You thought your “conservative” pastor was immune to social justice jargon?
Better check. Better check very carefully.
My own brush with an Orwellian thought crime patrol, (background here) taught me a few frightening things about our present political reality. Upon learning that I dared to scold Louis Farrakhan for being a racist, one school district responded to the crisis by asking me to never show my face, if they ever decided to bring students back to our living history farm. Merely having the wrong ideas, even if they were never expressed to students, represented a potential danger to the children’s safe space. (They also asked us to find a way to teach 4th graders the contribution of gays and lesbians to the California Gold Rush era. Yes, really.)
It turns out my own decision to begin mocking identity politics, and the howls of outrage that inspired, is part of a much larger battle that is now raging across the country. I knew this was taking place on college campuses, but I had no idea intersectionality and the grievance tantrums of social justice activism were actually threatening conservative evangelical churches. I should have sensed something was up when a hip young, “conservative” pastor recently opined, from the pulpit, that you couldn’t say “all lives matter” unless you had a black friend. How does that work again? We can’t declare the image of God upon every person unless we have a pre-approved racial and ethnic friend mix? That sort of nonsense is being preached in church? Surely, that had to be a fluke.
No. It’s not. At the Shepherd’s conference last week, Pastor Tom Buck revealed that a young divinity student, at a conservative seminary, was asked not to speak at an event because he, and other students, were the wrong color.
It turns out that Pastor John MacArthur and Phil Johnson, along with Doug Wilson, Voddie Baucham, and about 10,000 others have now become so concerned about the problem they formulated a remonstrance. The Statement on Social Justice is a simple, short declaration that identity politics, feminism, and collective guilt for ancient crimes have no place in the pulpit. For Biblical Christians, it’s so painfully obvious a defense of the gospel that it’s a little frightening it even has to be made.
If you’ve known me and a few of my friends for any length of time, you know that many of us have abiding problems with John MacArthur’s ridicule of conservative Christian political activists. His insulting book, “Why the Government Can’t Save You” has been instrumental in putting the church to sleep. Well, apparently John and his bulldog, Phil Johnson, are repenting for that, in a round about way. Good for them!
If you want your children attending churches where your boys will be scolded for being male and your congregation will be treated to race reparation nonsense, ignore this warning. Otherwise, find out if your pastor has signed the document.
Al Mohler and Russell Moore refuse. What does that tell you? We have a problem, folks.
