North Carolina pastor Samuel Burleson has gone viral after calling out another pastor for remarks that many would consider to be racist.
Burleson offered his critique in a TikTok video, which featured clips of a sermon delivered by Ronnie Jones of Mineral Park Baptist Church in McDonald, Tennessee. The sermon was part of an event at Faith Baptist Camp in Resaca, Georgia, in 2021.
“Well, just in case you’re wondering how a large group of Christian folk could tolerate the blatant racism and white supremacy that’s so prevalent in mainstream American politics,” said Burleson, “then here’s your answer.”
Burleson, who pastors a United Methodist congregation in Asheville, North Carolina, then played a clip of Jones’ sermon, in which Jones said, “I get so sick and tired—and I’m not being racial here—but I’m just gonna preach [for] just a minute.”
“I get sick and tired of white boys all the time wanting to go down to downtown Chattanooga and try to pattern their life out of how they’re living downtown,” Jones continued. “The Black boys with their britches hanging off, and white boys want their britches hanging off. And a hat turned sideways—they want to turn their hat sideways.”
“It makes me sick to pull up to a red light and see a white boy in a little lowered car with one of those trash can mufflers on it and the boombox in it, and they’re goose-necking in there,” Jones went on to say. “And I want to jump out and open the door and say, ‘You’re not Black. You’re white. Straighten up.”
Jones added, “You know, I’m just simply saying that God made a difference in us, and I was born again by a man of God that preached some things to me.”
In response to Jones’ words, Burleson said, “Listen, I know the temptation here is to believe that this is an anomaly, as if this was one dude sitting by himself in a Tennessee holler spewing out hatred.”
A holler is a small, usually secluded, valley area between hills or mountains.
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“But he’s not in a holler,” Burleson said. “And he’s not in a small community church. He was a featured speaker at a camp meeting in a regional gathering of like-minded church folks who deliberately invited him to come and preach.”
