I don't even support religous freedom. To spport religous freedom is to send people to hell. It's to support idolatry.
I don't think that's an exact quote but it's the gist of what pastor John MacArthur said in a sermon a few months ago, which has become a hot topic.
This was his response to being told by a representative of the Biden administration that he should be happy to hear that the administration supports religious freedom. This assurance relates to the events of the last year when MacArthur's church was under legal assault for meeting against the rules in force during the pandemic.
To review that story: the church complied with the order not to meet and MacArthur delivered his sermons to an empty church for a few weeks. Then people started trickling back to church as the threat of the disease turned out to be much less than anticipated. Over the next few weeks more and more people showed up until finally the state of California acted with various threats against the church. There were court cases and MacArthur won them all in the teeth of the continuing threats.
Since his legal wins rest on American law including the right of assembly, religious freedom and so on, it seems surprising that he would make the statement he made, seeming to condemn such laws. I should add here that he did make the comment during the legal assault that he'd be happy to go to prison, that he'd never had a prison ministry and that would be a wonderful opportunity for him. He's good at making Christian lemonade out of antiChristian lemons. To the state's threat to deprive the church of a parking area and set up a homeless camp there he said he welcomed such an opportunity to send their seminary students over to evangelize them. The parking lot was taken away although the homeless camp was not set up, but a synagogue not far from the church gave the church their parking lot for Sunday services.
In a way it sounds like MacArthur relishes the thought of persecution, and in a way that makes sense. The church always thrives during times of persecution. He went on in his statement against freedom of religion to say that Christians need to understand that in this world "we lose." We aren't supposed to win. I suppose he might have added the quote from ... Athanasius? I may have the author wrong -- "Theblood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." At least I assume that's in the ballpark of what he meant. (Later: Google says it was Tertullian, not Athanasius.)
However, he's also at times expressed appreciation for the church's continuing ability to meet because of the legal wins in their favor. So I don't think it's as clear as it seems on the face of it what exactly he had in mind when he made that statement against religious freedom He has received much criticism for the statement, but to this point I haven't found any answer he's made to it. I suppose eventually he will as the criticism seems to be increasing.
I have to think he can't have been denouncing the founding documents of America when he said that, he must have had a specific frame of reference in mind that isn't quite what we heard, but again I suppose that eventually we'll find out. Nevertheless I've had my own struggles with the idea of religious freedom granted by our Constitution that this gives me an opportunity to write about.
Since the country was settled by Protestants fleeing persecution in Europe, the freedoms they wrote into their governing documents during the colonial period, then carried over into the federal Constitution, cannot possibly have been intended to support any religion that opposes Protestantism. They would of course support individual conscience in matters of religious belief, but even that probably extended only to the various Christian sects and not to other religions in its original conception. Even if that was the predominant view, those of a different opinion also existed at least by the time of the Declaration of Independence, and had an unfortunate infljuence on the interpretation of these concepts. The problem is that freedom of religion has been interpreted over time to grant freedom to practice a religion such as Islam with its outright suppressive and persecutorial tenets. When members of such religions have political positions it's just a matter of time before they promote those tenets. Roman Catholicism is another potential threat, as it still maintains its doctrine of the Inquisition which murdered millions of Christian dissidents (early Protestants) among others during the Middle Ages; and they still have their long list of curses against Protestant doctrines on the books. Dare I suggest they're just biden their time until the undermining work of their Jesuit army has brought about the opportune moment to reinstate it all. (No I'm not talkinga about rank and file Catholics, I'm talking about the papal system.) Somehow the very foundations of the nation have been twisted against themselves to favor the very threats and opposition they meant to deny.
How could this have happened? Why wasn't it prevented by the laws intended to safeguard the legal and political framework of the nation? It's the same question as how freedom of speech got extended to such an abomination as pornogrphy and other obscenities and irrelevancie3s, and how such an abomination as abortion became a "right." And such an abomination as "gay marriage." By now there is so much water under the bridge in the direction fo these perversions of the Constitution there seems to be no way back. And now we are seeing the full-throttle assault of the Marxism that has been a big part of the push in this direction as crime and criminals are protected while the police are restricted and law-abiding citizens are denied freedom of speech, sued for refusing to support gay marraige, arrested for protecting their property from thieves and invaders, in Canada arrested for gathering for church during COVID restrictions, and having their second amendment right threatened.
In Chris Pinto's most recent documentary, The True Christian History of America, in the last section of the film, Political Protestantism, he quotes from various Supresme Court Justices in the early years to the effect that America was certainly intended to be founded on the Christian religion, meaning the Law of God laid out in the Bible. Justice Joseph Story is quoted saying that the first amendment was certainly not intended to put Christianity on an equal footing with the false religions.
The undermining of the original intent of the Constitution should have been thwarted long ago but the forces of evil prevailed. There was a time that atheists were not allowed even to give testimony in a court of law, the overturning of which would certainly get loud applause from all the unbeleivers today. Seems pretty clear from the original Christian worldview held by most Americans that the nation was to be governed by the rule of God's Law. Kind of takes the breath away to contemplate how completely that conception has been destroyed.
When a Representative recently read from Deuteronomy 22 about God's law against men dressing as women and women dressing as men, Representative Nadler responded contemptuously that there is no place in our government for that religious opinion that hurts trangender people. Or something like that. In the original conception of the government a Nadler would not have been allowed to hold office. Too late now. They've got the upper hand, they've reinvented America to suit themselves and overturned the original founding, and now it's the Christians and conservatives who are being denied our freedoms. We're silenced on the social media, arrested for protecting our poperty, sued for refusing to endorse gay marrige, having our secdon amendment rights threatened. It's only going to get worse. The devil knows what he is doing and we really aren't very bright when it comes to navigating this fallen world.
MacArthur is right that Christians are not going to win in this life. I still don't know exactly what he had in mind with his statement against freedom of religion. Did he mean to oppose the original intent of the law to protect true Christianity? As his critics have been pointing out, those Constitutional freedoms have given Christians a platform for spreading the gospel. Maybe he has the radical view that the gospel spreads more effectively when opposed and he really does object to American political protections of Christianity. But what exactly did he mean? I suppose eventually we'll get an answer.
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