Pastor: We must love Trump anyway
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, January 17, 2017
The Rev. Jimmy Jackson of Promise Land Ministry sent a powerful message about the president-elect to the people gathered for Opp’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day service Monday.
The president-elect is engaged in a feud with Civil Rights hero and Georgia Rep. John Lewis. But Jackson’s message was simple: “Love him.”
“We can’t hate our new president and love God,” he said. “You may not like his ways, but we have to love everybody.”
Jackson said there is a thin line between love and hate.
“We can’t look down our noses at President Trump,” he said. “Because we were a President Trump at one time. We’ve all said things we shouldn’t say, and we have overcome.”
The feud began after Lewis said that he doesn’t believe Trump is a “legitimate president,” and that he wouldn’t attend the inauguration for the first time in his 30 years in politics.
The president-elect has taken to Twitter to criticize Lewis for his remarks, saying Lewis was “All talk, talk – no action or results.”
He also said that Lewis should “finally focus on the burning and crime-infested inner cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get.”
Many other Democrats are now following suit, choosing not to participate on Friday.
Rep. Lewis is the sole surviving member of the Big Six, leaders of six prominent civil rights organizations active during the height of the Civil Rights Movement who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
The group also included labor organizer Asa Philip Randolph, Dr. King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, James Farmer Jr. of Congress of Racial Equity; National Urban League’s Whitney Young Jr., and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP. Lewis was the youngest of the Big Six and from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.