Albert Mohler is not a trustworthy man. He is not an honest man. He is not a good man. And he is not a courageous man. He is a liar, a fraud, a cheat, and a deceiver of the church.
Whatever benefit-of-the-doubt Mohler has earned over several decades of service has been riotously spent like drunken sailer in the last two years. Those who still insist that Mohler is either conservative or honest is either dishonest themselves or not paying attention.
No matter what Mohler does to actively support Critical Race Theory or Cultural Marxism and to platform the most radical leftists in evangelicalism, there seem to always be some undiscerning brothers who respond, “But listen to what Mohler has said [about such-and-such].” Of course, as with any parlor trickster or carnival hustler, it’s not what Mohler says that’s the problem; it’s what he does.
Like a mentalist performing an illusion, Mohler waves one white-gloved hand off to the side while saying, “Critical Theory is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and uses the other hand to pull a Critical Theorist out of a hat, who he then hires and promotes to run his seminary.
However hard it is to nail Jello to the wall, it is even harder to get Mohler to speak plainly about his positions. And however hard it is to herd stray cats, it’s even harder to get Mohler’s words to line up with his actions. And the best squirmy, squishy, defensive-tantrum you’ve ever seen (or never seen) is Mohler being lightly pressed on where he stands on social justice at the 2019 Shepherd’s Conference.
In the midst of Mohler’s hissy fit during the ShepCon Q&A, he angrily hissed his objections at being asked where he stood on the Religion of Wokeness. Mohler is a man who serves two masters, but he does it poorly.
Many wanted to know why Mohler did not sign MacArthur’s Dallas Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. The answer, of course, was simple…he did not agree with it. Mohler is not only woke, but he’s also orchestrating a woke revival in the Southern Baptist Convention and beyond. He was no hero of the Conservative Resurgence; Mohler was a progressive Manchurian Candidate who embedded himself into the SBC’s flagship institution and is leaving it as liberal as when he found it (if not worse).
Mohler, however, didn’t want to say he disagreed with the Dallas Statement (because he is not a trustworthy, honest, good, or courageous man). So instead, Mohler said that he doesn’t sign non-creedal statements. He said…
“I want to be very honest. You have known me for a long time. So you know of my concerns. I am having before God trying to address those concerns the way I think best consistent with 35 years of public ministry…I was not particularly appreciative of being handed a statement.”
He then added…
“It is not pride of authorship but I am just reluctant to sign onto anything that is not creedal and confessional that doesn’t express exactly how I want to say something,” Mohler explained. “Not signing should not be interpreted as a rejection of common concern. I don’t think that is fair.”
Of course, there’s hardly ever an evangelical statement Mohler has not signed.
Mohler signed the Manhattan Declaration. Mohler signed the Nashville Statement. Mohler would sign a petition for Universal Basic Income if it could earn him a headline in Christianity Today.
But after saying he doesn’t sign statements that aren’t creedal and confessional, Mohler did something contrary to what he said (sound familiar?). He just signed on to the virtue-twerking The Broken Wall of Hostility: An Evangelical Statement on the Gospel and Racism.
The statement itself isn’t controversial. It’s less than a page long, says nothing that hasn’t been said a million times over, and looks like it was written by a third-grade United Methodist.
In other words, the statement is trite, un-profound, and appears to have taken no more than three minutes on a cellular device to write. The statement is meaningless drivel and serves only the purpose of providing an opportunity for the Evangelical Intelligentsia to affix their signature to something.
If, unlike the Dallas Statement, the Post-Coronavirus Virtue Twerking Statement of 2020 “expresses exactly how [Mohler] wants to say something,” then it’s the most inarticulate, unnecessary, and benign thing he’s ever said. One can hardly believe that Mohler would write something like that “exactly.”
At a certain point, which was long ago, all of Albert Mohler’s conservative supporters need to acknowledge that his actions align with his words so infrequently that he is a liar, a fraud, a cheat, and a deceiver of the church.
