Black was Beautiful. “All is vanity!” Here is what killed my love for Marilyn Reed. She became convinced the Black Church had all the answers – and I stood in THE WAY!
Jon
The black pastors opposed to meeting with Trump were concerned their colleagues who signed up to meet with the billionaire were betraying the black church and giving legitimacy to a candidate who doesn’t care about the black community.
“We are concerned that your choice to meet with Mr. Trump, particularly in such a visible way, will not only de-radicalize the black prophetic political tradition, but will also give Trump the appearance of legitimacy among those who follow your leadership and respect your position as clergy. Mr.Trump will use that legitimacy to gain black political support, while using that support to govern in a way that harms black communities.
The Rev. Jamal H. Bryant, pastor of Northwest Baltimore’s Empowerment Temple church, said the group of black pastors who met with GOP 2016 presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Monday are worse than prostitutes.
During an interview on CNN Monday night where he sparred with Pastor James Davis on whether or not the meeting with the billionaire real estate mogul had accomplished anything, Bryant doubled down on previous comments he made when he likened the pastors to prostitutes.
“I wanna apologize because prostitutes get money. And the 100 that went in there walked away with nothing. They did it for free. So there’s another word for that and I would not use that language on the family channel. What I would suggest is that you couldn’t find a hundred white pastors to do the endorsement. Not a hundred Rabbis, not a hundred Imams,” charged Bryant in the interview.
Since Trump’s campaign announced on Nov. 25 that “a coalition of 100 African-American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders” would be meeting with him on Monday, many black clergy have spoken out in opposition to sitting with the bombastic billionaire because of his brash discussion on race.
“Mr. Trump routinely uses overtly divisive and racist language on the campaign trail. Most recently, he admitted his supporters were justified for punching and kicking a black protester who had attended a Trump rally with the intent to remind the crowd that “Black Lives Matter,”” noted more than 100 black clergy in an open letter to their colleagues published in Ebony prior to Monday’s meeting.
It continued: “Trump followed this action by re-tweeting inaccurate statistics about crime prevalence rates in black communities — insinuating that black people are more violent than other groups. Those statistics did not reflect the fact that most crimes are intraracial, meaning that most people do harm to people of their own race. They also did not speak to the crime of neoliberalism, capitalism, and white supremacy, which kill thousands of black and nonblack people each day.”
In the ceremony, Jackson tells the men, “You got to be buried… you got to die.” With the contemporary gospel song “I Give Myself Away” playing in the background, the men first laid face down on the ground. In the video depicting the ritual, Jackson circles them a number of times, appearing to grab their ankles. When the two men were covered, face down, in white sheets, Jackson then covered them in another red sheet, and promptly laid on top of each of them, one at a time, to the audience’s approval. After being helped up, Jackson removed the sheets.
Jackson defended the act to Fox 2 Detroit as nonsexual, saying the bishops were being consecrated under his authority. “For somebody to take that and try to use that, you know, in a perverted way, we pray for them. We walk in love,” he said in an interview with Fox 2 Detroit. He lambasted detractors, saying, “if you’re ignorant about something, you need to shut up.”
Some evidence shows that Jackson’s supporters worked to have the videos removed from the internet. Before one, on a YouTube channel titled “Exit Churchianity,” a script reads “Attention Wayne Jackson defenders: A false DMCA complaint was filed against this video, so I filed a counter-notice to pursue legal action. In response, YouTube RESTORED this video. So if you try to censor criticism of this video by filing a false DMCA complaint, I will pursue legal action against you. LET IT BE KNOWN.”
The black church, at its best, opens its doors to all no matter what they’ve done. It’s the only way the black community could have survived slavery, the de facto slavery that followed, the lynchings and Jim Crow and the everyday institutional discrimination that persists in the criminal justice and educational systems.
That’s what Jackson was trying to tap into — and that’s what Trump exploited. Trump is a man who wassued twice by the Justice Department for discriminating against black people; a man that a former business associate said believes black people have a lazy trait; the man who helped vilify and send five innocent young men to prison in New York; the man who demeaned the nation’s first black president by pushing a fringe birther movement into the mainstream — and neither apologized nor acknowledged any of it.
He then kicked off his presidential campaign by painting Mexicans as rapists and murderers, proposed a complete ban on Muslims entering the country, made racist allegations against a federal judge, attacked a Muslim-American Gold Star family and gave one of his most hate-filled speeches about undocumented people just a few days ago.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/04/opinions/black-pastor-shouldnt-have-invited-trump-to-church-bailey/
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/11/cleveland_heights_pastor_darre.html
Scott has been less progressive when it comes to accepting gays.
In 1997, New Spirit came under fire for Scott’s plans to host Angie and Debbie Winans, the gospel duo whose song “Not Natural” was criticized for including anti-gay lyrics.
Scott, according to a Plain Dealer article at the time, said his church believes the Bible is “anti-homosexuality.”
In 1998, a Plain Dealer reporter observed Scott bring “the congregation to its feet with his condemnations of … the open acceptance of homosexuality in other churches.” More from that profile:
“The presence of the Lord is in this place. He’s in your life. That’s why you can’t come over here and get away with that mess you used to get away with,” Scott says. “He’ll either convict you and get you to stop, or he’ll send his judgment upon you to get you to stop.
“But either way, baby, when you get to this ministry, the mess is definitely going to stop.”
Must See! Black Pastor BRINGS DOWN THE HOUSE at Trump Cleveland Rally! (VIDEO)
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