A Response to JD Greear's Response to Megan Basham: Part III - Ethnic Gnosticism

Megan Basham’s newly-released book, Shepherds for Sale, has the entire world of Evangelicals running away with their tails tucked between their legs. This book pulls back the curtain on the disturbing reality that many of America’s prominent evangelical leaders have sold out to secular left-wing forces.

The fact that they have sold out isn’t just a baseless allegation against people we don’t like without evidence—or “receipts,” as Basham herself calls them—it’s an indictment, supported by years of research from us so-called “discernment bloggers”, a title sniggered at by those we’ve dubbed the “Evangelical Intelligentsia.”

Basham scrupulously traces the influence of billionaires like George Soros—a connection The Dissenter exposed years ago—alongside progressive foundations and political operatives, in shaping the direction of evangelical churches, media, universities, and even entire denominations.

This isn’t just a naturally perverse regression in how we do church—it’s a complete betrayal of the gospel. The book unravels how these influential operatives, in what can only be described as dystopian, have greased the wheels of evangelical organizations and their leaders with their dirty money, subtly shoving biblical doctrines into the abyss while rolling out the red carpet for a parade of Marxist propaganda.

The result? A professing church hopelessly entangled in its own demise—where issues from sexual ethics to abortion to social justice are warped beyond recognition to fit the relentless march of progressive culture, then shamelessly baptized in a shallow pool of Bible-speak, as if a thin coat of religious varnish could hide the rot beneath.

But Basham’s book isn’t just a critique of the circus we call “Evangelicalism,” as we “discernment bloggers” been doing that for years. In reality, our small platforms were easily ignored, we were marginalized by those who now admit we were right all along. And if that didn’t work, we were attacked, painted as “divisive” and “slanderous,” and “sowing discord among the brethren.” Clearly, though, Basham’s book, as repetitive as it may be of our work over the years, has wreaked havoc among this crowd, sending them into a tailspin where the usual tactics of ignore-marginalize-attack won’t work.

Enter JD Greear, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), frantically scrambling to salvage his crumbling legacy from Basham’s withering critique. In Part I and Part II, we’ve already dissected how Greear tried to squirm out of his claim that the Bible only "whispers" about homosexuality and how he eagerly embraced the toxic ideologies of Critical Race Theory and the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, he's left trying to stitch together the tatters of his reputation, but the threads are unraveling faster than he can tie them.

Now, in Part III, we address Greear’s defense against Basham, who accused him of using his platform to push a progressive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda in his own church and in the SBC.

In this section, which Greear takes issue with, Basham writes:

Greear, however, as president of the SBC, was in the best position to fundamentally transform American evangelicalism with a DEI-based hiring philosophy. In May 2019, he delivered a sermon in which he outlined one of his tasks as the national leader of the denomination: appointing people to committees who make further appointments that “end up shaping the institutions,” (those institutions being the SBC seminaries that educate a plurality of pastors of all Protestant denominations; the North American Mission Board that plants churches, provides pastoral training, and supplies chaplains all across the U.S.; and the International Mission Board that sends American missionaries throughout the world). Greear noted with some pride that he took pains to ensure that “two thirds of them [were] either women or they [were] people of color” because “we need their wisdom.”

There are many wise black pastors and women in positions of influence from whom the church benefits, of course, but Greear (in contradiction to Galatians 3:28 and Romans 2:11) was suggesting they had a special wisdom because they were black or because they were women. Theologian Voddie Baucham, himself black, addressed this well with his coinage of the term ethnic Gnosticism. “[It] is the idea that people have special knowledge based solely on their ethnicity,” he wrote in Fault Lines, a book on CRT’s devastating impact on the Church.

Greear’s defense? He claims that his initiatives, particularly those aimed at diversifying SBC leadership, were in line with longstanding SBC resolutions. But we see right through the veneer—calling out these efforts as nothing more than a Trojan horse for identity politics and critical race theory, all dressed up as a noble quest for diversity.

Greear’s response is a polished act of self-preservation—one can only wonder if Docent wrote it for him—cloaked in the velvet robes of false humility and progressive piety. Basham’s book pulls back the curtain on the stealthy advance of cultural Marxism within evangelical ranks revealing talking heads like Greear who, while pretending to champion diversity, are in reality smuggling in radical racial dogma that places identity politics on a throne where the gospel should reign.

Clearly, Greear is too feeble-minded to run this show on his own. After all, he’s just one of the many mouthpieces of the cabal running the Southern Baptist Convention and its many Soviet-style re-education camps we call seminaries (and megachurches).

During his tenure, Greear’s presidency of the SBC was demonstrated to be nothing more than a DEI-fueled makeover, contorting the church’s leadership to fit the mold of the latest woke fads. Basham hammers this point home by quoting Greear’s own words from a 2019 sermon, where he boastfully declares that “two-thirds [of committee members were] either women or people of color” because “we need their wisdom.”

Basham also rightly identifies this as a textbook case of what theologian Voddie Baucham, who also happens to be black, calls “ethnic Gnosticism”—the precarious belief that certain ethnicities (or genders or you name your intersectional identity) are endowed with some mystical insight, simply because of their identity.

Greear, naturally, goes into overdrive in a desperate attempt to recast himself as simply following the long-standing desires of the SBC for greater diversity. In his manifesto against Basham’s book, he dredges up decades-old resolutions calling for more inclusion of ethnic minorities, trying to frame his identity politics as part of a noble legacy.

But let’s not be taken in by this selective historical revisionism. Greear couldn’t care less about continuing some noble legacy—he’s about cementing his status as the darling of the woke evangelical elite while retaining a semblance of “being a shepherd” to anyone foolish enough to fall for it.

His attempt at self-defense is a tangled mess of contradictions and blatant lies, like cheap perfume on a well-worn prostitute—an attempt to mask the stench of self-serving motives that anyone can smell from a mile away from the corner he’s working. Greear insists his push for diversity was never about tokenism or quotas, yet he proudly parades his appointments based on race or gender like a badge of honor.

He writes:

We know that the United States is changing. Already, nearly 20 percent of our membership in the SBC is non-Anglo. Beyond that, 63 percent of all churches planted in our Convention were planted by people of color. Last year, our committee appointments tried to reflect this. Forty-eight percent of our appointments were non-white, 40 percent were females and only 32 percent were white males. Nearly 80 percent had never served before, and nearly half of all appointments were from churches with an attendance of less than 250.

He accuses Basham of misreading his intentions, yet if his true motives were so different from his own words, why should anyone be forced to play detective to uncover them? It’s not our job to decode his doublespeak—if he can’t say what he means, it’s his failure, not ours.

It’s Greear who’s dealing from the bottom of the deck—blurring the lines between true biblical reconciliation and the divisive, secular creed of identity politics. His claim that Basham’s critique is an attack on the SBC’s “collective desire for more diverse appointments” is nothing more than a smoke-and-mirrors act, a flimsy attempt to shield his own radical agenda from the scrutiny it rightly deserves.

So before I wrap this up, let’s dissect Greear’s grumblings a little more.