, it begins where we all begin within our mother’s wombs: in sin (Ps. 51:5), by nature objects of wrath (Eph. 2:3). As far as any of us are concerned, life does rightly begin in the Sentences (and for this reason, I think they are a laudable and valid way to start a service).
Yet, ultimately, this is to begin in media res. And that’s fine–many great stories do. But the story of the universe does not begin in sin, but with God. He is the Alpha and the Omega. In fact, before the story even began… God was, and he was Good. He is eternal, simple, a se–all the big doctrine-of-God-things.
God is always and ever prior to us. He was here before us, and before there even such a thing as “before”. The drama of the Gospel begins in his movement of grace toward us. Even the Law, read to us in the Sentences, is a gift of grace arising from the profound priority of God (cf. Jn 1:16). Our arrival to worship–whether at home on a weekday, or at church on a Sunday morning–only occurs because God first moved and called us.
Beginning with the Sentences, whilst not contradicting any of this, seems to squeeze it out.
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