John MacArthur should serve as an example of what every faithful pastor and faithful church should do. MacArthur has risked his own livelihood — and arguably, his life — by standing on the front lines of the fight against tyranny as his church faces multiple legal battles, shutdown orders, and threats of fines and even imprisonment, for continuing to hold worship services during the coronavirus pandemic.

MacArthur has faithfully continued to serve God and serve his church, while the government has launched an all-out assault against Grace Community Church in Los Angeles. In the meantime, MacArthur has complained that no other church leaders have stood with him.

Today, that complaint is still valid as Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has continued to remain silent as MacArthur faces this assault mostly on his own.

And yet, despite Moore’s deafening silence on the attacks that John MacArthur has faced, Moore proudly boasts a woke Southern Baptist Church as a “model” for how churches should respond to government intrusion into religious liberty. Moore responds to Mark Dever’s Capitol Hill Baptist Church — who is also facing an intrusion against their freedom to gather, despite their proclivity toward the social gospel — as an example of how to fight this intrusion, despite the fact that John MacArthur has been fighting this in much the same way for months.

“Capitol Hill Baptist Church has served as a model for all of us in engaging this matter with the governing authorities,” Moore says. “They sought out a peaceable resolution and have consistently met and exceeded public health guidelines. The District of Columbia, sadly, has chosen to act inconsistently and arbitrarily, treating houses of worship by standards other than those necessary to maintain public health, thereby coming into conflict with First Amendment protections. Let’s pray that the District will quickly reconsider their actions, or that the courts will do so for them, and that the church and the government in our nation’s capital can both serve their neighbors freely in their respective spheres.”

The ERLC then goes on to explain what the legal arguments are against the government intrusion against Capitol Hill, which are mostly identical to the arguments MacArthur and his church have made. Yet, Moore doesn’t seem compelled to speak on behalf of Grace Community Church — yet, he is compelled to defend Islamic Mosques — and has showed himself to be given much more to social justice causes than the gospel.