Jay Bakker, son of televangelists Jim
Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, says GOP presidential
candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have hijacked
Christianity.
Bakker, who heads the gay-inclusive
Revolution
Church, told CNN anchor Don Lemon, who was hosting HLN's chat
show the Joy Behar Show, that his church does not believe
being gay is a sin.
Lemon, who came out gay in his 2011
memoir Transparent, asked Bakker his thoughts on Minnesota
Rep. Bachmann and Texas Governor Perry, both of whom oppose gay
rights.
“They're fighting for the Christian
vote here,” Lemon said. “What do you make of that?”
“Oh to me it's irrelevant. I mean
it's not – they're playing to a group of people who deal a lot with
fear and using fear to control folks. To me I'm a person of faith
and they don't seem to be pulling me in at all. You know, it almost
seems like you're hearing people who believe in – and I've been
accused of this myself – almost like, you know, these type of like
fairy tales or type of things. And it's scary to think that these
people want to, you know. I feel like they've kind of hijacked
Christianity.”
Bakker said that by fairy tales he
meant the candidates' decision to ignore science and archeology
“because that's what people do.”
“They just pick and choose, you know,
what they want to believe and what they don't want to believe,”
Bakker added. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)