When ordinations are granted ad hoc, surrounded by rather shady political dealings or, in Sharpton's case occurring at age ten, it causes many to cast a jaundiced eye upon them and those who granted them. We should point out that Jackson is not a baptist minister in the Southern Baptist Convention. He is of the National Baptist Convention, a black denomination the leaders of which would by no means defrock Jackson, whatever he should do, primarily because their constituents largely agree with and/or otherwise accept Jackson's platform and demeanor. The denomination is obviously marginalized within the larger world of Christianity. Unlike islam, it is benign. Jackson's and Sharpton's meager christian definitions are veritably dwarfed by an overt and consistent general Christian sentiment that in very many ways opposes what the National Convention tolerates. No such overt and effective counter sentiment exists for islam.
Most importantly, the original comparisons of Jackson and Sharpton to the islamics is terribly flawed for the reason that neither man is murdering people, or committing any other clearly immoral and illegal act by religious edict. Jackson and Sharpton, however close to the edge of sound morality we may find them, yet operate within the law. And this is yet another fact militating against a requirement for other clerics to speak against them. There certainly exists a requirement of allegedly peaceful islamic authorities to condemn obviously sinful islamic clerics who champion murder and many other serious crimes all in the name of allah.
Now my point on Jackson's and Sharpton's extra-church activities was not to claim them wrong. It was to claim they were outside of the church and therefore were functions that were not closely bound to religion. Jackson and Sharpton are not real pastors in the sense that they do not pastor as official designates of their denominations. They are not accountable to their churches at all. Indeed, it seems they are not accountable to anyone. So the point of whether disrepute is sufficient to negate the clerical designation is most irrelevant here. That designation clearly is not in effect in either Jackson's or Sharpton's public activities. Getting to the point of the thing, it is inappropriate to require functioning pastors to condemn titular pastors who generally do not function at all as official pastors of anything. If anyone has a logical compulsion to condemn Jackson and Sharpton it is other civil rights activists. And that simply has no import to the logical requirement of allegedly "peaceful" islamic authorities to clearly define their religion. |
