Despite being rebuked by Pastor Donnie Swaggart for endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to become the next president of the United States, Bishop John Drew Sheard, presiding bishop and chief apostle of the Church of God in Christ, defiantly anointed her with prayer before his congregation Sunday after declaring, “I believe we have the victory.”
“I believe we have the victory,” Sheard said as he invited other ministers to join him in anointing Harris during his 11:30 a.m. service at the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit, Michigan, one of seven swing states.
“We’re going to pray for our sister. We believe that God is going to do what we’ve been praying for. And dear God, we thank you now. We thank you for our sister.
We thank you for how you have lifted her up. Now we asking [sic] that you will touch her. Let your power be made manifest. We come against the enemy on every hand, and we claim the victory,” Sheard, who is married to famed gospel singer, Karen Clark Sheard, prayed.
“Victory is ours, oh God. We thank you for this sister. We’re asking that you anoint her afresh. Keep her, oh God, in the center of your will. And God, we will thank you on Tuesday,” he continued as Harris lifted her hands during the prayer and appeared to pray along as he anointed her.
“We will thank you on Wednesday. We’ll thank you on Thursday. We’ll thank you. We’ll say that you did it, oh God, and it is so, in Jesus’ name,” he ended.
Sheard’s full-throated anointing of Harris comes weeks after Swaggart, who supports former President Donald Trump, delivered a scathing rebuke of the black church, including his denomination, which boasts more than 6 million members, for supporting Harris.
“When the largest African American Pentecostal denomination, when that leader stands up and said I endorse that woman, he was saying: I endorse murder, I endorse homosexuality, I endorse lesbianism, I endorse transgenderism, I endorse every evil that Hell could prosper or bring up to [be] right.
That’s wrong, folks,” Swaggart lamented to members of the Family Worship Center Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father, Jimmy Swaggart, remains senior leader.
“The black church votes predominantly for the party that is anti-God. What’s going on here? What’s going on?” he asked.
Swaggart suggested that some black Christians don’t like it when he or his ministry publicly discuss the support Democrats have from black churches, but it needs to be discussed because Democrats don’t support an agenda that is in line with biblical values. He also noted that Christian preachers were one of the most outspoken groups against slavery in 1860.
