BROOKLYN – After enduring a bruising billion-dollar 18 month presidential election campaign go out and vote for human equality.
That, in essence, was the message Bajan-Canadian Anglican Bishop the Rt Rev. Peter Fenty delivered to hundreds of cheering Barbadians and other West Indians at a Barbados 50th Independence anniversary church service in Brooklyn on Sunday.
Fenty urged Bajans who are eligible to vote to flock to the polls across the U.S. and support the U.S. presidential candidate who respected people regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, skin colour or money in the bank.
In what was seen by many worshippers as a reference to Donald Trump, the Republican presidential standard-bearer whose name the cleric didn’t mention, Fenty, the first Black Bishop in the 150-plus year history of Canada’s Anglican Church, suggested the presidential election campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, had thrust the U.S. to the crossroads.
He reminded the large congregation that the God they worshipped and served “respected the dignity of every human being”.
And that was true, added the cleric, whether people were “black or white, rich or poor, gay or straight”. After all, he added, they were all made in God’s image and should be respected.
“I can’t tell you who to vote for but I can say ‘go out and vote’,” stated Fenty.
Trump is routinely viewed in and out of the U.S., Canada and elsewhere as a racist, misogynist real estate mogul who frequently insulted women, Blacks, the disabled, immigrants, Latinos, Muslims, homosexuals and Asians. He was once accused by federal agencies of refusing to rent apartments in his real estate towers to Black tenants.
The 30-minute sermon was delivered at the Bedford Central Presbyterian Church on Dean Street and Nostrand Avenue on a chilly Sunday afternoon. Among the congregation were Caribbean diplomats, Bajans from all walks of life in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New jersey as well as representatives of Christians, Jews, Muslims, evangelicals and other faiths
Bishop Fenty said while he couldn’t tell them who to vote for on Tuesday, they should remember their elected leaders should be focusing on uniting people, not on building walls to keep out immigrants.
That statement was an indirect reference to Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the extensive U.S-Mexican border to prevent “murderers, rapists, drug traffickers” and others from Mexico from entering the U.S. Trump had also demanded that many Muslims be barred from entering the U.S.
“We are taught to make today and tomorrow better than it was yesterday,” he said.
(TB)
