A Detroit cleric says detractors are waging a smear campaign against him and he is moving to pull a video from the Internet that detractors say is offensive and sexually charged.
Bishop Wayne T. Jackson said he's under attack because a video of an August consecration ceremony went viral. It shows him praying and lying atop new bishops as they lie on the floor, shrouded in white cloths, during their ordination at his church, Impact Ministries International on Grand River.
Jackson said the ceremony is similar to the ordination of Catholic priests. The practice of "lying prostrate before the Lord" is a common biblical reference.
"I have done nothing wrong," said Jackson, a grandfather and married father of nine, said Tuesday. "This was done in front of a thousand people. It was not done in secret."
He said he has been holding such ordinations since 1998 and does not plan to stop.
Others argue that would be a good idea.
"If I were Wayne T. Jackson, I would find another way to ordain bishops in the future," the Rev. Horace Sheffield III of New Destiny Baptist Church in Detroit said this week during his radio show on WCHB-1200 AM.
Jackson said detractors "took over" his Facebook page and posted insulting remarks about the ceremony.
He said his attorney is seeking a cease-and-desist order to pull the video from YouTube.
"They are using my likeness to spew hate," said Jackson, senior pastor of the church and founder of The Impact Network, a Christian broadcasting network solely owned by African-Americans.
"This has been a main attack on homosexuals. If (the ministers) call themselves Christians, they should be leading people with love."
The Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Black Church Initiative, said Jackson "has a right to develop any ceremony he chooses" — but the practice is unusual, offensive and seems to promote homosexuality, a taboo in the black church.
From The Detroit News:
Detroit cleric's ordination ceremony attacked | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com
stuff though.
