The Eric Metaxas Show - Bishop Harry Jackson

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Bishop Harry Jackson presents a way to help solve the problems of the poor and marginalized across the country with insights found in his new book, "A Manifesto: Christian America’s Contract with Minorities."

Once upon a time in Radio Land, a towering man strode to a silver microphone and announced to the world these words. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am that announcer, and my name is Todd Wilkerson. And this is the show I announce. I'm announcing it right now, in fact. And you have a front-roseech to history. Yeah, and here's Eric. Hey there, folks.

This is our two, and I continue my conversation with our friend John Zmir. And after that, we're going to talk to our friend Bishop Harry Jackson. He's a black American pastor leader in America. He was with me after we left the White House grounds the other night. And our lives were threatened. It was ugly. But we don't want to talk about that. We'll talk about happy things with the bishop in a few minutes.

John Smirak, what other articles have you written at stream.org that we should discuss right now? Well, all right. I've got the one piece, and the title is pretty evocative. The Democrat program, mayhem, street thugs, and threats of civil war. And I could sum it up with one quote from inside here. If Democrats don't intend to give mobs of urban criminals permission to litigate every police shooting in the streets with riots, fire, and mass destruction, what exactly are they offering them?

Think about this. Hold on. George Floyd's, the cops who busted George Floyd were in jail within two days. And facing maybe inflated criminal charges like first-degree murder. It's absurd. They might walk if they don't fix the charges. But anyway, the system is supposed to investigate when police use violence. And if they overuse it, it's supposed to prosecute them.

Maybe it doesn't do a perfect job. If it doesn't, then we need reform, and that's something for those mayors to do, those governors to do. The president, President Trump has already met over and over again with black leaders and police leaders. I was in Dallas when he came to speak, and there were black church leaders and black chiefs of police talking about the very positive things President Trump is trying to do to help improve the training, attract better police officers, all the responsible, rational things a sane, responsible political leader would want to do. What do the Democrats want? Defund the police, disband the police. Meanwhile, keep the citizens from having firearms to protect themselves.

So who will they be at the mercy of? They'll be at the mercy of vanilla ISIS, those white communist thugs in body armor who are screaming the N-worded black people, screwing the C-word at women. They are accountable to know. No one. Nobody reviews when Antifa beats you up and leaves you on the street, there's no civilian review board. Nobody investigates that. And even if the people beat you up, beat you up that arrested, the Democrat governor will set them free. I look, I saw that in my own eyes. I was with my wife who has a hip injury and with, as I said, my next guest, Bishop Jackson, who's a black Christian leader. And an older gentleman. Right. Well, he's really struggling. He's had, he almost died from hisopal cancer. It was a miracle he survived. He now has a hard condition. And he was obviously extremely fatigued, barely walk, which is why we were walking with him to make sure he could get to his Uber. And I think to myself, if I didn't see it with my own eyes, I don't want to believe it. Like, I don't want to believe this is happening in America. We're supposed to love each other. We're supposed to agree to disagree. And we settle things at the back. ballot box. We're in a dark place. We're in a dark place. And I want to say to people who may be

on the fence, folks, this is serious. This is not, this is not our parents, America. We're at a time now where we have to understand that there are forces that have been unleashed very, very cynically by people who do not respect the Constitution. They don't respect the founder's vision. And they're trying to bring a French Revolution-style revolution to America. The American Revolution led to ordered liberty, completely different view. I think that in the next two months as we go to this election, to help people understand that there's stuff that they're just not hearing. And John, you and I, we do our best to get it out there.

