#1780: Harry Jackson

Harry R. Jackson Jr. is a Pentecostal bishop, senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, and Presiding Bishop of the International Communion of Evangelical Churches. He is also founder and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, a group of extremist wingnuts, and co-founder of The Reconciled Church Initiative. Moreover, Jackson is completely, utterly deranged, and an open supporter of Seven Mountains dominionism.

Jackson has for instance supported the position that the US is facing its present challenges primarily because of the actions of the Queen of Heaven, which NAR founder C. Peter Wagner and Cindy Jacobs – and apparently Jackson – think is the demonic force that rules over Roman Catholicism, Islam and other faiths. Apparently she lives on Mount Everest – Wagner has written a whole book on the subject, and bragged about how his efforts to defeat her led to the deaths of Mother Theresa and Princess Diana, and to the “earthquake [that] destroyed the Basilica of Assisi” – but she has apparently also infiltrated the US government. Yeah, that kind of guy.

Politics and race

Jackson’s one-trick-pony trick is to claim that anything and everything he doesn’t like, including abortion, contraception and gay marriage, is a particular threat to the black community and therefore inherently racist. (It’s not clear that he really believes that, though; he has also argued that minorities should stop complaining about racism and start working with white Republicans.) The IRS for instance: according to Jackson the fact that churches cannot both engage in politics and retain their tax-exempt status is a conspiracy against blacks, and according to his own imagination (and nothing else), such regulations were originally put in place in order to prevent black churches from speaking out in support of the civil rights movement (in reality it originated with an amendment introduced by Senator LBJ in 1954 in response to attacks on him by tax-exempt groups that accused him of being soft on Communism during his re-election campaign). It’s not the only time he’s missed some historical details (he has, in fact, repeated the claim several times); his familiarity with the views and campaigns of Martin Luther King seems shaky at best, for instance.

Moreover the Obama administration’s contraception mandate isa means of anti-Black population control – a “silent effort of the powerful to control black breeding” – but Jackson is a bit thin on details as to, you know, how that’s supposed to work.

And Jackson has extensively blasted what he calls African Americans’ “adulterous relationship” with Obama, “adulterous” because “there’s no romance” between the Democratic Party and African Americans and Hispanics. Just think about it. And part of the problem is the “assignment of Hell” that has been in place since 1967 and which is attempting to “erase sexual differences” through the LGBT community, but the above claims of course suggests that Jackson is somewhat confused on issues related to love and sexuality. He has also implored minorities to leave the Democrats’ “ideological plantation” (he likes to use these kinds of phrases, but rarely elaborates – it makes you look awfully silly, Harry), and reminds us that a vote for Obama is a vote to bring “divine vengeance” on America (like so many of his ilk, Jackson seems to think of God mostly as his violent friend on whom he can call to beat up those who disagree with him). After the 2012 election Jackson argued that God is moving to “take out” voters who chose “race over grace” and didn’t “care about homosexual marriage” – he himself won’t condone violence, of course, but his crazy-as-shit bulldog God won’t hesitate.

In 2016 Jackson, who otherwise seems to have been considered too crazy even for CPAC, joined Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board (in fairness, one suspects the purpose of the board was to collect some of the loudest fringe lunatics – to satisfy the Texas Taliban voter block – and let them yell it out without having to actually listen to them), and argued for instance that God won’t heal racism under Clinton because she is, like anyone who dares to disagree with Jackson, “anchored in anti-Biblical darkness.” In January (2017) Jackson’s group created a “POTUS shield” to “renew America’s covenant with God” and declared Trump anointed by them God.

(More on) zeh gays

Jackson, who is completely delusional on these issues, has called on people to pray – preferably in tongues – against “the Enemy”, Satan, whom he is convinced is ultimately behind marriage equality (also, donate money!). According to Jackson, legalization of same-sex marriage is “an assault”: “The Enemy wants it to be a legacy, or a seed that is planted in this generation that corrupts, perverts and pollutes” society. He has elsewhere claimed that Christianity is the foundation for freedom and religious liberty, but curiously does not seem to be in favor of either.

Jackson thinks abortion and gay marriage are to blame for the erosion of the black family: “I don’t know of anybody black who says, ‘I hate gay people’ [he himself prefers to call them pawns of Satan who spread corruption, pervertion and pollution]. We’re more accepting generally. But you overlap that – homosexuality and gay marriage – with broken families, and we don’t know how to put it back together.” According to Jackson “[t]wo people of the same sex who marry and try to indoctrinate children into that lifestyle does nothing to strengthen marriage or families,” and “[i]f you redefine marriage, you have to redefine family. You’d have to redefine parenting. I’m looking at the extinction of marriage. And black culture is in a free fall.” Moreover, “sexual abuse does not happen” in straight marriages; it’s exclusively a gay thing (but he doesn’t hate gay people; he only think they’re depraved, violent enemies of America and decency and possessed by Satan), and if same-sex marriage is legal, then “polygamy and many other forms of marriage” will “automatically sweep the land” (note the delectable insertion of “automatically”; I don’t think he knows what it means). And of course, to Jackson being in favor of marriage equality means that you’re, like Obama, wishing to “wipe Biblical marriage from the Earth” since you can’t have both homosexual marriages and heterosexual ones coexisting. In general, the gays will bring in Armageddon – though apparently the end times are coming soon anyways and that is apparently a good thing. He has written extensively on these issues for the Taliban leaflet Charisma magazine.

In 2009, Jackson led the anti-marriage-equality efforts in D.C., and even filed a lawsuit after the D.C. Board of Elections refused to allow a ballot initiative on marriage equality, claiming the initiative would violate D.C.’s Human Rights Act. He lost, several rounds. He also led subsequent efforts in Maryland, where he claimed that D.C. public schools are teaching “children – young children – to explore and examine the differences in heterosexuality, homosexuality and transgender lifestyles,” and that activists trying to repeal marriage equality are “not trying to impose our views on others” but that gay rights advocates “are trying to impose their agenda on us.” I don’t think that’s how it works.

Miscellaneous

Jackson also believes that condoms promote AIDS, just because.

There is a fine Harry Jackson resource here.

Diagnosis: Barely coherent bag of hate, bigotry and insanity. He’s a clown, of course (Pennywise-style), and gets a lot of attention as such, but we have to believe that his actual influence is relatively limited.