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Shaun King

Jeffery Shaun King (17 September 1979-) was an American progressive commentator, Black Lives Matter activist, and evangelical pastor. He was infamous for his alleged embezzling of fundraising proceeds, for his advocacy for the tearing down of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues, and for his calls for statues and stained-glass windows depicting Jesus, Mary, or the Twelve Apostles as white to be torn down or smashed, respectively.

Biography

Jeffery Shaun King was born and raised in Versailles, Franklin County, Kentucky on 17 September 1979. He studied history at Morehouse College before embarking on a brief teaching career; he instead became a pastor at Total Grace Christian Center in DeKalb County, Georgia and founded the "Courageous Church" in Atlanta in 2008. In 2015, King became involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, and he became controversial for many of his extreme views over the following years.

King left the Democratic Party after accusing them of corruption and a lack of neutrality at the 2016 presidential election (he went on to campaign for Bernie Sanders), stated his support for the communists and socialists who participated in the counter-protests at the Unite the Right rally, wrongly accused a Texas state trooper of groping Sherita Dixon-Cole, allegedly embezzled fundraising money, called for the tearing down of statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (along with all other slave owners) amid the George Floyd protests, and, perhaps most controversially, tweeted on 22 June 2020 that all statues depicting Jesus, Mary, and the Twelve Apostles as white should be torn down and their stained-glass windows smashed, claiming that they were a "gross form white supremacy", "tools of oppression," and "racist propaganda." He did not, however, call for the tearing down of any historical depictions of Jesus as Ethiopian, Native American, Indian, or Asian. His comments about vandalizing white depictions of Jesus were met with criticism from several commentators, including Bishop Donald J. Hying, who pointed out that Jesus and Mary had appeared to various cultures in many forms, including the Our Lady of Guadalupe's mestiza appearance and black and Asian depictions of Jesus and Mary by regional churches.

On 11 August 2020, King drew more controversy when he glowingly endorsed Kamala Harris for Vice-President (calling her "the most progressive VP nominee in American history"), despite having made a 14 November 2018 tweet claiming that both her and Biden had "helped build & advance mass incarceration" and had a "dismal history on criminal justice." In 2023, he claimed that he worked "behind the scenes" with Hamas to help secure the release of two American hostages, but the hostages' family said that King had lied and fabricated his involvement. IN December, he claimed that Instagram removed his profile because of his anti-Israel posts.

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