T.D. Jakes is a multimillionaire businessman, a Bishop, an African-American and a regular contributor to television shows on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and Black Entertainment Television.
He recently gained national attention for rather bluntly addressing and looking at George W. Bush during a religious ceremony held at the National Cathedral. Among other things, he said: “It is not so important what we say, it is important what we do.”
Let us hope that T.D. Jakes himself will do, but also say, the right things. It’s all well and good to think that government should give people a leg up when they are in dire straights and indeed, government should do so.
However, anybody who reflects on how to eliminate poverty and does not conclude that birth control and scientifically sound education are key to the elimination of poverty and that both should be relentlessly promoted is an utter fool.
While T.D. Jakes gets yet richer off the “faith-based” programming he perpetrates on the African-American community, the poor members of that community do not hear from him so much as a word concerning the importance of birth control and scientifically sound education. Jesus is most definitely not going to be around when a poor woman’s umpteenth baby needs healthcare and for this man to be getting rich on the backs of the poor by endlessly promoting messages that don’t help the poor to advance is immoral; for him to look accusingly at Bush, as though Bush and not he were a cause of the problem is the height of hypocrisy. Poverty will never be eliminated if the government doesn’t have correct and humane policies, carried out in conjunction with an intense awareness in poor communities of what they must do to improve their lot, and a willingness to take the necessary steps.