Others do. But I know a lot of good people just have no idea how radical the left has gotten. I would just like to say that this evil has been here with us for a while, but it's been localized. I saw it week after week outside abortion clinics. When Operation Rescue tried to do peaceful, civil-rise style, non-violent protests, sit-ins at abortion clinics, I saw them getting beaten up, savagely beaten up by cops in places like West Hartford, Connecticut and Los Angeles, California, and it was covered up. I was praying outside an abortion clinic on Park Avenue and 3rd. 38th Street in Manhattan

and I saw a car pull up with a Latino woman driven by a guy with a woman beside him and a woman in the back. The woman in the front was sobbing hysterically clinging to the desk or she didn't want an abortion. He shoved her out. The other

woman grabbed her. They took her by her arms. Her feet never touched the ground and they carried her into the clinic right past the cops. I tried to say something. Some young young, I call him nooky feminist. Some young guy and his, it is J. Crew clothes,

knocks me to the ground. They carried that woman and she never had a choice in having an abortion. That kind of evil and violence has been with us every Saturday morning at abortion clinics all across the country. Now the violence and the chaos that has been raining in the womb

since 1973 is coming to haunt the rest of us. The butcher's bill is coming due. We have to go one way or the other in America. Either we respect innocent life, public order, private property in the Constitution, or we turn ourselves over to the demons and we ride like the Gatterine swine down into the sea. I have to tell you, I know the abortion clinic, I think it's on 34th Street in Parkette. Park Med, maybe it's a long time. It may be a different one, but in my book Miracles, I write about my friend

April Hernandez, who went into that place. And people have no idea. And this is, why it's so important we talk about this. You're not going to hear about this, you know, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the view. You're not going to hear about this on Ellen. Probably not on Fox either, except at these places. And even on Fox, they just steer away from this kind of stuff. But we're talking about human lives. We're talking about human lives, not just the child, but the mothers who are, in many cases, bullied into this. You just described the worst kind of example of that. But they are bullied by men. There's the irony, bullied by men into doing what they as mothers usually don't want to do. And Suzanne and I know

that most women, if they have somebody to walk alongside them doing their pregnancy, would choose to have the child, even if they can't take care of it, to give it up for adoption or something like that, but it's usually men who say absolutely not and who bully them. You never, ever hear that story. And so let's talk about the women. This case in Wisconsin, this guy, Jacob Blake, whom the police shot. Why, why were the police there? Because he had forced his way into the apartment of his ex-girlfriend. She said had violated her with his hand, held his hand up to his face, sniffed it and said, smells like you've been with other men. was rifling through her stuff.

She calls the cops, and these are the cops that Black Lives Matter want to abolish. No police. We don't need the police. Well, then who's going to be the victims? Black women, old people, small children. When you don't have the police, there is nobody to protect the weak and the defenseless, except citizens with their own weapons, but the Democrats try to take those away. They want us to be at the mercy of their street thugs.

And again, we have to say we've got less than a minute, but I just want to say that, folks, you're not voting for Joe Biden or Donald Trump. You're voting for the people that they will empower, okay, because one person doesn't do everything. He empowers scores, scores, hundreds of people. And we have it on the record that Joe Biden has made common cause with Beto, overwork to take away guns. That's not some NRA fantasy. That is real. He is partnering with AOC and with Bernie Sanders. It is that kind of a nightmare if you would foolishly elect this husk of a man named Joe Biden. We're at a time. John, my friend, God bless you. Thank you. We'll be right back

with Bishop Jackson. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know on the Airman Taxis Show, I get to talk about almost anything. But the best part of it for me is that I get to talk to people that I like to talk to. For example, Bishop Harry Jackson, he's the kind of guy that I would like to get on the show. Perhaps sometime in the future we can arrange that. Holy cow, here he is. Pastor Jackson, welcome. Now, now.

Eric, thank you. Do you want me to call you Bishop or Pastor Harry or whatever? known you for years, but I never, I don't even remember what people typically call you. Well, often they defer to Bishop, but I love it that my mother called me Harry. So out of his bad guy, he asked, and I think the Lord calls me son, but most people just call me Bishop or friends that you can definitely call me hearing. Maybe I'll call you Bishop Howell. No, I won't do that.

