John T. MacArthur is a Baptist preacher in Southern California. For more than 50 years, he has been pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley. He is also the founder and chancellor of The Master’s University and Seminary.
MacArthur represents a particular brand of Baptists, those intent on clarifying who is in the kingdom and who is out, who is saved and who is lost, who is a Christian and who is not.
Case in point.
In a recent public conversation, MacArthur described Martin Luther King, Jr as “not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral.” Later, he expanded upon this judgment, calling King “a non-believer who misrepresented Christ and everything about the gospel.”
What he meant and what he said was that King was too “woke” and too focused on social justice rather than personal salvation.
A few years ago, MacArthur helped draft a document to draw the distinction between justice and salvation. It is called “For the Sake of Christ and His Church: The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel.”
So far, more than 17,000 people have signed this statement.
But I digress.
The issue here is how often religious leaders draw circles to keep people out: doctrinal circles, ecclesial circles, identity circles.
It is not just a Baptist thing. In the early centuries of the Christian movement, councils of bishops would routinely issue anathemas condemning people who deviated from this or that construction of Christian thought.
For example: In 431, a bishop declared an anathema against prominent theologian Nestorius because he (Nestorius) was unhappy calling Mary (the mother of Jesus) “theotokos” or Mother of God. I’d be unhappy, too, then and now. God doesn’t have a mother, and Jesus was not God. In some circles, that is enough to make me a heretic worthy of anathema.
But I digress. Again.
It is not just a Baptist thing, but Baptists have, it seems, perfected this model of identity politics. Years ago, Baptists broke ranks with each other because of the details of baptism. The candidate was of age, and the ritual was by immersion; but because the administrator was affiliated with the wrong church or had some other supposed defect of status, the baptism was deemed “alien,” giving rise to the odd designation of “alien immersion,” a thing that has lingered in remote parts until this very day.
This must be explained because the phrase—alien immersion—conjures up images of either space travel or border crossing! Which shows how silly all of this can become, this habit of drawing circles to keep people out.
Which invokes this short poem I learned as a youth.
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham (1852-1940) is listed as its author, but it is easy to see Jesus as the real voice. It so perfectly illustrates his disposition in life, or so the gospel narratives would have us believe. It captures Jesus’ practice of hospitality and not just of personhood but also of ideas, emotions, and memories. Jesus received it all, even welcomed it, whatever the condition, whatever the history, whatever the complication.
Life is full of complications if it is anything at all.
It is these complications that can create barriers between people and communities; and barriers quickly become walls. One category of walls, especially in the world of religion, is the anathema. Sometimes it emerges as the official document of a powerful bishop, and other times it slithers out as the snide remark of a self-righteous preacher. On such occasions, it reveals more about the speaker than it does the individual condemned.
Such was the case, several weeks ago, when the white Baptist preacher of the West denigrated the now deceased black Baptist preacher from the East. He spoke a falsehood about another but in the process revealed something deeply and painfully true about himself. He is a smooth and self-satisfied practitioner of an old and unholy habit of drawing a circle in the name of God to shut out somebody he could not control.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was indeed a Christian, and I suppose Rev. John T. MacArthur is, also.
I suppose.
John T. MacArthur is a Baptist preacher in Southern California. For more than 50 years, he has been pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley. He is also the founder and chancellor of The Master’s University and Seminary.
MacArthur represents a particular brand of Baptists, those intent on clarifying who is in the kingdom and who is out, who is saved and who is lost, who is a Christian and who is not.
Case in point.
In a recent public conversation, MacArthur described Martin Luther King, Jr as “not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral.” Later, he expanded upon this judgment, calling King “a non-believer who misrepresented Christ and everything about the gospel.”
What he meant and what he said was that King was too “woke” and too focused on social justice rather than personal salvation.
A few years ago, MacArthur helped draft a document to draw the distinction between justice and salvation. It is called “For the Sake of Christ and His Church: The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel.”
So far, more than 17,000 people have signed this statement.
But I digress.
The issue here is how often religious leaders draw circles to keep people out: doctrinal circles, ecclesial circles, identity circles.
It is not just a Baptist thing. In the early centuries of the Christian movement, councils of bishops would routinely issue anathemas condemning people who deviated from this or that construction of Christian thought.
For example: In 431, a bishop declared an anathema against prominent theologian Nestorius because he (Nestorius) was unhappy calling Mary (the mother of Jesus) “theotokos” or Mother of God. I’d be unhappy, too, then and now. God doesn’t have a mother, and Jesus was not God. In some circles, that is enough to make me a heretic worthy of anathema.
But I digress. Again.
It is not just a Baptist thing, but Baptists have, it seems, perfected this model of identity politics. Years ago, Baptists broke ranks with each other because of the details of baptism. The candidate was of age, and the ritual was by immersion; but because the administrator was affiliated with the wrong church or had some other supposed defect of status, the baptism was deemed “alien,” giving rise to the odd designation of “alien immersion,” a thing that has lingered in remote parts until this very day.
This must be explained because the phrase—alien immersion—conjures up images of either space travel or border crossing! Which shows how silly all of this can become, this habit of drawing circles to keep people out.
Which invokes this short poem I learned as a youth.
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham (1852-1940) is listed as its author, but it is easy to see Jesus as the real voice. It so perfectly illustrates his disposition in life, or so the gospel narratives would have us believe. It captures Jesus’ practice of hospitality and not just of personhood but also of ideas, emotions, and memories. Jesus received it all, even welcomed it, whatever the condition, whatever the history, whatever the complication.
Life is full of complications if it is anything at all.
It is these complications that can create barriers between people and communities; and barriers quickly become walls. One category of walls, especially in the world of religion, is the anathema. Sometimes it emerges as the official document of a powerful bishop, and other times it slithers out as the snide remark of a self-righteous preacher. On such occasions, it reveals more about the speaker than it does the individual condemned.
Such was the case, several weeks ago, when the white Baptist preacher of the West denigrated the now deceased black Baptist preacher from the East. He spoke a falsehood about another but in the process revealed something deeply and painfully true about himself. He is a smooth and self-satisfied practitioner of an old and unholy habit of drawing a circle in the name of God to shut out somebody he could not control.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was indeed a Christian, and I suppose Rev. John T. MacArthur is, also.
I suppose.
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