Tertullian, Roger Williams, and John MacArthur debate the perils of freedom.
Until recently I would’ve been surprised to see that question raised at CT. We might disagree about what religious liberty entails or how it should be acquired or used, but the value of free religious exercise has long been assumed across political lines in American evangelicalism and the United States as a whole.
But a series of recent comments from pastor and theologian John MacArthur reject that value in vehement terms. It’s an about-face for MacArthur personally, but the more pressing question to me is whether his new perspective will spread. The view he outlines includes some truth, but it recklessly jettisons longstanding and important Christian convictions.
Last summer, when lawsuits proliferated over California’s unusually strict pandemic limits on in-person worship, MacArthur and his Grace Community Church (GCC) in Los Angeles were all about religious liberty. An August statement from Jenna Ellis, an attorney defending GCC, decried LA County’s “[clear defiance of] the Constitution’s mandate to protect religious liberty.” MacArthur himself cited the First Amendment in an interview on Fox News. And a July statement from GCC elders, though explicitly declining to make the constitutional argument, still embraced religious liberty and argued any church closure order is an “illegitimate intrusion of state authority.”
Half a year later, MacArthur was adamantly opposing religious freedom from the pulpit. His first sermon to include this theme came on January 17:
I don’t even support religious freedom. 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; ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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