‘Zero respect for what you did’ – Jake Tapper responds to Right Scoop story on Christianity

Soooo we got Jake Tapper upset. And he came after me on the Twitters. Here’s how it started.

This morning CNN broadcasted the entire church service from the Charleston AME church after the horribly evil murders. It really was a beautiful service, and CNN should be commended for having all three hours on it.

Jake Tapper is the new anchor for CNN’s Sunday news and I’m glad he is. He’s very fair, and a good reporter. But that doesn’t mean he gets everything right.

In this case, we posted his comments in a video under the headline, “Jake Tapper asks if forgiveness of those who wrong you is particular to the black church.”

Here it is:

Now after he got some push back from someone who read my post, Tapper admitted that he did it because Van Jones wanted to say something laudatory about the black church:

A few hours later, he came after me personally to try to educate me about black churches:

C’mon dude, the New Republic? The others are meditations on how forgiveness has a special place in black churches. I responded:

This rather saddens me because like I said, I like Jake Tapper. I would hope that he could see why saying that extreme forgiveness is exclusive to black churches might offend other Christians. But he got very defensive about it.

I added:

And just to comment on the weirdness of asking Van Jones to be an expert on these issues:

Tapper didn’t respond.

Again, I think my criticism was a fair one. Especially put this way – would it be possible for someone to say that white churches practice any value of the Christian faith more or better than black churches? Probably not.

I always want to say that I found the church members’ acts of forgiveness to be an incredibly profound moment. In fact, I wrote the post about it, and called it the highest expression of Christianity. 

Hopefully someday we can have tacos and tequila shots and be friends.

If you think I was being unfair, let me know in the comments.


Comment Policy: Please read our comment policy before making a comment. In short, please be respectful of others and do not engage in personal attacks. Otherwise we will revoke your comment privileges.