By L.A. Williams
Christian Action League
April 6, 2022
Abortion, transgenderism and “woke” theology were three of many topics in the crosshairs of Bishop Patrick Wooden, pastor of Raleigh’s Upper Room Church of God in Christ, recently as he accused preachers of sounding “more like Dr. Phil than Moses or John the Baptist or our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Taking his text from Romans 10:13-14, the well-known African-American minister told fellow pastors that “whatever it costs to say what must be said to declare the truth of God, we’ve got to be willing to say it.”
Wooden had been asked to address the minister’s role in the public square during a March 18 pastors’ briefing hosted in Greensboro by Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall ministry.
“We are not Robin to the politician’s Batman. We are not sidekicks, we’re not supplements, we’re not additions,” he said “We are the voice of God.”
Wooden said people who oppose God’s word had tried to “cancel” him even before “cancel culture” was a term.
“My crime was that I disagreed with then-president Obama about the definition of marriage,” he said. “My crime was I believed then and I believe now that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. And by the way, the guy has to be born male and the woman has to be born female — none of these factory jobs.”
He said too many people buy into the idea that you need to “separate your religion from your politics.”
“You don’t separate your religion from anything! Everything in your life is governed by your relationship with the God of the Bible and with what the Bible says,” Wooden declared. “If the Bible says it’s right, then it’s right. If the Bible says it’s wrong, then it is wrong.”
Pointing pastors to God’s accusation against the wicked in Isaiah 56:9-12, he compared those who fail to speak Biblical truth to “dumb dogs who cannot bark.”
“When we try to be comfortable preachers and play-it-safe preachers and we’re not going to bother any subject that may make congregants leave even if it comes at the expense of the truth, you’re not the same preacher as the other preacher who is laying it all on the line,” Wooden said. “Some of us are barking. To win this, we all got to bark, we got to say something.”
Wooden said he describes himself as the “blackest black preacher in Raleigh” because he is among the few standing up for the unborn.
“What civil right is more important than the right to be born?” he demanded, adding that his race is being targeted for extinction, with abortion rates highest among black women. “You want to see racism in its full strength, look at the abortion industry.”
Wooden also said too many pastors have been guided by fear rather than faith during the pandemic.
“Covid caused fear to grip the church, and we pretended to be people who were careful when the truth is we were afraid. So we kept our congregants home. We closed the house of God,” he said, pointing to the Bible verse that warns Christians not to “forsake the assembling of ourselves together.”
“Hebrews 10:25 is either Bible or it’s not. It’s either a command or it’s not,” he said. “We went to church and laid it on the line. Our mantra was ‘Worship is worth the risk.’”
Wooden challenged pastors to speak the truth in love without worrying about offending anyone.
“It doesn’t matter who’s offended. Who amongst you got saved, who gave your heart to the Lord without first being offended?” he asked. “The gospel just walked up to us and slapped us in the face and showed us how sinful we all were. And we cried out to the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus changed it.”
“Preachers, America and the world need us, but they need us with power, with authority,” Wooden added. “We need to get up! We need to act! The time is now!”
Watchmen on the Wall hosted the pastor’s briefing as a precursor to its Stand Courageous Men’s Conference, set for May 6 and 7 in High Point.