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It’s a safe bet that Bishop E.W. Jackson won’t take the Republican presidential primary debate stage in Milwaukee next week, but what he lacks in polls and donors, he makes up for in utter confidence.
“Eventually, the press is going to have to acknowledge that I’m a candidate with support, and then the rest will take care of itself,” the 71-year-old pastor in Chesapeake, Virginia, said in a recent interview. “We’re working right now to get on the debate stage. … If we don’t, though, we’re not dropping out of the race. We’ve got to go for the next debate and the next debate. We’re going to continue to just work at it and wait for our breakthrough moment.”
“Long shot” might be a generous description of Mr. Jackson’s presidential potential, but his previous political campaigns have borne his quixotic ambitions and given him a measure of name recognition in Virginia. In 2013, he was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor but lost to Ralph Northam. In 2018, he sought the nomination for a U.S. Senate seat but garnered only 12% of primary votes; his 2012 Senate bid won 4.7 percent of GOP primary votes.
Meanwhile, his radio show “The Awakening” airs daily on 180 radio stations affiliated with American Family Radio, a network based in Tupelo, Mississippi. He frequently discusses “the fundamental threat to the spiritual and moral foundations of our Constitutional Republic,” according to the network’s website.
As senior pastor of The Called Church, Mr. Jackson ministers to a 100-member nondenominational congregation in Chesapeake, home to many current and former military service members like himself, a former Marine.
His experience, education (Harvard Law School graduate), faith and confidence bolster his description of himself as “the complete package” among the field of 290 Republicans who have filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president.
“I really believe that without Judeo-Christian values and principles coming back, our country is headed for a cataclysm for disaster,” Mr. Jackson told The Washington Times. America’s “problem is not global warming, but moral cooling [and] I don’t hear any other candidate is saying that.”
The great-grandson of former slaves, Mr. Jackson said he must speak “the hard truths that must be told, which is the problem in the Black community is not racism.”
“The problem in the Black community is the breakdown of the family. And we’ve got a bunch of young men who have not been raised right. Their fathers have not been there to teach them,” he said.
Society needs to “raise up a generation of kids who understand that if you get an education, a marketable skill, stay out of trouble and don’t father children until you are married, you’re going to have a pretty good life in the United States of America,” he added.
He said he would immediately propose four constitutional amendments if nominated and elected. The first would “define life and personhood at conception.” A second would “define gender as having only two categories, male and female,” and a third would limit marriage to being “between one man and one woman.”
His fourth amendment would limit so-called birthright citizenship for those who have at least one biological parent who is a U.S. citizen.
“I would end having babies on vacation and getting across the border and having a baby once you get here, so that they’d be ‘anchors’ because the baby is an American citizen,” Mr. Jackson said.
“My ancestors were slaves,” he said. “I really value and appreciate the 14th Amendment. It was not meant so that the Chinese could send people here on vacation and have babies that could then go back to China but still claim American citizenship, and it’s time we brought an end to that.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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