There has never been any shortage of hucksters and hypocrites exploiting religion for their own self-serving purposes, and ever since Donald Trump endorsed the $59.99 "God Bless the USA Bible," there has been an increasing number of people accusing Bad Orange Man being both of those things and more. Few of Trump’s accusers, however, if any, have been as cynical and apparently devoid of any capacity for self-reflection as the Rev. Al Sharpton, a man who has been exploiting religion for his own self-serving purposes for decades.
Sharpton appeared on MSNBC’s morning anti-Trump hatefest, commonly known as "Morning Joe," on Thursday to denounce Trump in his Bible salesman mode. Sharpton said, "People ought to realize how offensive this is to those of us that really believe in the Bible. He's doing this during Holy Week. I mean, tomorrow is Good Friday. Sunday is Easter. Of all of the times you want to hustle using the Bible, why would you do it during Holy Week, which is really a spit in the face of people that really believe in the Bible from a Christian point of view.” Preach! After all, if anyone knows how to spit in the face of those who believe the Bible, it’s Al Sharpton.
After all, Sharpton is the man who gave us Tawana Brawley. In 1987, Brawley, a black teenager in Dutchess County, N.Y., claimed that a group of white men had kidnapped and raped her, and finally smeared her with feces and left her by the side of a road in a plastic bag. A grand jury investigated her claims thoroughly and found ultimately that she had fabricated them, whereupon one of the accused, former Dutchess County prosecutor Steven Pagones, won a defamation suit against Brawley, her attorneys, and Sharpton, who had made the case into a national controversy. Sharpton was found guilty of making defamatory statements about Pagones and paid him $65,000.
Some might say that leveling a false accusation against an innocent man that could have destroyed the victim both professionally and personally and left him under a cloud for the rest of his life is a spit in the face of those who really believe in the Bible. And that is not the only shameful episode in Sharpton’s storied career. He was accused of inciting riots against Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section, and of stirring up tensions (again with false accusations) that led to the destruction of a Jewish-owned store, Freddy’s Fashion Mart, in Harlem.
Of course, no one knows the true state of anyone else’s soul. It could be that Sharpton is contrite about his early days as a race huckster and agitator and sincerely regrets his role in poisoning race relations with trumped-up stories such as that of Tawana Brawley. If so, however, he has been very quiet about this change of heart. Still, Jesus said: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).
The same advice, however, applies to Donald Trump. Unlike Sharpton, whose entire career has been directed toward increasing racial tensions under the guise of fighting for justice, Trump, for all his personal faults and foibles, is actually standing with Christians in America against the Biden regime, which has treated them like enemies of the state and is hardly their friend in the best times. If only sinless men can sell Bibles, no Bibles will be sold.
Sharpton, however, was full of indignation at the very idea of a Trump Bible, fuming: "I wonder how many ministers or conservative evangelicals that [sic] will go to their pulpit tomorrow or on Sunday Easter using the Trump Bible. They ought to be defrocked if they would even try and act like this is nothing but what it is, and that's a hustle." Defrocked! Would Sharpton recommend the defrocking of any ordained minister who relentlessly defamed an innocent man in service of a race-baiting lie? Alas, he didn’t say.
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Sharpton even questioned the Christian commitment of evangelicals who did not denounce Trump. "For those in the Evangelical community not to come out and say, 'Wait a minute, during Holy Week, that's a step too far,' makes us wonder where their commitment really is," he said.
Trump, meanwhile, when he was selling the Bible, said, "It's a very sad thing that's going on in our country. But we're gonna get it turned around. Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country." How could Al Sharpton, an ordained Christian minister, object to such a statement?
