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Why John MacArthur Believes Online Church is ‘Unbiblical’
And Why He’s Wrong: A Tale of Power, Control, and Virtual Worship
Renowned conservative Evangelical powerhouse John MacArthur really hates online church — despises it, in fact. In a question-and-answer session, MacArthur advised his congregation, “Zoom church is not church. It’s not church. It’s watching TV.”
During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, churches across the U.S. and around the world temporarily shut their doors, sparking a surge in the popularity of streaming services as congregants turned to online sermons. This enabled Christians to walk the fine line between social responsibility and continuing to meet together—albeit via the internet.
However, MacArthur would refuse outright to go online, and even as COVID-19 swept through his congregation, Grace Community Church continued to defy public health orders to stop holding church services in person, indoors. In fact, MacArthur told his faithful followers back in August 2020, “There is no pandemic,” and even hired security guards to stop Country health inspectors from coming inside his church during worship.
If those health inspectors had made it inside, they would have seen thousands of maskless congregants sitting side-by-side — singing, shaking hands, and hugging.
Almost predictably, Macarthur himself contracted COVID-19, though he denied it for many months until casually mentioning it in a sermon as if it were an incidental detail. I suppose it was swept under the rug because it didn’t fit the narrative that Macarthur was trying to push or his desire to emerge a hero.
And emerge a hero he did—at least to those in his church. 81-year-old John MacArthur kept the doors open, delivering defiance from his pulpit every Sunday. In fact, he sued the State of California for trying to stop his in-person church services and won, being awarded US$800,000 in a court settlement.
While other churches saw an opportunity to innovate with technology and deliver services to people who can’t attend services in person, MacArthur went on the attack, labeling online church services “unbiblical” in a thinly veiled swipe, and all those other apparently faithless churches — the ones with a…
