June 04, 2008

Bishop Harry Jackson Should Be a Politician

That title is not a compliment. I'm making that statment based on these two videos of Bishop Jackson posted on Dr. Jerry Maneker's blog. The first one is him speaking to the group from Soulforce that visited his church, Hope Christian Church is the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. The second is an interview he gave the following week to Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network.

I make the politician remark because (1) he clearly tailors his remarks to his audience (2) he did not show the courage to make the negative remarks he made during the CBN interview to the faces of the people they were directed at when he had the opportunity a few days earlier and (3) since someone who truly had the heart of Christ wouldn't do that, he seems more suited for politics, where that is a fairly common occurrence.

The post on Dr. Maneker's blog also includes a response from Soulforce, expressing their disappointment with Bishop Jackson's obvious duplicity.

Here's the link. Don't watch the second video if you have high bloodpressure.

3 comments:

  1. Hiya
    Myself and a friend have just set up a blog carnival for progressive Christians
    The home page is here http://withoutachurch.wordpress.com/ I thought you might want to participate.

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  2. Thanks for ruining my morning :-P

    Seriously, though, I'm incredibly happy that Soulforce is doing this. A backlash of this nature is probably to be expected, but I think that it only further goes to show how necessary the effort is. Hopefully we gain supporters to our side every time someone makes such openly homophobic comments about who we are.

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  3. Mark,

    I agree. I think engaging folks like Bishop Jackson in dialogue helps expose their duplicity and hopefully reduces their ability to claim the moral high ground in the public square, which he is working very hard to do.

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