Pastor Jamal H. Bryant, of the Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, kick-started a firestorm of controversy by quoting a Chris Brown hook during a sermon. The pastor was discussing Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect/judge who sentenced Jesus Christ to crucifixion, when he invited the audience to relay a message to each other before referencing Brown’s hit “Loyal.” Pontius Pilate’s wife sent him a note proclaiming Jesus was innocent during his trial. According to Bryant, had Pilate listened to his wife, he would not have ended up an exile and committing suicide.
And Bryant says that too many men in the contemporary world forsake “anointed” wives for side chicks.
“Every sister elbow another sister and say, ‘He should have listened.’ Every brother tap another brother and say, ‘I should have listened to her,’” Pastor Bryant said, before adding, “Old saints, y’all forgive me, but I gotta tell you. These h— ain’t loyal!”
Pastor Bryant quotes a song about “h—” lack of loyalty while ignoring the fact that Chris Brown and featured artists Lil Wayne and French Montana have shown themselves to lack the capacity for loyalty to their significant others. Montana and Wayne are both divorcées whose ex-wives accused them of serial cheating. Brown published a “confession” where he admitted that he was “in love” with two women at the same time, namely pop star Rihanna and model Karrueche Tran.
So, “these bros ain’t loyal,” either.
In the same sermon, Pastor Bryant criticizes the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag that was started in support of the almost 300 young girls that were kidnapped in Nigeria in early May. Bryant chastises social media and mass media for not acknowledging 59 boys who were killed by the same terrorist group that kidnapped the girls in the month before the kidnapping.
“The enemy has a pattern of adversarial attacks,” he says. “[The enemy] longs to destroy black boys, but he wants to detain black girls. The killing of the black male child has become so common that it no longer gives us pause.” He then addresses violence in Chicago and the supposed ambivalence towards the death of black boys. He goes on to state that “the enemy” knows that “if I can take men out of the house, I can take the whole house.”
Pastor Bryant’s approach to addressing the very real problems that are faced by black men and the black family is loaded with his own misogynistic and patriarchal perspective. Bryant wants his congregation to believe that somehow addressing the kidnapping of hundreds of black girls undermines the plight of black boys. He operates under this pretense while ignoring the fact that names like Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin and Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo have resonated and still resonate deeply in our communities. He ignores the fact that the President of the United States has launched and is vocally supportive of My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative to “save” black boys through mentorship. He ignores the bevy of articles and videos lamenting the crises of being a young, black man in American society. He, like most misogynists, views any and all advocacy for women as an attack or a disregard for men.
“Men are thinkers while women are feelers,” Bryant also postulates.
His assumption is not just wrong and misguided — it’s dangerous. And his message is echoed by other dangerous persons of religious influence such as Shahrazad Ali. If we are truly about the progress of a people, we, as black people, have to stop believing that the recognition of the plight of women is an affront to men. Men operate from a position of societal privilege, just as whites do in the Western world. By not acknowledging the oppressive forces that stifle women constantly, we are endorsing and enabling them.
And that’s just what the real enemy wants.
See a portion of Bryant’s sermon below:
[jwplayer mediaid=”635563″]
See the full sermon here:
[jwplayer mediaid=”635575″]
