'What Happened to Janet?' I Saw the Conservative Downgrade

This morning, I awoke to see yet another bunch of conservative Christians insulting me online. Good morning!

The crux of all the criticisms that the Christian Nationalist-captured and Christian Nationalist-adjacent crowd have lobbed at me over the past two years basically comes down to some version of this: “Janet used to be so conservative. She used to be concerned about all the cultural issues that we’re trying to fight, yet she’s turned on us! What happened to her? She’s insane now. She’s the new Russell Moore! She’s the new David French!”

I imagine both Russell Moore and David French would find that last line to be hilarious (and someone online really did say that about me), but you’d imagine that if someone went that far in criticizing me, they’d at least offer up some evidence that I’m no longer a conservative. But they never do. Because they can’t.

In fact, I’m still a staunch conservative who’s never changed any of my positions on any cultural issue I ever tackled on Christian radio. Let’s recap.

I decried sexual abuse in the church in 2012; I still decry it. I exposed Mark Driscoll in 2013 and said he was disqualified from ministry; he obviously is disqualified. I went after what I termed “Big Gay,” in every way, for years, exposed and explained the dangers of Revoice in 2018, when no one had ever heard of it, stood firm against so-called “gay” marriage and “transing” and Drag Queen Story Hours and spoke at multiple conferences (and founded one) to take a strong biblical stand against all of it. I stand by everything I believed then, because I still believe it all.

I also spent hundreds of hours defending the lives of the unborn, arguing against open borders, supporting our military, defending our Constitution, standing for Israel, opposing all the COVID tyranny in our government and criticizing every aspect of the cultural Marxism of our day, outside the church and inside — including inside the Southern Baptist Convention. And when I saw more than a decade ago that the Twitter-eschewing Carl Trueman had coined a very useful term, “BigEva,” I was an early adopter of the term on Twitter to critique the power players in evangelicalism (I only mention this because some of my critics are now trying to smear me as “BigEva.” Give me a break!).

My point is that no one who’s criticizing me on the increasingly Dissident Right has ever produced one shred of evidence that I am no longer a political conservative (and I’m obviously biblically conservative to the hilt). What they are doing is smearing me because I am not drifting away from political and biblical conservatism, as they are. I’m still exactly where I’ve always been. I’m just trying to call them back to biblical and pro-constitutional sanity, but that’s not the zeitgeist in the “conservative” movement right now, and so they’re mad at me.

See, what has happened is that many of my former friends, associates and contacts in the evangelical subculture who used to like me just decided to ride the wave when conservatism got infiltrated by Christian Nationalism — not the caricature of the term that the Left used to smear normal Christian conservatives a few years back, but the Woke Right version that has become oh-so de rigueur. A lot of these go-alongs just didn’t realize what was really happening. Many still don’t. They liked that new people were popping up to “own the Left” and “fight for what is right.” They loved that the Daily Wire’s Megan Basham came along to write a book about how shepherds on the Left are “for sale.”

But let me explain my side here. You guys are looking at something one-dimensionally (“but they’re right on the cultural issues”) that is multi-dimensional in scope (the CNs’ underlying philosophy is unbiblical and completely deceptive). President Reagan had a famous line that is applicable here: “Trust, but verify.” He was referencing that wisdom as it applies in politics, but that principle also must apply in the church, especially in an age of so many false teachers and false prophets. We have to be biblically discerning.

Yes, American Reformer is against “transing” the kids. I agree with that; what Christian wouldn’t? But American Reformer also defends a Nazi jurist and denigrates the Constitution and unapologetically republished a retooled Communist Manifesto, for heaven’s sake.

Its own William Wolfe deceptively says there is no such thing as the “Woke Right,” while being one of its main leaders inside the church (and falsely stating online that the organization he directs to conquer the SBC for CN is a “national nonprofit,” sans any produced EIN, when it’s provably just an “assumed name” of American Reformer). He mass-deletes his X timeline regularly to purge posts containing things like antisemitic-infused phrases and Heil Hitler references and a crack-pipe meme sent to a black critic. He prayed with heretic Paula White-Cain in the Oval Office and bragged about it.

