If you're questioning MLK's Christianity, you should check yours
John MacArthur is a Christian like I'm a Nobel Physics laureate
The idea that Donald Trump is a Christian is one of the most comical commentaries on the state of modern Christianity I can think of. That some claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ AND yet somehow combine them with the hateful homophobia and racism of MAGA is laughable. Yet that’s precisely the case with those who subscribe to “MAGA Christianity,” a “muscular” Christianity that is entirely at odds with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Christ taught love, tolerance, compassion, acceptance, kindness, and understanding. MAGA Christianity is about hatred, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and the elevation of the interests of good, God-fearing, White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual Patriots who worship America first and God second—a distant second at best.
And they also have NO problem telling others that they’re not “real Christians,” as if they’re the ultimate arbiters on such matters. Take John McArthur, who I’ll bet can be fun at parties, eh?
John MacArthur, an influential right-wing megachurch pastor and author, told an audience at his church last week that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was “not a Christian at all.” MacArthur described the pastor and civil rights icon as “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.”
Yo, John; I may not believe in God, but I remember enough of my Sunday School classes to understand that you—especially someone like you—cannot pass judgment on anyone.
Anyone who claims the “MAGA Christian” label is as much of a Christian as I am…and I think we all know what that means.
MacArthur, considered one of the most influential evangelical preachers in modern times, has been under fire in recent years for having “repeatedly shamed or ignored victims of abuse while protecting their abusers.” He has a history of preaching what Baptist News has called “cringe-worthy” things about race and slavery. He made his most recent appalling comments during Black History Month while he was criticizing a now-defunct evangelical pastors conference for having honored King several years ago, which MacArthur described as evidence of “the impact of the woke movement.” Video of MacArthur’s comments was posted on social media by a Christian podcaster and reported by other Christian outlets.
MLK, who preached non-violence, actually attempted to practice what he preached. While certainly as flawed as the next person, MLK endeavored to live by Christ’s teachings as he understood them. He saw the Gospels as teaching, among other things, love, tolerance, compassion, acceptance, kindness, and understanding.
Describing John MacArthur’s theology as “cringe-worthy” would probably be an excellent place to start. To begin with, he’s about as much fun as an autopsy, and he could manage to strip the joy from a screaming orgasm.
What MacArthur calls the “woke movement” is about respect. It’s about not being a self-centered, me-first asshole—something one would expect a Christian minister to be down with. Sadly, MacArthur is as much about love, tolerance, compassion, acceptance, kindness, and understanding as Ted Bundy was about promoting and preserving healthy male-female relationships.
King, a Baptist minister and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, drew on his faith to inspire and mobilize Americans to overcome the system of Jim Crow segregation and win passage of federal voting rights and civil rights legislation. In 2012, TIME magazine called him one of the 20 most influential Americans of all time.
MLK was a genuine man of faith, someone who relied on that faith to guide him as he worked to motivate and inspire Americans from all walks of life to overcome a racist system and create a more fair and just America.
He was hardly “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.” James Earl Ray assassinated MLK primarily because of what he represented and because he endeavored to live his beliefs. White racists were threatened by what he represented.
MacArthur, who heads Grace Community Church in southern California, has long mixed his preaching with right-wing politics. In 2018, MacArthur led an effort that rallied thousands of conservative evangelicals to denounce the pursuit of social justice as a threat to the gospel, and criticized churches that address racism as a social justice issue. That same year, MacArthur’s Master’s Seminary was placed on probation by an accrediting agency, which cited a climate of fear, intimidation, and bullying among faculty and staff.
Fear, intimidation, and bullying—precisely the working environment the Prince of Peace Himself would’ve created, eh?
And I’m curious to understand how social justice could be considered “a threat to the gospel.” Indeed, it would stand to reason that social justice, mainly as elucidated by MLK, would be precisely the sort of thing that would fall into line with the Gospel, which, after all, was about love, tolerance, compassion, acceptance, kindness, and understanding.
In 2020, MacArthur declared that “any real” Christian would vote to reelect Donald Trump as president. MacArthur’s church was represented by Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis in his legal battle against public health restrictions on church gatherings during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Later that year, he joined the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, Christian nationalist pastor Jack Hibbs, and others in promoting COVID denialism.
How could “any real” Christian vote for Trump, a man who’s almost certainly violated every one of the Ten Commandments at least once, if not on multiple occasions, in his lifetime, and has stated he has no reason to seek forgiveness?
MacArthur aligned himself with a President whom the Brookings Institution estimates is responsible for the COVID-19 deaths of 750,000 Americans. We could call that irresponsibility what it is—genocide. Promoting COVID-19 denialism has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans, which Trump and people like John MacArthur are complicit in.
The following year, MacArthur flatly declared his opposition to religious freedom. “I don’t even support religious freedom,” he said in a 2021 sermon. “Religious freedom is what sends people to hell. To say I support religious freedom is to say I support idolatry. It’s to say I support lies, I support hell, I support the kingdom of darkness.” He added, “No Christian with half a brain would say, ‘We support religious freedom.’ We support the truth.” MacArthur doubled down on that position in a “State of the Church” address a few weeks later, arguing that evangelicals should stop working in collaboration with non-Christian groups to support religious freedom, likening such as efforts as “alliances with Satan.”
This self-serving heresy is where MacArthur confirms any suspicion about his false Christianity. His stance on religious freedom runs so counter to the Jesus Christ that he claims to revere that a word like “hypocrisy” doesn’t begin to do it justice.