Now, look, you and I, we were together just a few days ago, so I know all about your new book. And what I love is that, I mean, because I've known you, I know where you're coming from. I know you're someone whose voice and thinking I can trust. Because right now we're dealing with some tough, confusing stuff in this country around the issue of race, particularly. And so you have a book out called Manifesto, Christian America's Contract with Minorities.

Now, I just want to say, first of all, that you are the senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C. And I've seen you at Chuck Colson events. He was my dear friend. But what is it that led you to write this manifesto? do you call it a manifesto? Well, Eric, as you know, a manifesto really is a declaration of intense. And I felt that Christians have been too disunified. We are on both sides of the political spectrum, left versus right. But I began to think about that passage in Joshua where the huge angel appears to Joshua.

and Joshua wants to know whose side he's on. And essentially the angel says, I'm on my own side. I'm on the Lord's side. And I think that many Christians have let the donkey or the elephant alone define them. And I believe if we had a manifesto based on scripture, it would make easier our decision. Who should we vote for? whose policies are right and wrong.

And then we've been dealing with this race issue. And Eric Blacks have historically voted, as you know, for justice issues. They are biblically based, the widow and the orphan, those kinds of things. What do you do with the poor? And white evangelicals have been looking at what I call righteousness issues, which are also biblically based. But the problem is that Psalm 89, verse 14, does not say righteousness versus justice. It says righteousness and justice are the foundation of God's throne. So I've got millennials who are justice-oriented, but sometimes they're advocating people who are pro-abortion, pro-death,

who've got a hypocritical anti-biblical stand. And there needs to be this clarity of how do we bring righteousness and justice together? How do we bring black and white together? How do we bring millennials and the older folk together? And that's why I thought we needed a manifesto. So this year, 2020, 18-year-old and younger, we have a majority minority population. 18 years and under, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, tie them all together. There are more of those kids 18 and under than they are white kids.

So in the future, we're going to decide, are we going for Jesus? Are we going for biblical revelation? Are we reforming the culture? Or are we going to let these hotheads with no sense of history, perspective, and priorities, just kind of defuse the opportunity for change that we have today. It's interesting, Bishop, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Shelby Steele. He wrote a book called White Guilt. And when we talk about white evangelicals, I've been shocked to see how many white evangelicals

just go along with whatever they feel they're supposed to do when Black Lives Matter has the bullhorn, the white evangelicals I'm talking about, some of them haven't even bothered to know what Black Lives Matter stands for because they think it's this term Black Lives Matter and they go, oh, I agree with that. Well, guess what?

If you agree with that, you better not get behind the organization called Black Lives Matter because they're against the family. They're against everything that the black people that I know are for. And I thought to myself, We're not hearing that.

And especially in the church, you get some churches that they think that when we're talking about racial justice, we shouldn't be talking about cultural Marxism and so on and so forth. And I'm thinking those are the people that are in the streets doing the damage. Those are not people in the mold of Dr. King. These are people with a radical agenda. And if you care about black lives, you better know that those people are going to harm black lives. And I feel like I'm no longer shy about saying that as a white person that if you care about Black Lives, you better understand that virtue signaling and saying that, well, I sort of agree with Black Lives Matter. I'm thinking, folks, if you really care about the urban poor, you better distance yourself from that. And you better have it.

It's going to take some courage because maybe your friends will look differently at you. But the facts are there. You can look at their website. You're absolutely right. I did this years ago. Remember when Ferguson jumped off. I happened to be in Ferguson promoting a book I talked with Tony Perkins from Family Research Council about personal faith public policy.

This was nearly six years ago. And in Ferguson, I heard that among the protesters, as I was sitting and talking to pastors, There were paid people protesting. And the folk in the room with me said, I don't mind protests, but I don't want paid people having to say who were shipped in or bust in from outside the region. Then one of my friends who was a reporter said that as they were on the ground there, they saw this huge drum of oil being rolled down the middle of a street. And then boom, set on fire, right? And I realized that there were forces trying to create legitimacy for things that should not be part of the conversation. In other words, anarchy was already getting in six years ago in Ferguson.

