Megachurch Pastor: ‘Law Enforcement Officers Are Ministers Of God’

Pastor Robert Jeffress trashes activists while arguing cops “are ministers of God.”

In a deplorable display of sanctimonious self-righteous hyperbole, Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, lashed out at critics of police brutality while implying that police officers are above suspicion because they “are ministers of God sent by God to punish evil doers.”

During a Sunday interview on Fox & Friends, Jeffress used the Bible to defend the unquestionable authority of the police, saying:

The New Testament says in Romans 13:4 that law enforcement officers are ministers of God sent by God to punish evil doers. When you think about it, police officers are just as called by God to do what they do as pastors and priests are called by God. And I think we need to remind our members of that.

Pastor Jeffress called on churches “to instill in their a members a respect for the police,” while criticizing clergy members sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement as “bogus ministers” who fail to preach about having “respect for the police.”

The megachurch pastor even implied that President Barack Obama was somehow partially responsible for the violence in Dallas, claiming Obama had “exacerbated the racial divide instead of healing it,” opining:

I’m afraid the president, just like he did with conservative Christians after the beheading by ISIS of Christians, it seemed like he wanted to blame conservative Christians in the past, instead of putting the blame when it belongs.

Adding insult to injury, a patronizing Pastor Jeffress implied that African Americans have nothing to fear from police officers as long as they do “what is right,” concluding the segment by saying:

And you know, I have to say if we would teach our children to respect law enforcement officers, they wouldn’t have anything to worry about. The Bible says law enforcement officers are nothing to be feared if you do what is right.

“Law enforcement officers are nothing to be feared”? Please, Pastor Jeffress, please explain that law enforcement officers are nothing to be feared to the friends and family of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the countless other African Americans killed by police because of the color of their skin.

(H/T Raw Story. Watch the video below.)