Back in 2001, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson gained infamy for blaming the September 11 attacks on abortion and increased LGBT rights. Well, earlier this week, a prominent religious right pastor stepped into that same territory.
Perry Stone, a Pentecostal televangelist and frequent TBN fixture from Cleveland, Tennessee—near Chattanooga—has lately become as rabidly pro-Trump as the likes of Lance Wallnau, Jim Bakker, Steve Strang and Rick Joyner. He was really drinking the covfefe by the barrel during the impeachment inquiry. He claimed that Adam Schiff and several of Trump’s other critics were demon possessed, and warned that he and his fellow Trumpvangelicals might have to sic God on us if we don’t leave Trump alone.
But Stone really went off the deep end on Tuesday during a prayer meeting at his church, Omega Center International in Cleveland. It began that morning, when he took to Facebook to tell his followers of a “word from the Lord” he’d gotten about coronavirus. Apparently, God told him that it was a reckoning for legalized abortion and recognizing marriage equality.
Stone referred to a number of scriptures that suggested there would be hell to pay for spilling innocent blood. He also claimed he is going through a number of things that the prophets in the Bible went through before the Israelites were taken into captivity by Babylon—including being mocked. He argued that the Bible spelled out two “national sins”—the “shedding of innocent blood” (abortion) and homosexuality. America, he said, had done both—and we were now facing a day of reckoning in the form of this virus.
Later that night, at church, Stone googled down. He claimed COVID-19 was a reckoning for all sorts of sins—banning mandatory school prayer, abortion, marriage equality. As he saw it, while God isn’t willing to let anyone perish, eventually he reaches a point where he says, “Enough is enough.” He also noted that it was no accident that the hardest-hit areas of the country were sapphire blue—San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles.
Just in case he didn’t make himself clear, Stone kept it up at his Thursday night “Firehouse Prayer” meeting. He claimed that God allowed coronavirus to happen because of the numerous “abominations” that have taken place in this country. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
Imagine if someone like John Pavlovitz, Al Sharpton or William Barber claimed Ebola and H1N1 came about because of the slime Obama faced over the years. It would be no less callous than what Stone is saying here.
Let Stone have it on Facebook, on Twitter, and on YouTube.