And so I've known what you're saying for a long time. So I wish I'd come up with and been wise enough to say all black lives matter. If you'd stay with me. And if I would say that instead of Black Lives Matter, I would have said the unborn babies who are aborted disproportionately in our communities who happen to be black, their lives matter. I would have said yes, the people that died in Chicago on a weekend through violence in the community. their lives matter. Then I would have added to the fact that kids growing up in the ghetto with broken homes and wind up making mistakes getting into jail, a second chance matters for them.

There's all these spectrums. So our people are confused. They think that Black Lives Matter is only about police brutality. But as you alluded to, the organization has a, oh, I'm going to call it LBGT agenda. It's anti-family. It's socialistically driven. And it wants to create a kind of panicky. And there are a collaboration of what I'm going to call non-biblical worldviews.

is that our fueling it. So what do you do? I thought, again, I wrote this book manifesto to say, folk, be clear, what are you asking for? You're mad about something. I get it. 400 years of problems with blacks, whites, and others. We can't deny that.

But I will say this, and I spoke about this in Las Vegas a few days ago. Bishop, I'm going to cut you off because it's a radio program. Hold that thought. When we come back from the break, we are talking to Bishop Harry Jackson. Don't go away. Folks, I'm talking to Bishop Harry Jackson. Bishop, continue with that thought. You were just making a wonderful point.

My wonderful point was that, and I believe it's wonderful, that a unified church has shifted things. Remember, Uncle Tom's cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a wife of a professor at Bowdoin College, and because of it, we had 10% of the population of Maine, for example, who didn't even have any slaves in it, enlist in the Union Army to get rid of slavery. A tenth of those people, all white Christians,

died on the battlefield for, the change that we've seen happen, freedom from slavery. There was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of that area of Civil War. He, a Christian, stood on top of Gettysburg, looked up, and he saw, in his writings later, he saw an open vision which told him, if he lost the hill, he'd lose the war Civil War, and he had been charged two times by the Confederates at the bottom of the hill that he stood on. This former professor of religion said, affects bayonets. They're out of ammunition.

They have no ability really to beat these guys if they charge again, but he knows he can't lose the hill or they'll lose the Civil War. slavery becomes permanent, he charges over the hill and down hill the Confederate surrender, they give their weapons to the union and we win the war. This is a white evangelical person who fights for people of color because there's a unified church. After the Civil War, one of the generals from the same state, Maine, read the book Uncle Tom Cobbin, talks to Congress, says, you've got to do something about educational reform. They fight back and forth. Eventually, they said, yes, we're going to give a black university to train these African Americans. And so Congress said,

well, because you fought for it so hard, we're going to name the university after you. you. So Howard University was named after a white evangelical general who said, I'm going to unify cross racial boundaries. And in a manner of speaking, he had a manifesto. He had an agenda that he was promoting to smooth out the racial transitions in his day. And that's how Howard University got started. So I feel like we've got this history. The NAACP, I could go on and on, was not started by black people. Most folk don't know this. It was a majority of white folk, and W.B. Dubois was only the communications director. It wasn't until, Eric, 1967 until the first executive director was black of the NAACP.

White folk with humanitarian and Christian motivations joined hand with black folk because there were too many people getting lynched. They were straight up saying, we're stopping lynching because our faith and our values won't let us do it. So my thought is with the book manifesto, why can't we do this again? The first black president, whether you like his policies or not, could not have gotten elected if only black people voted for it, period. So I mean, I just got to say, how can we forget, you know, people talk about the racism

of America, my goodness, we are by far a majority white nation. we elected a black president. I mean, it seems like we have to push those things aside. We have to forget that hundreds of thousands of white boys died in the Civil War. I mean, it seems to me at least a disservice to history and to the lives of people who have sacrificed and sacrificed to pretend that none of that happened. You're exactly right. and you are a historic writer. I'm looking at your book, Bonhofer, over your shoulder.

