Fox News is desperately searching for folks who represent minorities to acquiesce their hatred of President Obama. The Prayer Breakfast that launched a shitstorm of controversy over the president's critique of Christian extremism, will provide endless segments of outrage from the Fox faithful. The token, black, overcritical pundit du jour is none other than Bishop E.W. Jackson. This train wreck of a candidate was extreme even by GOP standards.
On guns, Jackson says, “Every person who has a concealed weapons permit and was trained to use a firearm…should be allowed to bring that firearm to school.” On rights for gay and lesbian Americans, he says, “How in the world can we expect our military to be blessed by the hand of almighty God if we allow our military to become the equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah? God is not pleased.” On the right-wing grassroots, he says, “It was God’s plan to beget the Tea Party.” And on the question of education, he says Obama will “force schools to start teaching all children homosexuality.”
Right out of the gate, Jackson asserted that American slavery was never practiced by people who considered themselves Christians.
"Whatever justification may have been given for slavery by so-called Christians it was because so many Christians objected to the institutions from the very beginning. And so people conjured up these esoteric ideas about why it was okay. But it was Christians who were constantly objecting to slavery so he got, he gets that wrong."
He brought up the president's 2009 speech in Cairo wondering why he didn't admonish the Egyptians for enslaving the Jews 3,000 years earlier. It should not matter if one happened A.D. and the other B.C. No historical references should ever be used to compare religious brutality, especially history involving chaste Christians.
The president is just trying to divide us, that was the real intention of his disparaging remarks on other religions that are impeccably infallible. Jackson parrotted the far-right fallacy that President Obama is just trying to rule us from his high horse, he's trying to be a messianic figure.
Like all opinions expressed on Fox News, it is easy to debunk Jackson's claim of Christian purity regarding Christians in the pre-Civil War South.
Slaveholders believed that slavery would liberate Africans from their savage-like ways, especially if they were infused with Christianity. As religion ran deep through slavery, white Christian slaveholders argued that slavery was a necessary evil because it would control the sinful, less humane, black race.
Black people were literally chattel for centuries and Jackson himself would have suffered simply for his looks. In fact, before 1774 it was not a crime in North Carolina to assault or even kill a slave. ISIL savagely burned a Jordanian pilot alive, but the history of Waco Texas in the early 20th century (not 3,000 yrs ago) had a gruesome practice of burning and torturing black people, people who look like E.W. Jackson. These were Christians from a town known for its Christian faith (it's the home of Baylor).
Jackson is desperate for acceptance within a party that truly has no respect for black people, especially those, like him, who help lose elections for their white candidates (Cucinelli). Of course he will take a stab at President Obama and his portrayal of Christianity because every other conservative Christian charlatan has also done so. How can he resist when Tucker Carlson calls him 'a voice of clarity?' The standards for lucidity at Fox News are pretty opaque.
