JACKSON: Blacks are abandoning the Democratic Party

OPINION:

For more than 50 years, the black community has been the wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. That may be changing. In spite of the overwhelmingly liberal voting patterns of black voters, they are an essentially conservative community. Americans of African descent are more pro-life and pro-family than the average white voter and as conservative on social issues as any white evangelical.

Democrats have managed to monopolize the black vote in spite of the vast chasm between the two on social issues. This philosophical difference has become more pronounced in the past 20 years, as liberals have embraced far-left progressivism. Their view of “social justice” embraces the killing of an unborn child right up to the moment before birth. Indeed, President Obama, the iconic representative of the far left, believes that even a child born alive should be left to die without medical treatment if the mother intended an abortion. He championed this Mengelean position as a state senator in Illinois.

I was raised to be an FDR Democrat because my father was a young man during the Depression and credited President Roosevelt with saving him from starvation. “The Republicans only care about rich people,” I was told. This was more than 40 years ago. In spite of my childhood indoctrination, as a young man newly committed to my Christian faith, I had a crisis of conscience in the late 1970s. Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank was pushing the homosexual agenda. How could I, as a Christian, be committed to a party led by Mr. Frank? In the end, I could not. My desire to be in a right relationship with God and my faith was greater than my desire to be approved by my father, my family or the black community. My wife and I, then Massachusetts residents, left the Democratic Party in 1980 and never looked back.

Democrats now have fully embraced an abortion policy that amounts to infanticide. They have also made the lesbian-homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda their vision for America. How have they managed to hold on to black Christians in spite of an agenda worthy of the Antichrist? They have shown a ruthless willingness to frighten black voters with outright lies about the plans of conservatives and Republicans. Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s “they gonna put y’all back in chains” was not a gaffe. It is part of the Democrats’ strategy of using fear to keep blacks as a captive audience. I always have believed that such lies could not distract black voters forever or keep them from noticing the increasingly anti-Christian radicalism of the Democratic Party.

All over the country, black churchgoers are now expressing disenchantment with the Democrats making “same-sex marriage” an official part of their platform. This may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. There are older black Christians who will vote Democratic no matter what, driven by emotional memory rather than spiritual commitment. Younger, committed Christians more readily see the contradiction and the irony. They are being asked to put aside their biblical and moral vision of the world and submit to the leadership of the Democratic Party because that leadership promises to do something for them. The Democrats’ policies since the 1960s have decimated the black family, perpetuated poverty and created failing schools that operate to benefit unions rather than children. In league with the National Education Association, they oppose every effort to give choice to parents to allow their children to escape failing schools.

Now black churchgoers are being told to suppress Christian conscience and remain beholden to a party that demands their loyalty while insulting their faith and blaspheming their God. For the first time in 50 years, there is a discussion going on in the black community as to whether their loyalty to the Democratic Party is deserved. Many black pastors are telling their members to stay home, rather than vote for a black president who has done more to advance the cause of homosexuality and abortion than that of black Americans.

We are hearing the rumblings of a fissure between black Christians and the Democratic Party. My organization, Staying True to America’s National Destiny (Stand), is calling for a mass exodus of Christians from the Democratic Party. We held a news conference at the National Press Club on Sept. 10 and produced several videos. This not only has prompted discussion, but perhaps has launched a movement. Mr. Obama’s commitment to the radical left’s anti-Christian, anti-God politics may cost him the election, because a constituency he has taken for granted has awakened to the truth that being the first black president is not enough.

E.W. Jackson is founder and bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries, founder and president of Staying True to America’s National Destiny (standamerica.us), a Marine Corps veteran, Harvard Law School graduate and former practicing lawyer and adjunct law professor.