A righteous furor has erupted in the past week over a credible report published by Christianity Today telling more stories of women who sought help through “biblical counseling” at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church and were told they must remain with the men who hit them, raped them and abused their children.
Notice I said “more stories.” This is not the first time such evidence has been presented against MacArthur and his ironically named church. There is no grace in the kind of male-centered theology popularized by MacArthur and his all-male elders.
John MacArthur has been a danger to the gospel of Jesus Christ for years, but he has sold so many books and generated such a fan club that few people were willing to point this out. What we’re seeing and hearing of MacArthur today is nothing new. He has not suddenly changed; he always has been this way.
The difference now is finally more people are willing to declare the emperor has no clothes.
This matters hugely because there is no single pastor who has been more influential on young theological conservatives in the last 50 years than MacArthur. Not Billy Graham. Not Adrian Rogers. Not Charles Stanley. Not John Piper.
MacArthur has been the gold standard for conservative and Reformed theology not only through his preaching but through his books, his commentaries, his study Bible, his podcasts, his videos, his conferences, his public appearances.
“To list the many things MacArthur has been wrong about would take thousands of words — perhaps an entire book.”
To list the many things MacArthur has been wrong about would take thousands of words — perhaps an entire book. He’s been wrong about religious liberty. He’s been wrong about the pandemic. He’s been wrong about American history, racism and slavery. He’s been wrong about women in ministry. He’s been wrong about the purpose of preaching. He’s been wrong about the nature of salvation. He has been wrong about Catholicism.
I could go on and on and on. There are many things I consider MacArthur wrong about that are matters of theological preference. But many of the things he’s wrong about would be considered heresy by huge swaths of the global Christian community.
Yet people listen to his sermons, buy his books, cherish his counsel as though every word that proceeds from his mouth has divine sanction. His influence far outweighs his rightness. He has infected several generations of young pastors.
At the root of everything wrong with John MacArthur is a cross complex. MacArthur is a man who loves to be hated, who needs to be hated. According to his theology, for a Christian to be hated by “the world” means they will be loved by God.
He loves to declare that Jesus was hated too, and therefore faithful Christians today must be hated by “the world.” Here again, he’s got it all backward. Jesus was crucified by the super-pious religious officials of his day — people like John MacArthur — not by “the world.” The common people loved Jesus. The prisoners, the poor, the infirm, the downtrodden — they all loved Jesus.
And here is the most fundamental flaw in MacArthur’s theology: The gospel is good news for the poor, release for the prisoner, a declaration of the Lord’s favor. The gospel of Jesus Christ must be “good news” of release and empowerment, not damnation for long lists of sins monitored by a stiff-necked elder board.
“The gospel of Jesus Christ must be “good news” of release and empowerment, not damnation for long lists of sins monitored by a stiff-necked elder board.”
MacArthur and Grace Community Church are all about judgment, not grace. So much so that they and their fellow Calvinists have redefined “grace” to gaslight us into believing God’s wrath is gracious. This is simply a pile of theological bunk.
I am reminded of the beautiful verse from the hymn “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” penned by Frederick William Faber in the mid-1850s, soon after his conversion from strict Calvinism to Roman Catholicism.
But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.
Faber could have written those words precisely to describe John MacArthur and his theology. It is a narrow theology that is so strict even God would not recognize it. Yet in the last 50 years, MacArthur’s influence and theology have spread like wildfire.
Why? Because against the threat of modernity and enlightenment, some people — lots of people — want to hunker down and build more walls of protection. MacArthur is a master architect of building walls.
Unfortunately, those walls trap people in serious theological error while being told they are being saved from serious theological error. John MacArthur is the de facto bishop of a Calvinistic, conservative cult that harms people spiritually.
“John MacArthur is the de facto bishop of a Calvinistic, conservative cult that harms people spiritually.”
Let us genuinely grieve for the women and children who have been harmed by the unbiblical counsel they have received at Grace Community Church, but let us finally admit that just because an old white man stands in a pulpit and declares he has all the answers does not mean anyone should submit to him.
As I explain in my new book, Honestly, certainty must not be confused with veracity. Just because someone is convinced they have truth does not mean they actually have truth. And there is a compounding effect of being wrong about essential things. If we can’t tell the truth about Genesis, for example, we’re not going to comprehend the truth of the rest of the Bible.
MacArthur has been wrong about most of Genesis, from the nature of creation, to race, to gender and even marriage. No wonder his house of God has become a house of cards.
Mark Wingfield
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of the new bookHonestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves.
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