So you understand the power of research and seeing what really went on versus the narrative that a generation later, people want to rebrand things. So I don't know how Uncle Tom became a figure of disdain in the black community, for example, but the real Uncle Tom was a man named Josiah Henson. He was born in Tobacco, Maryland, not far from my church.

And that guy's life story is really what Harriet Beecher Stowe based the book on. I talk about this a little bit in the final chapter of my book. And now we got people who, not knowing their history, don't really recognize that faith and belief, faith and reformation, faith in politics coming together can give a moral backbone to any culture's standards. There is no doubt about that. Folks, we'll be right back. I'm talking to Bishop Harry Jackson.

The new book is called A Manifesto Christian America's Contract with Minorities. We'll be right back. Hey, Albin, isn't it time that we heard about what Janice has to say about Relief Factor? We're sponsors of Relief Factor on this program. It works for me. I talk about it all the time, but let's hear from somebody else. Here's Janice. I was skeptical at first, but because of the pain that I was having when I would substitute

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But I'm saying, give it three weeks. Relieffactor. Relieffactor.com. Folks, this is the Eric Metaxa show. I'm talking to my friend Bishop Harry Jackson. His new book is called A Manifesto, Christian America's contract with minorities. And Bishop, I know because I wrote a book

about the great William Wilberforce that he was a man who, when he became born again, when he became an evangelical, he knew that God was calling him to lead the battle in parliament. which was 100% white to end the slave trade. He knew that it would be a big battle. He knew that even though England said we're Christian nation,

they sure were not behaving like any kind of Christianation. And I'm not just talking about on the slavery issue, on every issue. And he knew that he kind of needed revival as part of that. He needed to wake up the church, to be the church, and to stand against the wickedness of the slave. trade. And of course, there's Wilberforce University named after him. I don't know the story behind that. I don't know if it's as fascinating as Howard University. But it seems to me that anytime anybody loves Jesus, they are against any kind of discrimination, not just racial

discrimination, but any kind of discrimination inequality. And this lie that is out there that, you know, white evangelicals only care about power or what these are really vile lies from the pit of hell because I don't know anybody like that everyone I know cares about what God cares about and again it seems to me that we're in a tough spot now because of the loud voices on the left pushing things like Black Lives Matter it takes more courage today to say Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization that will harm blacks. If you don't wake up to that, that that term has been hijacked, you're helping them to harm blacks in this country in the future. Their policies are going to hurt people. Those are not policies along the lines of Martin Luther King's ideas. These are anti-Christian

policies. It really is taking a lot to push back against this media narrative. Well, it is. You take example, for example, Terry Cruz, the actor. He went on to Don Lemon Show, and he basically said, we're in danger of black supremacy if we take up the mantra of Black Lives Matter. Now, he's an actor. So he wasn't debating well, and he didn't have a manifesto, the self-serving comment, or anything like this, to say, here's what I believe, separate out,

a political agenda from the call against police brutality. So my thought is, as a person of faith, we've got, as you look at my five fingers, maybe five initial issues that have to do with major race reformation or problems with the poor in America. Let's separate out this discussion, set some goals, and we can make some changes. We have in the White House now an action-oriented, courageous person who will take action. We have another group that I'm concerned about. I don't want to get too deeply political, but I do want to say this affects politics.

if we maintain the Democratic Party's strangle hole on minorities, then we're sort of like in an adulterous relationship. What do I mean by that? We get a call or knock at our door at midnight. We have somebody who wants what they want, and I'm a bishop, I'm just saying this happens in the real world. There's someone who wants what they want sexually, emotionally, whatever.

