Justin Giboney is the founder of the AND Campaign, a wishy-washy organization that seeks to strike a middle ground between the democrats and republicans by always leaning toward the former, as well as a prominent The Gospel Coalition (TGC) contributor.
California pastor and theologian John MacArthur called King “not a Christian at all,” “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything 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 end of TGC’s faithfulness and orthodoxy.
MacArthur cast these condemnations casually, with an apparent air of self-righteousness that suggests 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 greatest commandments (Matt. 22:37–39) and a failure “to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14), including King’s good work of peace and justice informed by Scripture and motivated by the gospel.
Giboney gives no proof or evidence that MacArthur is wrong in his assertions, however. He simply quotes an undocumented assertion by Mika Edmondson, (who recently suggested that Jesus’s sermon on the mount was primarily inspired by, if not directly taught by, his mother, Mary and that Jesus’ turning the water into wine at Cana was a ‘justice situation’) that “King’s early seminary papers don’t reflect his final fully formed theology.”
MacArthur may take issue with some of King’s early theological work, which did question 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 seemed to “shift back toward the faith of his conservative Black Baptist upbringing.”
There is no evidence that MLK ever repudiated his former beliefs, either privately or publicly. Blogger Mark Lamprecht helped clarify some of this when he wrote in an article:
As to the question of whether or not King ever repudiated the above theological beliefs, I may have an answer.
In the past few years I was curious about whether or not King ever changed his beliefs. So, I emailed one of King’s biographers who, in turn, forwarded my inquiry to another of his biographers. The reply from both biographers was that they saw no indication that King ever changed his beliefs.“
Failing to offer even a base level of justification for the volleys against MacArthur, Giboney concludes with more baseless assertions befitting a trash article in a trash publication:
Rejecting King is no solution to this problem; he is the model of the unabashedly, unmistakably Christian activism we need—the exact kind of public, Christian faithfulness that the dysfunctional corners of the Left have eschewed. Condemning King and evangelical groups who are trying to show contrition and repentance is a move toward “bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander” (Eph. 4:31), not redemption.
Justin Giboney is the founder of the AND Campaign, a wishy-washy organization that seeks to strike a middle ground between the democrats and republicans by always leaning toward the former, as well as a prominent The Gospel Coalition (TGC) contributor.
In a talk with David French as part of the Good Faith podcast, Giboney says that all white Christian churches owe racial reparations, even new ones who weren’t directly involved with it or who have no history with it, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is just trying to get off on a ‘technicality.’
French: The Protestant church in the US is just a whole bunch of brand new institutions, right? You’ve got all kinds of non-denominational churches that have sprung up in storefronts, for example. They have a history, but it might be to 2011, you know, that particular church? What do you say to a lot of these much newer Christian institutions? There’s all kinds of them in an evangelical spaces that have exploded and grown up since the end of slavery, since the end of Jim Crow. And they’re gonna look at you and say, ‘Justin, what are you talking about? We, my institution that I had, I’m a part of, had nothing to do with it. I have had nothing to do with it. Yet. This institutional analysis doesn’t make any sense to me, because we’re not at a seminary that benefited from slavery. We’re a church that started with 23 people and an old, you know, an old 7/11 building 15 years ago, what do you say to us along those lines?”
Giboney: I would say that you’re part of a culture and institutions that have benefited in general, right? So you know, whenever we look at sin, whenever we look at Christian ethics, you got to look at the spirit of it. Because if we want to get out of something, if we want to be overly technical and be lawyers, like you and I are, we can do that. I wouldn’t do that with God, though.
And I think if you really look at the spirit of, honesty, if you really look at the spirit of what the ethic is saying, have I in direct or indirect ways had a benefit? And even if I didn’t, have somebody been, has something been taken from somebody? What is my responsibility? So yeah, we can get technical, we can say, well, you know, ‘if you look at this, we didn’t exactly you know, we weren’t the ones, we shut this organization down and started something new’.
Yeah, but the benefits of that old institutions still flow in one way or another to the new institutions, right? Even if it isn’t a line item in the budget, right? There’s still ways that that flow from one of the other.
