Commentary : Jackson Marries Televangelism to Politics, and Enlightens Them Both

The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s moving speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday convinced me of something: He is the best TV evangelist in America.

Although newspaper commentators on the speech seem not to have interpreted it as such, Jackson preached a sermon to the delegates and the nation.

He began by telling the conventioneers--”red, yellow, brown, black and white”--that they are “precious in God’s sight.” He noted how his family had endured pain, anxiety, threat and fear during the campaign but were strengthened by “a faith in God.”

In a manner reminiscent of a letter of the Apostle Paul, he thanked various family members, Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta and former President Jimmy Carter for their help. And he saluted the heroes and martyrs who paved the way for the civil rights movement and his candidacy.

Rosa Parks was there as a living witness; Viola Liuzzo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and “Schwerner, Goodman and Charney--two Jews and a black--found in a common grave, riddled with bullets” were all there in spirit. He spoke of moving from a battleground to common ground and compared it to Jerusalem, “the intersection where many trails met” and the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In his appeal for party unity, he used the prophet Isaiah’s parable of the lion and lamb lying down together in the messianic era (Is. 11:6). “Neither lions nor lambs can survive nuclear war. If lions and lambs can find common ground, surely we can.” He alluded to the Bible again when he spoke of how Jesus did not do his own will but God’s.

Again sounding like Paul in his letters, he spoke autobiographically of his birth at home to an unwed mother and of growing up in a slum. He closed by noting that “the God that we serve, that endowed our nation, did not bring us this far to leave us now.”

But if this were all the religion in Jackson’s oration it would not have moistened the eyes and moved the hearts of so many of the delegates and so many others watching at home. All of us--even those like myself who have serious disagreements with Jackson--were caught off guard by his prophetic vision of a nation that grieves for its unemployed, that cares about its working poor, that gives hope to its ghetto youth, that reaches out to its AIDS victims and handicapped.

He spoke too of peace, in Central America and the Middle East, between the superpowers.

And he challenged the young to “dream of a new value system,” and of “a world where we measure character by how much we share and care, not by how much we take and consume.”

To characterize Jackson as the best “televangelist” in America might seem to some like damning by faint praise. In fact, there is about him some of the showmanship and even demagoguery that has disillusioned many Americans about the electronic preachers.

Yet, there is a difference, it seems to me. Jackson cares about whole people, not just their souls; about forgiving, not condemning; about hope for the present generation, not Armageddon and millennial bliss. It is the social gospel of his northern Baptist heritage intertwined with the black gospel of his southern experience.

It may be quixotic, it may be impractical, but it is real--and it sets him apart from a host of preachers who use TV as show biz, not prophetic activity.