Shall we also talk about Stephen Wolfe’s “we need a Christian Franco/punish the heretics and blasphemers under CN” garbage, Joel Webbon’s denigration of women, American Reformer co-founder Aaron Renn’s embrace of Critical Theory, AmRef editor-in-chief Timon Cline’s embrace of “good deceit” and the antisemitism and white nationalist ideology that has been spreading like wildfire through their circles and beyond?

As for Megan Basham, she contacted me before she published her book, “Shepherds for Sale,” to get some information from me about BigEva. She seemed like a nice person, and I appreciated that she was tackling some of the same stories that I’d covered for years. It was great to have more company.

But guess what? Her book was full of errors, inaccuracies, mischaracterizations, unfair claims that were based on quotes taken out of context, an inexcusable lack of interviews or attempts to interview her subjects and even lifting material off Wikipedia (read my previous Substacks and X posts with the details). I’m a conservative, guys, but the errors in that book are real and provable. And when many of her subjects came forward to object to the unfair treatment they received in the book (including Marvin Olasky, her former boss at WORLD), Megan inexplicably and weirdly doubled down.

I’ve criticized the Evangelical Left for a very long time, but it is just wrong to misquote someone or misinterpret someone, take someone out of context, draw false conclusions based on a premise and then — when you’re publicly corrected by person after person after person — refuse to apologize or edit the book again or even pull it altogether. It is wrong to misrepresent anybody, on the Right or the Left, and I was simply holding to that same principle when someone on “our side” did that. Not only is that behavior unethical, but those kinds of errors destroy your credibility and erase any potential impact that a well-crafted argument with airtight hard proof would have achieved. I didn’t move Left. I was just trying to hold critics of the Left to the same standards that you know we would insist upon from critics of the Right.

Also, does it matter to anyone that Megan has had the CNs’ back from the get-go, even though she’s in the position to expose this awful movement? Does it matter that she’s basically done lots of free PR for Doug Wilson, arguably the subculture pioneer for promoting this disgusting form of Christian Nationalism (Stephen Wolfe’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” you’ll recall, was published by Canon Press)? Or that she recently spoke at a conference put on by openly antisemitic, white-nationalist ideologues in Texas, a conference that even super-conservative Texas GOP politicians abandoned when its founders’ views were made public (again, see my X feed for details)?

My point is this: All of you conservatives who defend this rot aren’t acting like conservatives, because conservatives — both biblical and political ones — believe in truth. In right and wrong, yes? Principles that govern us in every situation. Biblical morals. Biblical ethics. Biblical standards for everything. Individual liberty and justice. And maybe, if you’re like I am, the entire, brilliant Constitution and the good old three-legged stool of Reagan conservatism guides your politics, instead of the latest form of GOP populism that includes little things like on-the-ground support for “gay” marriage and hurrahs for evangelicals praying with heretics in the Oval Office. What is going on? Am I not allowed to notice and object to the disturbing shift? And lest you try to use this as evidence that I’ve somehow moved Left, I haven’t. I’ve never voted for a Democrat and never would. But if biblical and conservative principles guide you, and you see those who used to hold them begin to abandon them, isn’t it right to speak up?

When it comes right down to it, those who are “worried for me” and think I’m “bonkers” have no solid argument to prove I’ve moved Left at all. They’re just tired of my relentless opposition to CN. Fine, you’re sick of me. I have no problem if you want to mute or block me online. But understand that if I’m relentless against CN, I’m relentless because I am a biblical and political conservative who just sees the five-alarm fire that you guys — high on politics and the quest for more political power — apparently don’t see.

Along with other Christians in my position, I see the conservative downgrade, biblically and politically. I see the abandonment of the gospel taking place, as former “conservatives” put the lure of political control over Scripture. I see the apathy toward applying biblical principles to CN if a celebrity you like is involved. I see the nonchalance toward godliness and a rise in rage and hatred among people who are supposedly Christians. And I also see a whole lot of rising evil that you guys are either missing or ignoring. I feel a Christian duty to warn you about it. That is all I’m doing.

So no, nothing happened to me other than I am trying to do the right thing because I believe, wholeheartedly, that the biggest cultural concern the church should have right now is Christian Nationalism, a movement that has the potential to do catastrophic damage to the church and beyond.

So CN “conservatives,” insult me as you will.

But let me ask you a question: What has happened … to you?