So you got to look at the spirit of it, and Christians know that in other in other spaces, we know that in other situations, but we want to get very technical and just find ways to get out of it. You can convince yourself with that. I would be worried that you could convince God that. And so we need to look at a little bit different
The And Campaign's Justin Giboney says American churches, even if they were formed as late as 2011, should still calculate how much they owe in racial reparations, because "benefits" from a hypothetical "old institution still flow, in one way or another, to the new institutions." pic.twitter.com/h30oSZcB5e
Pastor Charlie Dates of Progressive Chicago recently hosted the Justice Summit – “What Hath Justice To Do With Righteousness?” on June 16-17, 2022. The conference features a collective of Professing Christian leaders seeking to “move the Church forward at the intersection of theology, justice, and race.”
Ironically, nearly every speaker featured is either pro-choice or has been completely silent on the issue of justice for the pre-born since the May 3rd Roe v Wade SCOTUS leak, including the revelation on June 24 that it had indeed been overturned. The silence has been absolutely deafening, and we’ve catalogued that below.
Rev Dr. Otis Moss III is the pro-choice pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. In 2008 he took over from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who Barak Obama sat under for decades preaching black liberation theology, and whose church currently follows the Black Value System. Despite a ton of tweets, he has not said anything about the May 3rd leak or recent decision, choosing instead to comment on sports and gun violence.
In a recent sermon, Moss argues that humans have the right to freedom and agency over their bodies and that the government has no right to restrict it. He says that the idea of giving the right to restrict abortion over to the states is the same logic that led states to enslave black people.
“This decision opens the door to states restricting what is known as gay marriage, states restricting interracial marriage, states restricting contraception. The state’s restricting in-vitro fertilization. But one of the biggest pieces that no one is talking about is that this decision opens the door for states to restrict the voting rights of black people..
…they said that the Constitution doesn’t speak explicitly about it, so therefore, we will give it to the state. Well, if you have a state or states that we already know have legislators who are functioning with a political agenda, let me say racist agenda, then they now have the power to restrict the rights of people, especially those of African descent.
In another, he says “A pro-life position means a woman’s health and choices are between her god, her conscience, and her doctor, and the government has no place making sacred decisions for people of different faiths and traditions.”
Fredrick Haynes is the pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church. In 2012 he famously supported Obama’s stance on supporting gay marriage, and himself is pro-choice, writing on Twitter and then saying in a recent sermon.
This past week, we heard several rulings come down from the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court that was basically put together; it really is illegitimate if we’re honest with ourselves, because there are stolen seats on that court.
…Because there are one-issue people who find themselves in churches across this country celebrating today, because they are one-issue people. Why? They call themselves pro-life. No, you’re not really pro-life. That’s an illusion, an illusion that masks the truth and the reality that you are one-dimensional persons… and that you are playing a power game of control, especially control over the bodies of others, the bodies of women, and that my sisters and brothers is what we cannot forget.
…(this woman) recognized that that whole anti-abortion piece had nothing to do with pro-life, it has everything to do with denying reproductive justice, bodily autonomy….So don’t tell me that you’re pro-life. No, you are pro-fetus. Don’t tell me you’re pro-life, you are pro-birth. Don’t tell me you are pro-life and let me talk to my bass-ackwards black folk who find themselves now jumping on board and saying ‘yes, this is a good thing because the nation is finally rising up to protect the unborn, the nation ain’t doing a damn thing to protect black-born people in this country.”
Christina Edmondson, from all accounts, is not pro-choice, but she never passes by an opportunity to dig at pro-life Christians. She’s an author who recently wrote how white Christians are racists who commit violence against black people by voting Republican and disparaging the Democrats for being anti-life. For years she was part of the Truth’s Table with Michelle Higgins, an openly pro-choice pastrix who would routinely promote Planned Parenthood and pro-choice slogans. After Roe was overturned, her other co-host, Ekimini Uwan, who has previously said that she does not want to overturn Roe v Wade, tweeted out, ‘America is a failed state.’
Edmondson has mentioned abortion a bit since the decision, but mostly to condemn those who praised it as failing to be ‘womb-to-tomb’ prolife, writing on Twitter.
Ppl can hide behind costless labels like “pro-life” that give the veneer of a moral high ground with 0 sacrifices
No universal health care
No justice for sexual trauma survivors (moreover granting abusers power)
No accountability for the sexual practices of men
No credibility. I have limited expectations for people who complained about a piece of cloth on their faces to give up anything truly costly for the sake of the unborn. Limited expectations for people who turned a blind eye to multiple sexual assault allegations to gain political power to actually care with understanding about and for rape victims seeking termination
or this, from 2 years ago.
