Church attendance likely has plummeted, the pastor added, because “if you’re living in the culture that we’re living in, where you want absolute freedom to do anything you choose to do, to establish your own set of rules, your own truth, your own standards of morality, the last thing you want is to step into some place that’s going to call into question everything you’re choosing to do in your life and is going to exercise authority over you.”
At Grace Community Church, MacArthur has taken strong stands against issues such as female pastors and pandemic-related governmental orders.
The Role of Families, Parenting and Culture
While discussing America’s move away from church and faith, MacArthur also pointed to the family unit’s “crushing disintegration.” The pastor, whose latest book is titled “The War on Children,” said many parents no longer guide their kids, essentially letting the secular culture raise them. That leads to the types of rebellion recently evident on college campuses, MacArthur said, referencing protests about the Israel-Gaza war.
“It’s easier for people to take a kid and put him on a drug than it is to turn off the cell phone,” the pastor told Shapiro. “It makes no sense.”
RELATED: Beth Moore and Abby Johnson Push Back on John MacArthur for Mental Health Comments
As ChurchLeaders has reported, MacArthur caused controversy earlier this year when he called mental illness a “major noble lie” that is told to make “Big Pharma” richer. Speaking at a conference in April, the pastor said conditions such as ADHD, OCD, and PTSD don’t exist, while medicating children who receive such diagnoses leads to “potential drug addicts.”
John MacArthur: ‘Trying To Uphold Righteousness’ Isn’t Christian Nationalism
Another hot topic MacArthur and Shapiro discussed was Christian nationalism. The pastor took issue with claims that church leaders should avoid preaching about morality. Both the Republican and Democratic parties used to have a “sociological view” and an “economic view,” MacArthur said. “There was never a moral issue.”
But then early in the 21st century, he added, “Politicians began to make their platforms moral—or immoral, from my standpoint.”
“When you start saying it’s pro-LGBTQ, it’s pro-homosexual, it’s pro-abortion, it’s pro-transgender,” said MacArthur, “everything has shifted from the economic definitions of the past into these moral issues.”
