Social conservative pastor and radio
host E.W. Jackson announced on Sunday that he and his wife had
contracted COVID-19.
On his The Awakening radio show,
Jackson downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.
In March, Jackson claimed that God was
protecting President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence from
the virus. Trump contracted COVID-19 in September and was
hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in
Maryland.
Jackson also said that God would
protect him from the pandemic.
“I will not get the coronavirus,”
Jackson
told his listeners in March. “Who do you think you are? How can
you say that? Because I asked God to protect me from it. I confessed
Psalm 91 over my life and over the life of my congregation and over
the life of our families and we're not getting it.”
Jackson, who ran for a seat in the U.S.
Senate in 2018 as a Republican, announced his diagnosis during church
services Sunday morning. He said that he was “feeling good.”
During one radio program in March,
Jackson used the pandemic to attack LGBT rights, blaming
the “homovirus” for destroying the black family.
In 2013, Jackson
described gay people as “very sick.”
(Related: E.W.
Jackson: U.S. will become “homocracy” if Pete Buttigieg is
elected.)