Bree Newsome is famous for scuttling up the flagpole and removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house grounds after the Charleston church shooting and getting arrested. She is radical in her beliefs, being openly against capitalism and wants to abolish all police and prisons. She has tweeted a hundred times since the May 3rd leak about all sort social justice issues, but has not mentioned anything about abortion.
David W. Swanson is the pastor of New Community Covenant Church and author of Rediscipling the White Church. In a book review by Neil Shenvi, he surmises that the message of the book is “Whites are broken, tainted, corrupt, complicit, and in need of repair.” From May 3rd, when the news of the overturning of Roe leaked, until today, despite tweeting hundreds of times about issues of gun violence and justice and racial issues, he has not mentioned it once, nor has he said it in his newsletter.
Esau McCaulley is an associate pastor at Wheaton College and a Theologian in Residence at the hosting church, Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago. Since the Roe v Wade decision leaked on May 3rd, he did not write anything about it on his Facebook page, and none of his Twitter posts mention anything about it; instead choosing to tweet a lot about gun violence and his newest book.
Lisa Fields is the founder of the Jude 3 Project and produced the documentary Unspoken. She has tweeted hundreds of times since the May 3rd leak, promoting her work, gun violence, the shooting in Uvalde, the Buffalo shooting, and retweeting Truth Table events, but nothing about abortion or the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Raymond Chang is a pastor the President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative (AACC). We can’t see his posts after the May 3rd SCOTUS leak. Still, he posted a few dozen times since the overturning of Roe v. Wade came down, tweeting out about the second amendment ruling the day before, but has not mentioned anything about abortion.
Russell Moore has been somewhat active on Twitter since the SCOTUS leak may in May. He wrote one op-ed about it, but then nothing since then. With news of Roe v, Wade being overturned, he has not discussed it on his feed, podcast, or Facebook. Despite having a lot to say about other notable events, on this he has gone radio silent.
Justin Giboney is the founder of the AND Campaign, a wishy-washy organization that seeks to strike a middle ground between the democrats and republicans by always leaning toward the former. He is one of the rare speakers who acknowledged it happened, offering up a tweet or two about it, albeit in a dispassionate, unenthused way, noting it’s passing.
He also tweeted out a statement by the And Campaign, which reads:
“The life of unborn children must be protected, however, women should not be targeted for criminal prosecution for seeking or having an abortion. Furthermore, the holes in our healthcare system and social safety net must be addressed thoroughly if we really care about life…The court’s decision today highlights the need for Christians to address issues like maternal mortality, paid family leave, childcare and education, and economic security for mothers and families.”
Charlie Dates is the pastor of Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, and he hosted the event. He did not say anything about it on Twitter, nor did he mention the May 3rd SCOTUS leak. He tweeted about gun control and the need to go “pro-life” on guns, but that’s it. The only mention he has given it so far is during his last church service, he gave it a strange nod by telling his congregants to ask him about it after the service.
“Listen, there’s a lot to be said. You know Roe v. Wade was overturned this week. I’m not getting into that; I’m not making a political statement about it. I just want y’all to know I saw the news too. And if you want my personal opinion, you can ask me when church is over. I do appreciate the statement that the And Campaign made.”
Dates also said of pro-LGBTQ, pro-choice Pastor Fredrick Haynes, in his introduction of him:
“(he pastors) one of our nation’s cutting-edge, innovative, pressing into the kingdom of darkness, gospel preaching churches. And that church has just grown to life in amazing ways. Aside from all of that he really is, in my opinion, one of the leading voices to help frame the narrative for the church in our fight against injustice.”
(Reformation Charlotte) Justin Giboney, a co-founder of the social Marxist organization known as the AND Campaign and a prominent The Gospel Coalition (TGC) contributor, says that a rejection of redemptive social justice is a rejection of orthodoxy. To phrase this in simpler terms, Giboney is essentially saying that unless you’re on board with the Marxist oppressor/oppressed ideology and its tenets of class warfare, you’re a heretic.
Yep, he said that–out loud.
He goes on to suggest that…
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Editor’s Note. This article was written by Jeff Maples and published at Reformation Charlotte.
