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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