Is Religious Liberty Really a Dance With the Devil? by BONNIE KRISTIAN for Christianity Today
Tertullian, Roger Williams, and John MacArthur debate the perils of freedom.
ntil 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.
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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; I support hell; I support the kingdom of darkness.” You can’t say that. No Christian with half a brain would say, ‘We support religious freedom.’ We support the truth!
MacArthur continued on January 24:
Now I told you last week that I do not believe as a Christian that I can support strongly freedom of religion, because that would be to violate the first commandment, right? “Have no other gods.” You say, “Well, doesn’t the church need freedom of religion to move forward?” No. In no way does any political law aid or hinder the church of Jesus Christ. We are a separate kingdom.
He returned to the topic again on February 28:
I said I couldn’t fight for religious freedom because that would be fighting for Satan to be successful, because every single religion in the world except the truth of Christianity is a lie from hell. You say, “Well, isn’t religious freedom important for Christianity?” No, it’s meaningless.
And in a “State of the Church” address on March 3, MacArthur said defending religious liberty is “fight[ing] for idolatry” and “looking for alliances with Satan.”