But when it comes to actually getting married, taking me out for a date, giving me a dinner, giving me flowers, if I'm in an adulterous relationship that's secret, I don't get any of benefits of the covenant of marriage. We have this situation now. I need somebody to blow up the stranglehold

by the Democratic Party, against the community. And then let's have some people bid on those, I have nine things with the word empowered, but maybe there are three or four things that the church decides out of that nine they're going to go for. Let's work on education and really get an even playing field. Let's work on home ownership

and really make sure that generational wealth is passed on in minority families. Or let's work on creating black businesses that give jobs and destiny. Let's get specific. But you need the voting block of that church once again. That changed our nation. I know for a fact that most people do not know that the Republican Party was started as the anti-slavery party.

That's why Abraham Lincoln was the first president. I've only learned this recently, and it's embarrassing to realize that the Democrats were viciously racist. This was simply a fact through history, and that even in the 60s that, oh, yes, it was a Democratic president, LBJ, but the entirety of Congress that voting, voted for the Civil Rights Act was the Republicans, not the Democrats, and Byrd, who was a mentor of Joe Biden, filibustered against the Civil Rights Act. I thought, I never heard this in school. I never heard this on TV. How have I been fooled into thinking that the Democratic Party had been standing up for

black people? How even I have been fooled into that? And I think we're at a season right now where people are waking up and beginning to see that we have been sold a bill of goods. Democratic leadership has had a stranglehold on many of our big cities. And they have harmed the black community. They have instituted policies that have harmed black families. And before we go to break, I mean, I guess I just want to say this quickly that, you know, what you said, they have taken the black vote 100% for granted. If they had succeeded in lifting up black communities, I would say, that's fine. You got to give them that. We're going to go to break. Final segment with my friend, Pastor Harry Jackson. Jackson, a manifesto is the title of the book. We'll be right

back with Bishop Harry Jackson. Stick around. Hey there, folks. Bishop Harry Jackson is my guest. He has a new book out. A manifesto is the title. America's contract with minorities. Bishop Jackson, I just love this idea that you put forward. So what have we missed in our conversation? I don't want to miss anything. Well, the overview is very simplistic, and I need to start with it. And that is, imagine that you're in a rowboat, and you're trying to get from one side of a river to another. In order to move forward, you can't just pull one row. You got to pull both rows and you got to progress forward with this intense focus. And I think here to forward Christians have not been

registered to vote so they're not pulling the political or not pulling the political or. And then others aren't even praying. They're feeling like, oh, it's the end time and evil is going to get worse and therefore I'm checking out early until my ticket on the rapture comes. I'm just going to stay here. So I need that other or a prayer. And so if you get involved in this area, many people say, oh, you're not spiritual, but the reality is some of us who are reading things like a manifesto are learning to pull both orrs. The activism being registered this year for the first time, I got on a, I was supposed to appear in the live meeting with the party of my choice and to be on several committees and to be engaged. So what minorities and Christians have in common is their lack of registering the vote, their lack of knowledge about the issues like reading a book like manifesto, their lack of genuinely praying, pulling that ore, and then acting.

So if you're a Democrat in name only and you're sitting around, you're just going to vote what's on the D category, and you don't tell people. people, you can't take the Bible out of consideration in your platform. You can't make all these decisions and not let me be involved. So my final word in this segment really is there has to be spiritual and natural engagement. Most groups I see they're top heavy on one side or the other. but right now, I'll go back to Wilberforce as you talked about. If he did not have biblical thinking with prayer, along with sustained patient strategic action, that's engagement, he never would have seen slavery defeated. We're not going to advance Christ's agenda in this generation unless we pull this boat

forward with both oars. I love it. And people have to educate themselves. I mean, I had no idea of what I was just saying before. And the most cynical thing that I heard was that Lyndon Johnson said, if we pass the Civil Rights Act, we'll have those N-words voting for us for 200 years. And I got to tell you, that is the darkest, most cynical, political thing. And I want to say to my black friends, don't be a sucker. This has been 50 years of getting nothing. And I hope people will buy this book, a manifesto, because this is ultimately about Jesus. It's not about politics. Bishop Jackson, you just, you just bless me. Thank you for being my guest. Thank you so much.