By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Friday, October 25, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBkX8U8oy9E
Donnie Swaggart is the son of Jimmy Swaggart, a popular Pentecostal televangelist with a significant following among black Americans.
Evangelist Donnie Swaggart, the only son of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, is now coming under fire from black Christians after he delivered a scathing rebuke of the black church and Bishop John Drew Sheard, the presiding bishop and chief apostle of the Church of God in Christ, Inc., for endorsing endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
“The statement I’m about to make, I’m going to be called a racist and I will be called every name under the sun, but somebody needs to stand up and speak to the black church,” Swaggart began in his critique to members of the Family Worship Center Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father remains senior leader.
“When the largest African American Pentecostal denomination, when that leader stands up and said I endorse that woman, he was saying, I endorse murder, I endorse homosexuality, I endorse lesbianism, I endorse transgenderism, I endorse every evil that Hell could prosper or bring up to [be] right. That’s wrong folks!” he said to applause.
“And the black church votes predominantly for the party that is anti-God. What’s going on here? What’s going on?” he asked.
Swaggart suggested that some black Christians don’t like it when he or his ministry publicly discuss the support Democrats have from black churches, but it needs to be discussed because Democrats don’t support an agenda that is in line with biblical values. He also noted that Christian preachers were one of the most outspoken groups against slavery in 1860.
“I guarantee you, if 1860 was today, they wouldn’t say a word about preachers preaching against slavery, they would trumpet it. And they should. So then, why will not the African American Church stand up for righteousness and stand up for the Word of God? Come on Church, come on! You can call me a racist, you can call me every name under the sun, but I am right!” he declared in his wincing rebuke of black churches. “I come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t vote for somebody just because mama voted for them or daddy voted for them, but you vote according to the Word of God.”
Swaggart’s comments elicited much criticism across social media, but one of the loudest came from outspoken activist Church Of God In Christ pastor, Bishop Talbert Swan, who rebuked Swaggart “in the name of Black Jesus.”
“Since this bigot, cosplaying as a preacher, came for my denomination, the Church Of God In Christ, my leader, Bishop J. Drew Sheard, and the Black church in general, let me offer this saved, sanctified, Holy Ghost filled clap back to his racist, hypocritical temper tantrum about black people not supporting Donald Trump,” Swan began in an extended response on X Wednesday.
“The overwhelming support of white evangelicals for Trump exposes profound hypocrisy within their political and religious alignment. Trump’s life, actions, and policies are antithetical to the values they profess as Christians. Evangelicals claim to uphold the sanctity of marriage, yet they support a man who has been married three times, each marred by infidelity. They preach family values while endorsing someone who paid porn stars and has been accused of sexual misconduct by over two dozen women. The Bible condemns lying, yet Donald Trump is a documented pathological liar, spreading falsehoods with impunity,” he continued, arguing that white Evangelicals pretend to have an allegiance to the Bible when, in fact, their allegiance is really to power.
“The evangelical church’s selective morality — opposing certain sins like abortion or homosexuality while embracing mass violence, exploitation, and white supremacy — reveals a deep hypocrisy and exposes the fact that their allegiance is to power and racial domination, not to the gospel they claim to follow,” Swan argued.
On Oct. 11, 1991, Swaggart’s popular televangelist father, Jimmy Swaggart, was pulled over while driving in California and was discovered by authorities to be with a prostitute. The discovery came three years after Jimmy Swaggart was caught in an affair with a prostitute in New Orleans, which led to him being defrocked by the Assemblies of God.
Swaggart had been cited for driving an unregistered vehicle, driving on the wrong side of the street, and not wearing a seatbelt when he was caught with Rosemary Garcia of Coachella Valley. “He asked for sex,” Garcia told KNBC-TV. “I mean that’s why he stopped me, that’s what I do, I’m a prostitute.”