In an open letter to John MacArthur, Pastor Charlie Dates issued a “word of correction” to the longtime pastor and Bible teacher. Dates also urged pastors “of all colors” to stop using MacArthur’s resources.
The scathing letter from Dates, who leads two historically Black churches in Chicago, is a response to comments MacArthur made last month about civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. During a Q&A session at Grace Community Church, where he has served for more than five decades, MacArthur said King “was not a Christian at all” and his “life was immoral.”
While acknowledging that King did “some social good,” MacArthur added that it’s wrong to “honor a non-believer who misrepresented Christ and everything about the gospel.”
In 2018, MacArthur helped draft a statement on social justice that warned about a “war on wokeness.” He has criticized Christianity Today and evangelical groups such as Together for the Gospel and The Gospel Coalition, saying they lead believers astray on social issues such as racism.
Charlie Dates to John MacArthur: ‘Your Words Reek’
Charlie Dates, pastor of Salem Baptist Church and Progressive Baptist Church, both on the South Side of Chicago, has been vocal about systemic racism within American society and the church. In December 2020, he was one of the Black church leaders who left the Southern Baptist Convention after all six of the denomination’s seminary presidents denounced critical race theory.
His letter to MacArthur, Dates wrote, is intended to be “a patient and reasonable rebuttal for your unwise and ill-timed slander” of King, which occurred during Black History Month. “These words sound eerily familiar to us,” Dates wrote. “They ring with the same pitch of those slave-holding American preachers from yesteryear who, under a supposed high view of scripture, denigrated an entire people group on the basis of race and ethnicity.”
“Your words reek with the stench of superiority and partiality,” Dates continued. “They reverberate like a hymn of George Wallace in the tone of J. Edgar Hoover.” The pastor stated:
You are them in postmodern dress. You are of the ilk of those who, in their theological lineage, won’t raise a finger to help Black and Brown people secure and maintain the right to vote thereby ensuring a better life on earth, but will lecture us on the way to heaven. You strain at an obscure point of orthodoxy while ignoring the weightier matters of the law like justice and compassion.
Dates added, “If King is not in heaven, I know not on what grounds God will let you in.”
Charlie Dates: MacArthur’s MLK Stance Is ‘Tragic and Irresponsible’
It’s “ironic,” Dates continued, that MacArthur leads a ministry called Grace to You yet denies grace to people who believe in Jesus while resisting “the evil of racism and unrighteousness.”
About MacArthur passing judgment on King, Dates wrote, “It is ironic that a man whose ministry is based upon grace can be so graceless…It is tragic and irresponsible. We are sorry to say that your argument against Dr. King is theologically inconsistent and Biblically errant.”
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MacArthur has spoken about visiting Memphis, Tennessee, the day after King was assassinated. Dates accused MacArthur of flashing “street credibility” but then finding a way “to hate the people God loves.” That’s “the same gimmick” used by previous generations of “White fundamentalists,” Dates wrote.
