When my grandfather died, a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. was hanging over his deathbed. His name was Bishop Thomas Lee Cooper, and he was a part of the Black church’s now-fading civil rights generation, which King defined.
It’s no great mystery why he and hundreds of thousands of other Americans held King in such high regard. This confessing Christian leader literally sacrificed his life to exemplify love of neighbor. His prophetic dream was a transparent application of the gospel, which gave his people reason to “carry on keeping on” while suffering under the sword of oppression. He modeled a tenacity and charm that challenged America’s wicked racial caste system without reciprocating the hatred or belligerence of those lynching his people. And King all the time pointed Black Americans’ hope toward Jesus Christ, not himself. It’s inconceivable to truthfully honor him without acknowledging the role his Christian faith played in his social motion.
Contrarily, in February comments more widely circulated this month, California pastor and theologian John MacArthur called King “not a Christian in any respect,” “a nonbeliever who misrepresented all the things about Christ and the gospel.” He also called The Gospel Coalition (TGC) “woke” for honoring King in its MLK50 conference in 2018, implying this signaled the top of TGC’s faithfulness and orthodoxy.
MacArthur forged these condemnations casually, with an apparent air of self-righteousness that means his theological expertise is paired with an infantile understanding of neighborly love (Heb. 5:11–13). Deep knowledge of systematic theology, unfortunately, can exist alongside a desperate need for remedial instruction on the best commandments (Matt. 22:37–39) and a failure “to differentiate good from evil” (Heb. 5:14), including King’s good work of peace and justice informed by Scripture and motivated by the gospel.
I spoke at MLK50, and I don’t recall seeing any speakers who weren’t unambiguously orthodox. MacArthur’s accusations aren’t only too evenly made. They are plainly slanderous.
MacArthur may take issue with a few of King’s early theological work, which did query Christian doctrine. However, as Mika Edmondson—himself a pastor and systematic theologian—insightfully explained, “King’s early seminary papers don’t reflect his final fully formed theology.” Not unlike Abraham Kuyper and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, King wrestled with theological liberalism but later looked as if it would “shift back toward the religion of his conservative Black Baptist upbringing.”
And notice, as Edmondson also mentioned, that Kuyper’s and Bonhoeffer’s salvation is rarely questioned. “They are given the advantage of the doubt.” Why is King held to a special standard? Even theologians who were slaveholders receive less scrutiny than King in some Christian circles.
But let’s be honest: The details of King’s theological journey have never been the principal concern of his detractors. J. Edgar Hoover and Bull Connor didn’t hate King due to his theology and even his indiscretions. They hated his audacity and the way he called out America’s sins and exposed its fictional storylines. They hated that he didn’t know “his place” and was undermining their authority.
In Acts 5, the apostle Paul’s teacher, Gamaliel, warns fellow religious leaders against attempting to kill the apostles based on their inconvenient testimony about Jesus. After reciting a temporary history of past leaders and upheavals, he says: “Therefore, in the current case I counsel you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it is going to fail. But whether it is from God, you is not going to have the opportunity to stop these men; you’ll only find yourselves fighting against God” (vv. 38–39).
The leaders to whom Gamaliel spoke had rejected the Messiah and had helped bring about his death, just as Peter and the apostles charged (vv. 29–32). Yet they were unwilling to simply accept the reality and repent. They thought they were near God, but their behavior was at odds along with his purposes.
To their detriment, many evangelical leaders (and others) rejected King’s righteous indictment of America’s injustices just because the religious leaders rejected the message of the apostles. God sent America a messenger, and a few within the American church are still unable to reckon along with his message. They remain too focused on justifying themselves to simply accept verifiable historical facts. They may find themselves fighting against the very thing they claim to uphold.
As for MacArthur, he might genuinely consider he’s defending the religion, but he’s actually defending a false narrative that has weakened the church’s credibility. People are walking away from the church partially because they will’t reconcile the double-mindedness of such a evangelicalism. One cannot worship the Prince of Peace and refuse to be a peacemaker within the social context.
That said, though MacArthur’s concerns concerning the ideological Left’s impact on the church are sometimes exaggerated, they usually are not completely unfounded. The far Left has distorted social justice and disfigured its redemptive form. It’s turn into more about individual autonomy and self-indulgence than equality under the law and social order. I too lament when Christian leaders imitate secular activists and academics in the general public square and fawn for his or her validation.
But rejecting King is not any solution to this problem; he’s the model of the unabashedly, unmistakably Christian activism we’d like—the precise sort of public, Christian faithfulness that the dysfunctional corners of the Left have eschewed. Condemning King and evangelical groups who are attempting to indicate contrition and repentance is a move toward “bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander” (Eph. 4:31), not redemption.
Ironically, those that are obsessive about political power and cultural domination are sometimes similar to those that query King’s representation of the gospel. It’s telling that he’s known for self-sacrifice, they usually’re known for resentment and self-interest. They pick up a cross and awkwardly try to make use of it as a sword, but King knew “the cross is something you bear and ultimately that you simply die on.” Their assessment of King is improper.
And disparaging King is just not enough to discredit the Christian social justice movement more broadly, as MacArthur has sought to do. To accomplish that, MacArthur would should do greater than smear King’s legacy and deny his faith. He’d should tear the Spirit-filled prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos out of Scripture. He’d should retroactively undo the eschatological motive behind God’s deliverance of the Hebrews. He’d should return and rip the center of Jesus out of the chests of Christian abolitionists.
He will fail in that effort. Social justice, as practiced by Amelia Boynton Robinson and Fred Shuttlesworth, is the fruit of the gospel and is found wherever God reigns. And King’s vision and self-sacrifice rightly made him an emblem of the church’s call “to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:16–21).
Ultimately, the justice imperative comes from God, who sits on the throne of justice and righteousness, not from any person or organization. And inasmuch as MacArthur or any others reject and even obstruct the American church’s efforts to repent of injustice, imitate Christ, and heal our country’s racism, sexism, and economic inequalities, they may only find themselves fighting against God.
Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, attorney, and the president of AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the co-author of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.
