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Respected Black North Carolina pastors came together to blast Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson for his controversial comments about the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., NBC News reports.
In 2011, Robinson allegedly called the legendary civil rights leader a “commie bastard, “worse than a maggot” and a “huckster.” He also allegedly continued to say that if he were allowed to join the hate group Ku Klux Klan, he would use an anti-Black slur to refer to King as “Martin Lucifer Koon.” The remarks caught the attention of King’s older child, Martin Luther King III. King III said he wasn’t surprised by Robinson’s alleged remarks. “His praise for slavery, disparaging rhetoric, and grotesque characterization of my dad and his legacy are deeply worrisome for North Carolinians and all Americans who oppose racism and bigotry,” he said.
Other leaders and pastors stood in solidarity with King’s son, including Bishop Sir Walter Mack of Union Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who said he was offended by the words. Mack feels Robinson needs a lesson on what King represented and, most importantly, his words.
”What we need to do is help people to understand what King stood for, and that was to unify people and to bring people together in the spirit of love, and that is the language and the method that we need to hold on to today,” Mack said.
“We won’t glorify anyone or anything that comes against the work and the legacy of Dr. King. It’s all about the love that he presented.”
In 2018, Robinson talked down to those who admire King’s legacy — on Martin Luther King Day — and labeled him an inferior preacher. “It is at once funny and sad that so many people will follow the lead of a bunch of atheists and worship an ersatz pastor as a deity,” he said on Facebook.
After former President Donald Trump, who endorsed the candidate for governor, referred to him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” pastor of Baptist Grove Church in Raleigh, Mycal Brickhouse, labeled Robinson’s alleged past comments as furthering “a political leader who embraces a narrative of hatred and supremacy, creating more problems by casting a unifying leader as a threat.”
As Robinson’s campaign has spouted an urgency to return to Christian values, other religious leaders like Rev. Dr. Latonya Agard have called out the politician’s harmful rhetoric. According to Cardinal & Pine, Agard said that he doesn’t represent Christian values. “How does mocking survivors of mass shootings or denying the Holocaust reveal the love of God?
How does revoking the rights of women or threatening to use physical violence to control people promote the flourishing of life?” Agard, who is the pastor of Transformation Fellowship Christian Church in Apex, North Carolina, wrote in an op-ed.
“Mark Robinson has proudly done all of these things and more, yet his popularity continues to soar, and it’s soaring in the name of Jesus. But who is this “Jesus” whom Robinson sermonizes?” Robinson has openly projected his disdain for King and the civil rights movement in its entirety for years.
In 2017, he called the movement “crap.” Henry P. Davis II, pastor of First Baptist Church in Highland Park, Maryland, was taken back by his comments and cross-referenced it as an example as to why Black history needs to always be taught in schools as those he has come in contact with that knew Dr. King would “almost rise up in their graves because of the ridiculousness.” “This is also a perfect example of why certain history needs to be taught in our classrooms because it is obvious that Mr. Robinson is not up on his, especially when it comes to Dr. King and those who were those who partnered alongside Dr. King,” Davis said.
