Black Religious Leaders Invited to Trump Meeting Say They Won't Endorse

Source: CNN 7:21 PM ET, Sat November 28, 2015

Several black pastors invited to meet with Donald Trump on Monday have denied reports that they had plans to endorse the presidential candidate at the event. Bishop Clarence McClendon, a Los Angeles-based pastor who like Trump has appeared on reality television, was invited to the meeting but will not attend.

Bishop Corletta Vaughn, Senior Pastor of The Holy Ghost Cathedral and a star of the Oxygen reality series "Preachers of Detroit," said she was invited to the meeting but will not attend nor endorse Trump. "Trump is an insult and embarrassment. But he represents the country we have become," she said Wednesday on Facebook. "ZERO experience ... Flaunting a ticket of unbridled bigotry, sexism, racism and everything that is wrong with America."

The Trump campaign has not responded to CNN request for comment on the issue Saturday, and in their announcement, the campaign did not specify, which religious leaders were invited to Monday's meeting. The meeting was described by the campaign in a press release as, "a coalition of 100 African American Evangelical pastors and religious leaders who will endorse the GOP frontrunner after a private meeting at Trump Tower." Bishop Paul S. Morton tweeted Friday that he refused to meet with Trump, calling the candidate disrespectful.

"I was asked to meet with Mr Trump but I refused because until he learns how to respect people you can't represent me thru my endorsement," the founder of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship tweeted. In an op-ed in EBONY magazine, pastors, seminary professors and Christian activists critical of Trump asked the group backing the candidate to consider the impact that endorsing him could have on their congregations. "By siding with a presidential candidate whose rhetoric pathologizes Black people, what message are you sending to the world about the Black lives in and outside of your congregations? Which Black lives do you claim to be liberating," the leaders wrote.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/28/politics/black-religious-leaders-donald-trump-endorsement/