Thread by @megbasham

Let's talk about the import of what @JoshDaws uncovered here. What he found is that @BillKristol's explicitly partisan, anti-Trump organization, Defending Democracy Together, gave $200k to Redeeming Babel, which developed @drmoore @DavidAFrench and @curtischangRB's church curriculum to help "reframe Christian political identity."

How did they go about executing this reframing among Christian voters during an election year?

Let's take a look...

At the start of an election year, @cccuorg encouraged its 185 member schools (and roughly 520,000 students), including @WheatonCollege @biolau and @Baylor, to use the After Party curriculum in their chapel services, discipleship groups, theology and pastoral classes, and in student book clubs. Many of these Christian schools offered chapel credit for attending After Party lectures.

Wheaton held an After Party event featuring Chang and Atlantic writer, @TimAlberta. Many other schools like Baylor and @ACUedu also welcomed The After Party to campus to speak to their students about politics.

Many large churches all across the country also hosted The After Party to speak to their congregations about how they should think about politics.

Then there was Christian media's role.

Ray Ortlund, president of Renewal Ministries and a @TGC Emeritus Council member also participated in After Party events.

The ostensibly non-partisan @trinityforum was also a major booster.

But perhaps no outlet promoted the program as aggressively as @CTmagazine. This means that Russell Moore did not simply participate in The After Party as an independent project. He integrated it into his work as editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. (We'll discuss why that matters in a moment).

Now, I knew when I wrote my book, Shepherds for Sale, that The After Party was exclusively funded by secular left foundations. But I did not know then that Kristol's organization was one of them as they had not yet filed their 2023 taxes.

So who is Defending Democracy Together and why does it matter that they bankrolled nearly half of The After Party's funding?

Let's see...

Kristol and a group of Never Trump allies founded Defending Democracy Together in 2019 for the express purpose of opposing Donald Trump. One of its first initiatives was "Republicans for the Rule of Law." DDT spent a million dollars in campaign ads to pressure Republican lawmakers to condemn Donald Trump's famous "perfect" phone call with Zelensky, which led to his impeachment.

(@shellenberger has covered how the CIA used a USAID-funded media organization to claim that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. Essentially, the same regime change tactics the CIA has used overseas.)

And DDT's efforts to defeat Trump continued from there...

In May 2020, DDT launched Republican Voters Against Trump, spending $10 million on a campaign to convince GOP voters to choose Biden over Trump. They especially targeted swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona.

By the end of that election the non-partisan campaign, finance watchdog Open Secrets had called DDT one of the "top dark money spenders" of 2020.

When Trump lost the 2020 election, DDT continued to spend additional millions to boost midterm candidates who voted to impeach him.

As the 2024 election season approached, DDT continued their efforts to defeat Trump, pouring millions in dark money into the effort, according to Open Secrets.

And now we know that at least $200k of what the hyper-partisan Kristol and DDT spent for the 2024 election cycle went to a political bible study curriculum that was brought into hundreds of Christian schools, churches, and ministries all across the country.

But for Christianity Today, it is an even bigger breach of ethics...

Because as their editor-in-chief, Russell Moore, was taking money from Kristol's anti-Trump political organization to develop and promote a Christian political curriculum that teaches that white conservatives lack empathy and that Christians must use their vote to end alleged systemic racism, he was overseeing Christianity Today's political coverage, which the outlet claims is non-partisan.

This means Moore was formally partnering with a hyper-partisan group and promoting the material he developed from that partnership to Christianity Today's readers and podcast listeners.

This is an even greater ethical breach than the CT staffers who donated to Democrats while covering politics. It is a greater breach that merely taking the money of the hard-left, secular Rockefellers. Moore was taking partisan money to create material for churches and ministries and using his magazine to promote that political material without disclosing that it had been financed by an anti-Trump political group.

Do we really believe that after all the spending DDT has done to defeat Donald Trump this wasn't its aim in funding The After Party?

Is it any wonder then that in the run up to the election CT was white-washing Kamala Harris' record and encouraging Christians not to vote?

Whatever the purpose was for the $1.8 million listed as government grants on CT's 2023 tax return, this alone is damning stuff.

And if you'd like to read more hard documentation about how the left has infiltrated churches and ministries, I have written a book full of stories and receipts.

a.co/d/88qWm7r