John MacArthur remains one of the leaders in Evangelicalism, due to his lifetime of steadfast ministry. Being one of the initial signers of the Dallas Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, as well as the Frankfurt Declaration. And thus when John MacArthur continues to platform woke preachers, this rises to the level of contradiction.
Dr @LigonDuncan with us today @MastersSeminary at the Central Valley location today for pastoral ministry. So good. pic.twitter.com/eGvBnCoPbF
— Scott Ardavanis (@Scottardavanis) September 13, 2022
Last week it was pointed out that Ligon Duncan taught at Master’s Seminary. Ligon Duncan has a well known reputation for being woke, solidified two years ago with statements on why black people cannot trust him.
Evangelical news and discernment outlets ran with this story. Capstone Report would go so far as to call this the death of the Dallas Statement. However what these outlets did not cover was that this issue goes deeper than Duncan having a small role in Master’s Seminary.
Grace Community Church is holding the Puritan Conference next month, and two of the headlining speakers are Ligon Duncan and John Piper. John Piper is also a preacher whose views on Critical Race Theory are an affront to the Dallas Statement. Make no mistake about it. John Piper is woke and he has denied that Critical Race Theory is taught in the church because his critiques of it are critiques of materialism.
This begs the question as to why two obviously woke pastors are speaker’s at MacArthur’s upcoming conference. We would not expect one of the initial signers of the Frankfurt Declaration to capitulate to government lockdowns, and with equal logic we should not expect one of the initial signers of the Dallas Statement to support woke pastors.
The Dallas Statement is not meant to only be signed, but to be acted upon with confidence. We urge John MacArthur to reconsider platforming woke pastors.
3 Responses
So glad you saw this about the Puritan Conference and posted an article about it.
I thought I would share the Gate Keepers commentary from a couple of years ago about MacArthur’s statement that he wouldn’t fight his friends:
“We saw this with the Shepherds Conference Q&A session this past March [2019]. We saw men on stage that found themselves on both sides of the debate on Social Justice. On one side we saw Phil Johnson and John MacArthur. On the other side we saw Mark Dever, Al Mohler & Ligon Duncan. It was the perfect opportunity to bring clarity to a chaotic & confusion situation. Instead, what we saw was Phil Johnson asking good questions in as nice a way as possible (I commend Phil for his line of questioning. He got a lot of blowback that he did not deserve), and then we saw Dever, Mohler and Duncan get defensive and downright hostile in response to the line of questioning. And then to sum it all up, we saw Pastor MacArthur give his now famous line: “I’ll fight error, but I won’t fight my friends.” Every single person who saw that Q&A session saw that Pastor MacArthur chose his alliance with these men over the truth.”
Birds of a feather flock together
It’s really sad. Actions speak louder than words.