NEW YORK – Gospel singer Donnie McClurkin provided the inspiration, a former Miss America provided the poise, Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele supplied the humor and a Detroit minister came close to turning a Republican-sponsored prayer breakfast into a revival meeting that focused on the topics of gay rights and abortion yesterday.
About 400 people – many of them black delegates to the Republican national convention which concludes tonight when President Bush is expected to give his acceptance speech – gathered in a hall of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for a “National Prayer Breakfast” sponsored by GOPAC, a Republican political action committee headed by former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts.
“I need not tell you that there’s a move to redefine marriage today and to normalize homosexuality,” said Glenn R. Plummer, the events keynote speaker, as many in the audience applauded. The chairman of Christian Television Network and senior pastor of Ambassadors for Christ Church in Detroit, Plummer lamented what he claimed were two million black fetuses aborted since the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision was handed down in 1973.
“Everything about it [the speech] was great,” Doug Moore, a black delegate from Montgomery, Ala., told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We need more of this kind of activity, especially in the black community. Nobody talks about marriage, disrespect of elders, homosexuality. It’s destroying our community.”
Richard Finley, another Alabama delegate, agreed.
“The minister hit upon some good points,” he said. “Our people follow this left-wing agenda. Plummer said the number of black babies aborted since Roe vs. Wade was two million. I’ve read that number is more like 13 million. There have been 13 million abortions since Roe vs. Wade. We don’t have time to follow the homosexuality and abortion agenda. We need to move back to the center.”
Finley said he was in the civil rights movement in Alabama and noticed a difference between blacks and whites working in the movement. “Most of the whites that were involved had separate agendas involving abortion rights or homosexual rights,” he said, adding that black America needs to return to its spiritual roots.
“We came up out of slavery in this country by faith,” Finley said.
Faith was a constant theme at the prayer breakfast. Erika Harold, the 2003 Miss America, was the mistress of ceremony for the affair and often spoke of her faith. So did Watts, who said the purpose of the breakfast was to “pray for our nation, our world and our leaders.”
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele continued the faith theme – but not before injecting a bit of humor into the proceedings. Steele joked that he and Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. were at a function when Steele put his arm around Ehrlich and asked, “Governor, in light of the recent problems in the governor’s office in New Jersey, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
Also in attending the event were Bishop Keith A. Butler, the founder and president of the Word of Faith International Christian Center and Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., the founder of the Nueva Esperanza Academy, who received the “Values in Education Awards.” They run by educational institutions geared to, respectively, black and Hispanic students.
Day Lipford-Gardner, the first black woman who made it to the list of 10 finalists in the Miss America pageant, also attended the GOP prayer breakfast.
“Sometimes pioneers don’t get the recognition they deserve,” Harold said as she acknowledged Lipford-Gardner’s presence. “I just want to say I wouldn’t be where I was if (Lipford-Gardner) hadn’t walked down that runway first.”
That was in 1976, said Lipford-Gardner, who is now 49. “This is phenomenal,” she said of the prayer breakfast. “I was very pleased to hear all the speeches, and Donnie McClurkin was, of course, the icing on the cake. I’m glad to see so many people here giving praise to the Lord.
