In all the furor surrounding Jesse Jackson's recent overheard comments about Barack Obama, the thing being largely ignored is the thing I find most offensive: this clown is supposed to be a minister.
Of course, as with his friend/rival Al Sharpton, we all know that the title "Reverend" is just a fig-leaf cover for his real work, which is race-baiting and hucksterism. If there were any holdouts on the issue of Jackson's piety, I think they were pretty conclusively dislodged earlier this decade by the news of his illegitimate child. (Though to his credit, Jackson was embarrassed enough about the incident that he announced he was dropping out of public life for a period of time, which ended up being exactly one weekend.)
Nonetheless, it's unseemly for someone who claims to be a preacher of the gospel to be speaking this way. In reality, the only "gospel" Jackson is selling is the good news that a corporation that it will not be boycotted if it pays him hush money. Theologically, Jackson is not a Christian. As a graduate (though he never completed the work and was awarded the degree in 2000 because of "life experiences") of the Chicago Theological Seminary (which recently launched it's Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Queer Religious Studies Center), Jackson holds to a liberal theology that, as the scholar J. Gresham Machen pointed out, is an altogether different religion from Christianity, despite stealing some terminology.
So I shouldn't be surprised. Jackson's not about Jesus. He's about Jesse.
No comments:
Post a Comment