Topic category:  Religion & Philosophy in the News

A Gospel Coalition podcast was titled “Why You Should Avoid Political Idols When Engaging The World Today”.

In addressing the issue of “dechurching”, it was pointed out that, following COVID, nearly 40 million people that had once attended church were likely not going back.

It is believed that a significant number came to this decision have done so over political reasons.

Ironic, then, to turn to pastor, theologian, and missiologist Dr. David Platt to address this topic.

It is assumed that this ideological alienation is solely the fault of hardline pastors on the Religious Right harping on behalf of policies found nowhere in the pages of Scripture or in a manner not characterized by a kindness once referred to as Christian charity.

But in regard to the phenomena taking place at the congregation pastored by David Platt, McClean Bible Church, over the course of the past several years, droves have departed over his own creeping variety of authoritarianism skewing noticeably towards the Evangelical left in terms of the secondary matters he has involved himself with during the course of his public ministry.

One should not come to the incorrect conclusion that Dr. Platt is the kind of pulpit exegete that explicitly emphasizes Biblical doctrine to the exclusion of all other concerns.

In 2020, Platt took to the streets in a march with a cadre of other leftwing religionists not only supportive of Black Lives Matter and condemnatory of police brutality but where the typical banalities regarding White guilt and pleas for collective forgiveness were also articulated.

Yet interestingly nary a word was invoked regarding the Biblical injunction of “Thou shalt not steal” in light of the looting that took place in connection with the protest movements to which minor celebrities such as David Platt were willing to lend their notoriety in the hopes of being noticed as progressively trendy.

Platt's pandering did not end there in what one could argue was a questionable use of his free time.

This subversive ideology has come to color much of what Platt teaches in his role as pastor and minister.

For example, a Youtube video posted by The Dissenter is titled “David Platt's Worst Woke Statements Ever”, a number of these articulating even from behind the pulpit that particular homilist's understanding of social justice.

Platt now complains about those leaving his congregation.

Yet he is in a video dictating that, if you don't agree with his position on these ancillary cultural and social matters, McClean Bible Church might not be the church for you.

So why is one obligated to remain in a church where you are blamed for many of the world's problems simply as a result of how you came prepackaged into this world rather than over anything you actually did?

Seems to me one would simply be doing nothing more than what the pastor asked you to do in the first place if one left the congregation and never came back.

By Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins
Issachar Bible Church & Apologetics Research Institute

Biography - Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.