An Alabama pastor has garnered much attention after slapping a shocking message across his church’s roadside sign: “Black folks need to stay out of white churches.”
Alabama pastor, the Rev. Michael R. Jordan, of New Era Baptist Church lambasted the Church of the Highlands on Thursday as racist and “hypocritical,” accusing them of harboring ulterior motives as they plan to plant a new church in the inner-city.
“Whites left the inner city. Whites carried their churches with them, they moved to the suburbs. White folk have proved they don’t want to live next door to us, or be our neighbors, or worship with us,” Jordan told WVTM-TV in a shockingly frank interview. “Now they want to plant a white church in a black neighborhood under the umbrella of supposedly to fight crime? The real reason Church of the Highlands wants to put a white church in a black neighborhood is they have too many black folks at their main campus and they want them to leave and come to a church in their inner city.”
https://www.facebook.com/WVTM13/videos/1270069199794411/
On April 29, Chris Hodges, the founder and head pastor of Church of the Highlands, announced a new church planting initiative would take place in one of Birmingham’s most violent neighborhoods this fall.
“I have selected the Right Reverend Mayo Sowell to be the leader over there. It is gonna be awesome and we’re gonna reach the drug dealers and we’ll get the crime to stop. Come on everybody, we’re gonna be the local church,” Hodges announced recently, according to the Christian Post. Rev. Mayo Sowell is a black former NFL player who has previously spent time in prison for drug charges.
Pastor Jordan, however, said that Rev. Sowell would be nothing more than a “token.”
“The white administrators of Church of the Highlands [will] boss him and control his sermons,” he added. Now, he is actively campaigning to prevent the megachurch from planting in his area.
“I’m totally against it because their reason is not pure. It’s hypocritical,” he said. “If you don’t want to be our neighbors, if you don’t want to live next door to black African-Americans, how can you put a white church over here to help fight crime? As soon as you finish worshipping, you’re going to go back to the suburbs like you’ve done for 30 years.”
Pastor Jordan, whose interview has been watched almost 1.5 million times, had a stern message to any African American’s who were attending a white-majority church: leave immediately. “I want to say something to every African American that attends a white church: leave now,” the pastor declared. “Come to your mainstream black church. Your focus is different, our cultures are different. Again, the white institutional church is under watch because they elected a promiscuous, racist president that’s building walls.”
The pastor’s interview caused widespread uproar on social media.
“Is this guy REALLY a pastor????? God sees no color!!! How can he stand behind a pulpit & preach the word of God & say the things he is saying now,” one person commented on the Facebook video.
“Heaven has no color! This is what’s wrong with the world today, this type of thinking & mindset!” another added.
(H/T: The Christian Post)