I recently came across this interview with the well-known US, mega-
church pastor, John MacArthur. He is being asked about Critical Race Theory, which he describes as THE greatest danger to the evangelical church in the last 100 years.
Really?
Check it out below. My thoughts appear afterwards:
First, the majority of MacArthur’s remarks are, frankly, incoherent. He is rambling. There is no logic to anything he says. He is simply making “authoritative” declarations, without any apparent logical connection linking them together, while expecting his listeners to take him seriously.
Apparently, MacArthur has basked in his status as an adored, authoritarian mega-church preacher for far too long.
Second, MacArthur is obviously a dedicated American individualist, as are most evangelicals in this country. He speaks strictly in terms of individual sins and personal responsibility. But that is only half the picture. Every society is a collective enterprise in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
Thus, social evils are always sins of the collective. And the collective is only changed through new legislation, restructuring, and advocacy for a renewed type of social conscience. MacArthur is either unwilling or incapable of recognizing this fact. Thus, his comments have little relevance to people working to improve the broken social structures in which we live.
To pursue justice within a society, it is not only possible but necessary to address the problems of BOTH individual AND corporate, collective sins. Like far too many evangelicals, MacArthur cannot or will not acknowledge this fact.
Third, MacArthur believes that the current controversies over “social justice” (SJ) within evangelicalism pose the most dangerous threat to the church in the past century!
Frankly, that assertion strikes me as a remarkable “chicken little” type of over statement, to put it mildly.
Why does he believe the social justice movement is so dangerous? Because, (a) in his view, social justice is actually socialism, the eternal boogey-man for American conservatives. [Does he honestly not understand that history has been filled with godly Christian socialists?] (b) He further claims that SJ is simply a “euphemism for equality of outcomes.” (c) “Critical Race Theory only wants to destroy,” “to abolish everything.” And (d) CRT insists that individuals are not responsible for evil; only society bears that responsibility.
MacArthur’s claims are nothing more than fear-mongering falsehoods. Frankly, he does not know what he is talking about, plain and simple. Each of these points is demonstrably false.
CRT uncovers the many ways in which western society, constructed by white Europeans, has legalized an unequal social system that has historically granted significant advantages to white folks while denying them to people of color. That sort of system needs to be torn down in same way that slavery was torn down by Christian politicians in 19th century England.
Every follower of Jesus, who sees every fellow human being as made in the Image of God, should want to see all racial privilege and systemic inequalities abolished! There is nothing the least bit radical about any of this!
The fact that SJ is now “dividing the church” simply reveals how deeply paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — more specifically, white, paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — is embedded within American evangelicalism!
It is always difficult for those who rest easy in the enjoyment of their social privileges to recognize, confess, and repent of their ignorance and indifference to the difficulties created for others by the very system from which they have always benefited.
I do not know John MacArthur’s heart. But I will say that he is a misguided, reactionary white man whose “criticisms” of SJ and CRT are very similar to the arguments used by Southern segregationists as they combatted the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.
Leaders like John MacArthur need to be ignored when they address important topics with such arrogance and self-satisfaction.