Big Eva’s painful death

People, ministries once trusted now lack credibility

CRU, the former Campus Crusade for Christ in Orlando, Fla., is part of Big Eva. CRU leaders produced a devotional for staff coming to grips with a Trump presidency. Photo of CRU headquarters via cru.org

Big Eva is experiencing a slow, excruciating death, and the election confirmed its lost prestige, status, and influence.

American voters, specifically followers of Jesus Christ, rejected the rhetoric and reasoning of Russell Moore, David French, Jim Wallis, Dwight McKissic, Jemar Tisby and a host of others pushing Kamala Harris, the most anti-Christian candidate to ever seek the presidency.

The Evangelicals for Harris website already changed its name to Evangelicals for America. Evangelicals for Harris attempted to make the most pro-abortion candidate ever to be palatable to conservative Christians. President Joe Biden received more than 20 percent of the vote from evangelicals in 2020, and Evangelicals for Harris sought to repeat that this election.

She didn’t break 20 percent with white evangelicals as Chris Hughes of Baptist News Global reported Nov. 11. The final numbers are 82 percent to 17 percent. Trump made gains with multiple faith groups:

In fact, Trump made gains in nearly every category of self-identified Christians running against Kamala Harris compared to his run in 2020 against Joe Biden. He even expanded his support among white “born-again” and evangelical Christians, a group that has overwhelmingly supported him in all three of his presidential campaigns.

According to exit polling data from NBC, Trump expanded his margins for Christians identifying as “Protestant or other Christian” and Catholic. Of voters identifying as “Protestant or other Christian,” 63% went for Trump and 36% went for Harris. That’s a small bump from 2020, when Trump got 60% of the “Protestant or other Christian” vote and Biden got 39%.

Trump made a bigger jump with Catholic voters against Harris, who is a Baptist. Exit polling shows Catholic voters broke for Trump by 58% to 40% for Harris. That’s a major shift from 2020 when Biden, who is Catholic, won Catholic voters 52% to 47%.

For some time, Big Eva has sold its soul to gain worldly affirmation  and other justifications. Climate change, race relations, female pastors, homosexuals in the church, and other issues are now Big Eva causes du jour. Name the issue and you have leaders in American Protestant evangelicalism going woke at the expense of truth.

Some of the groups and names part of Big Eva include: Christianity Today, the Southern Baptist seminaries, Fuller Theological Seminary, Wheaton College, The Gospel Coalition, CRU, the former Campus Crusade for Christ, National Association of Evangelicals, InterVarsity and NavPress, New York Times columnist David French, and a variety of pastors and churches.

For example, Revoice Conference emerged in the past 5 years to establish an avenue for gays and lesbians to have greater acceptance in churches, pushing the “third way.” It gained support from North Point Community Church Pastor Andy Stanley and other Big Eva leaders. It gained criticism from pastors across orthodox Christian circles.

Christians rejecting wokeness have searched for alternatives. They have fled to Founders Ministries led by Tom Ascol in Florida, Shepherds Conference in California, and Doug Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, home to the slogan, “Moscow Mood.” Podcasts ranging from James White’s Alpha & Omega Ministries, Crosspolitic, hosted by men connected to Wilson, and others have gained traction with Christ followers.

Throw in Daily Wire’s Megan Basham exposing Big Eva in her book, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, and you have followers of Jesus Christ questioning people and ministries they trusted for decades. Big Eva can’t control that Christians don’t rely on them anymore.

Big Eva hitched their wagon to the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever–arguably the top moral issue for followers of Jesus Christ. Big Eva explained it away with “we don’t agree with every position of Kamala Harris.” 

This is the post-election podcast involving David French, top, Russell Moore, bottom right, and Curtis Chang, bottom left. All are part of Big Eva. Via Protestia on X

Big Eva listened to post-election lament by French and Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore on a podcast with Duke Divinity School’s Curtis Chang. Chang’s a consulting professor at Duke Divinity School, is a senior fellow at Fuller Theological Seminary, and gained recognition from former President Barack Obama. Chang confessed to experiencing anxiety, anger, anguish, and alienation.

Despite the disappointment in the election’s outcome, Big Eva needs a reality check. 

Basham made the following relevant observations on X Saturday:

Bottom line, I think most of the sour graping you’re seeing from Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Mike Pence, etc. is not about a desire to persuade the administration to nominate more pro life nominees. If it were, their approach—nose wrinkled with disdain for Trump and his voters, negatively exaggerating the GOP’s stance on the life issue—would certainly not be the way to accomplish it. 

What we are seeing is the bitter gall of men who thought that they would be the representatives of conservative thought and power in whatever sphere they inhabit, who long ago fashioned a rock-solid intellectual entitlement in their right to rule and counsel rulers.

They now find themselves shocked at the turn of events—they find that their carefully calibrated (or nonexistent) criticisms of Harris and their correspondingly scathing approach to Trump has left them with little respect and no proximity to the influence they hoped for. They suddenly find themselves standing outside of events, having been pushed off the stage by a new movement that no longer wants respectable loyal opposition representing it. It wants real opposition. Which usually means sacrificing your reputation among the elite, something they have never been willing to do.

And so they have the only refuge left is to rewrite history to assure themselves that this is all happening to them because they were too principled and the rabble too immoral to see their superior qualities. Now they ask, “who will speak up for life?”

I’ll tell you who – – the people were willing to toss their reputations on the bonfire to ensure the candidate who was not promising to protect abortion up to birth, not promising to remove any religious exemptions would win.

Big Eva’s lack of post-election perspective underscores how they’ve failed Christians and America. Now have an echo chamber, not influence.