Megan Basham, a Daily Wire reporter, recently had her curiosity piqued when reading a new Tim Alberta book about religion. Flipping through the pages, she discovered a Bible study entitled “The After Party – toward better Christian politics,” which is praised in the evangelical-bashing book.
That forthcoming Bible study was created by New York Times columnist David French, Russell Moore of Christianity Today, and Duke Divinity professor Curtis Chang.
“Secular news outlets from NPR to The New York Times are hailing Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, for furthering the popular thesis that evangelicals have abandoned themselves to political idolatry," Basham wrote recently.
"By ‘political idolatry’ they mean ‘political conservatism,’ as neither Alberta’s book nor the many prestige outlets enthusing over it have a word of criticism for Christians who advance left-wing causes," she pointed out.
In their Bible study, the trio of French, Moore, and Chang joined forces to plead with Christians "how to be less politically divisive,” Basham explained on American Family Radio Wednesday.
Why would they do that? Basham told show host Jenna Ellis there has been growing concern from the Left about the political engagement of conservative evangelical Christians.
In other words, the Church that awakened from its slumber is being lulled back to sleep to focus only on souls and salvation, and ignore what is happening in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
The book is not the first time Alberta, the son of a church pastor, has addressed the topic.
“We’ve seen something of a cottage industry in recent years of books warning that conservative evangelicals are becoming political idolaters, that they have brought political division into the church and created evangelicalism that overly focuses on politics,” Basham said.
Bible study backed by 'progressive secular funders'
In the AFR interview, Basham said she found it an odd strategy to take a politically-themed Bible study into churches if the goal is to “depoliticize” the church. So when things look a bit odd, good journalists dig.
In the book, Alberta said that French, Moore and Chang were unable to secure funding from Christians to produce the Bible study. So the study moved ahead with “mostly progressive secular funders,” Alberta wrote.
“I went, okay, hang on a minute. Who are these secular funders?,” Basham said.
One is Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. With the name Rockefeller, nobody is surprised to learn that is one the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations whose website celebrates partnerships with groups with “left-leaning social change missions such as those related to race, the environment and gender,” according to Influence Watch.
“They give money to things like furthering abortion, furthering gender indoctrination and the mutilation of children, and they are funding this political Bible study to come into churches and college campuses,” Basham warned.
Another source of funding is The Hewlett Foundation, the second-largest private donor to abortion giant Planned Parenthood, Basham said.
'One America' with left-wing crazies
Basham said “The After Party” has a promotional partnership with One America Movement, whose website states it “partners with faith communities across religious, political and racial divides to confront toxic polarization in our society."
“They're supposedly an ecumenical group, which means people of various religious faiths coming together for some good cause, except you check their board and the people on their board include a female LGBTQ-affirming rabbi. The supposed Christian on the board, a man who founded the Black Lives Matter chapter of Greater New York, has called Jesus a black radical revolutionary and defends rioting as self-defense. That’s hardly people who themselves are not politically divisive,” Basham said.
Chang shamed unvaccinated Christians
Funding aside, the three faces of the Bible study should be enough to raise eyebrows, Basham said.
By now most people are familiar with Trump-hating Moore and French. They were criticized by evangelicals, and embraced and rewarded by the Far Left, for running from Trump in 2016.
As far as the lesser-known Chang, Basham says he has jumped into politics, too. The co-author of "The After Party" Bible study amazingly opposed California's recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom. He called it a "wasteful perversion of democracy."
Chang also co-founded a website called Christians and the Vaccine, which urged the Church to roll up a sleeve for the experimental shot.
"The pathway to ending the pandemic runs through the evangelical church," Chang, who is supposedly averse to politics, told a U.S. Senate committee in 2021.
“I don’t think anybody looks and says, ‘Here are the guys to tone down political rhetoric in the church,'" Basham concluded.
