#1972: Dwight McKissic

William Dwight McKissic, Sr. is the founder and current senior pastor of the charismatic Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a leader of the Bapticostal movement (rejection of cessationism, for instance; he claims to be speaking in tongues and using a private prayer language). McKissic is first and foremostly an evil man, but he is also a serious loon.

McKissic doesn’t like gay people, whom he thinks must be trying to recruit children to gayhood because they can’t have their own gay children, because he’s moronic. When Obama expressed his acceptance of gay marriage, McKissic responded that “Obama has betrayed the Bible and the Black Church with his endorsement of same-sex marriage. The Bible is crystal clear on this subject, and the Black Church strongly opposes same-sex marriage.” Therefore “[h]is endorsement is an inadvertent [?] attack on the Christian Faith,” so “America is now a candidate for the same judgment received by Sodom and Gomorrah.” Indeed, “the moral impact of this day and decision is equal to the military impact of AL-Queda [sic] when they attacked the Twin Towers on 911,” no less – people like McKissic are not associated with the qualities subtlety, sense and being reasonable. And of course: unless gay marriage is vehemently opposed, “our children and grandchildren will pay a far greater price in suffering from a governmental sanction of same-sex marriage than we would have under segregation.” In short, “[t]oday’s announcement is a moral earthquake equivalent to a tsunami or hurricane that will have far more devastating results than Katrina.” Hurricane Katrina, by the way, was also just God attempting to “purify the nation”; “New Orleans flaunts sin in a way that no other places do. They call it the Big Easy. There are 10 abortion clinics in Louisiana; five of those are in New Orleans. They have a Southern Decadence parade every year and they call it gay pride. When you study Scripture, it’s not out of the boundaries of God to punish a nation for sin and because of sin.”

One of the reasons gay marriage must be banned, is that “parents are now going to have an extremely difficult time teaching their children that marriage biblically and traditionally is between a man and a woman.” It doesn’t seem that hard to us, but one suspects McKissic would have a hard time explaining anything in a remotely reasonable manner to anyone anyways. Indeed, fighting the gays is just like the Civil Rights Movement – and it is deeply offensive for the gay right movement to invoke that movement (to “compare their sin to my skin,” as McKissic puts it); indeed, it’s not only offensive, but “tantamount to high crime and treason”. The civil rights movement, according to McKissic, speaking at the Values Voters Summit, was a matter of moral authority, truth, righteousness and the Holy Spirit, whereas the gay rights movement is inspired “from the pit of hell itself,” and has a “satanic anoinment.” So there’s that.

Meanwhile, people like Michael Sam, the University of Missouri defensive end who came out of the closet, are merely tools for the Antichrist. Concerned that the NFL draft pick will “become the face of the ‘gay rights’ movement that takes us down the road to Sodom and Gomorrah at a record setting pace,” McKissic has warned us that we are about to bring about the coming of the Antichrist, who he thinks will probably be gay. McKissic therefore wished to pass a resolution at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting denouncing the media for their positive coverage of Michael Sam and Obama.

In fairness, McKissic has apparently spoken out in favor of taking environmental issues seriously, and is surely no fan of the alt right.

Diagnosis: A hateful, horrible and apparently deeply confused maniac. But he is surely influential, and seems to wield quite a bit of authority among certain fundamentalist hate groups.