The Rev. Jamal Bryant, the unmarried pastor of Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore, Maryland, responded to allegations and purported documented proof that he fathered a child last summer.
Bryant took to his Periscope account this week and neither confirmed nor denied the claims of Latoya Shawntee Odom, the 34-year-old mother of the pastor’s alleged 10-month-old son, John Karston Bryant.
The divorced 44-year-old preacher and father of four instead asked supporters to “pray for me” and declared that “God ain’t finished with me,” according to The Christian Post.
Bryant also stated, “[…] I am one of those rare people who are flawed with character.”
The Black Lives Matter activist added at another point that he does not run from his issues, but “I stand right next to them.”
He also acknowledged his divorce from Gizelle Bryant in 2009, due to his admitted infidelity. “The worst mistake you can ever make is to repeat the exact same mistake,” Bryant added.
Before ending the Periscope, Bryant informed his audience that his Sunday message would be about God and not about the pastor’s own “frailty.”
He also insisted that a pending legal case prevented him from speaking on the matter in depth.
The paternity document at the center of these reports on Bryant’s alleged out-of-wedlock affair and request for Odom to abort their child dates the boy’s birth to July 2015.
During this time, Bryant was active in Black Lives Matter protests in the city of Baltimore, where 25-year-old Freddie Gray had died four months prior after being arrested by police officers.
The pastor was also recently tapped to co-host “The Preachers” daytime talk show along with Christian leaders John Gray, associate pastor at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, Dr. E. Dewey Smith Jr., senior pastor at The House of Hope Atlanta and The House of Hope Macon, and Orrick Quick, pastor and founder of God Seekers Church in North Carolina.
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