To say that his flavor of Christianity and only his flavor of Christianity is the One, True, and ONLY faith requires a degree of arrogance that no faithful follower of Jesus Christ could claim.
Despite MacArthur’s assertions to the contrary, no Christian with half a brain would say, “ONLY my faith tradition is valid; all of the others worldwide are false, and their adherents are headed straight to Hell.”
If one were to look at the Gospel of Jesus Christ and use that as a measuring rod, then one could easily say that John MacArthur is a Christian in the same way Jeffrey Dahmer was a vegan. He knows nothing of living a Christ-like life, and his devotion to Donald Trump betrays someone who worships America first and Jesus Christ a distant second.
Any “real Christian” would’ve sought out ways to help Americans cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. They would’ve endeavored to save as many lives as possible- isn’t what Jesus would’ve done?
A few weeks ago, on February 19 during Black History Month, fundamentalist Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California was asked how he felt about conservative Christian groups like The Gospel Coalition and Together for the Gospel.
MacArthur called The Gospel Coalition “woke”—which just shows you how unhelpful that word is since TGC routinely spreads decidedly right-wing, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-sex propaganda—and he condemned Together for the Gospel (also an extremely conservative group) for honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2018.
Yes, really.
It's interesting to note how genuinely meaningless “woke” has become. When scorched earth Christians like John MacArthur can use it as an epithet against groups almost as far to the Right as he is, “woke” can be deemed to have lost any meaning.
Beyond that, MacArthur utterly dismisses a man almost universally recognized as a genuine, faithful Christian and a martyr for the Civil Rights movement.
Both of those organizations, well, T4G [Together for the Gospel], is basically nonexistent. They bought into the deceptiveness of the woke movement and the racial baiting that was going on a couple of years ago, and it literally put them out of existence...
… A year later, they did the same thing for Martin Luther King, who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral. I'm not saying he didn't do some social good, and I've always been glad that he was a pacifist, or he could have started a real revolution. But you don't honor a non-believer who misrepresented everything about Christ and the Gospel in an organization alongside honoring somebody like R. C. Sproul.
This was a symptom of the impact of the woke movement that basically displaced that whole organization. That was really—it was over after that. And some of the effects of those men who were leaders there are still going on, and it had a negative effect on their leadership. And I think even the role they play in evangelicalism today…
MacArthur is, of course, lying egregiously about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK was by no means a perfect human being. Still, the fact that James Earl Ray, Jr. assassinated him indicated that Whites felt him and his message to be a significant threat to their continued hegemony.
MLK’s campaign for equality and equal treatment was something that Whites, who were accustomed to being in power and liked it that way, weren’t about to give up. Of course, equality can feel like oppression when you’ve been on top your entire life.
Many Black leaders before him and since then have also used religion to justify their push for equality. Pastor Charlie Dates, of Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, said of MacArthur’s comments, “If you ain’t gonna raise a finger to help us get the right to vote, to live where we want to live, to go to school where we want to go, keep Martin King’s name out of your mouth.”
Even if he wasn’t Christian, the values he fought for were important enough that they ought to override any personal foibles. But the argument doesn’t even make sense on MacArthur’s terms. As a writer at Christianity Today pointed out, “I spoke at [Together for the Gospel’s] MLK50, and I don’t recall seeing any speakers who weren’t unambiguously orthodox. MacArthur’s accusations aren’t only too lightly made. They are plainly slanderous.”
To claim MLK wasn’t a True Christian™, and therefore shouldn’t be honored by any decent Christian organization, is nothing more than a right-wing talking point that has moved from the fringes to the church. Conservatives have spent years trying to discredit King; now they have MacArthur joining their crusade. It’s not enough, apparently, that white evangelicals have largely been voting for someone who opposes civil rights at every turn.
And since MacArthur is a powerful Christian leader whose words carry a lot of weight, it’s worth reminding people what he’s said about MLK in the past and how he regularly lies his congregation.
John MacArthur is primarily concerned with his own power, influence, and control. His belief that he and ONLY he has the right to determine who is a True Christian™ has no firm basis in fact or theology. He enforces this belief in his church, giving him a solid and influential power base.
None of this gives MacArthur the right to slander someone who stood for more than he ever will and sacrificed his life for it. MLK died a martyr; MacArthur is a racist and religious bigot more concerned with his own temporal power than preaching the Word of God.
MacArthur is a hypocrite and a liar who misrepresents the Word of God to those who look to him for solace and religious education. His fervent support for Donald Trump, the most unChristian man ever to soil the White House, is proof that he’s far more concerned with power here on Earth than with anything in the Gospel.
Hypocrite much?
All of my posts are public at this time. Any reader financial support will be greatly appreciated. There’s no paywall blocking access to my work (except for a few newsletters), but that remains an option. I’ll trust readers to determine if my work is worthy of their financial support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.
If you look at the picture at the top, the double negative has an interesting effect: "If you DIDNT (sic) NOT vote" for Trump? So, in other words, if you *DID* vote for Trump, you can't call yourself a Christian.
Yeah, I can get behind that one.
Speaking of which, I am not a Christian, but I have in fact published in the peer-reviewed literature on the philosophical underpinnings of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King's arguments, and seeing/hearing/reading Reichwhiner's legislating on the subject is one of those things that can cause the veins in my neck to start pulsing in an unpleasant and vaguely threatening manner.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20708980