Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, April 22, 2009
Call it the stimulus package from God.
Manhattan’s Riverside Church—one of the country’s most illustrious religious institutions—is paying its new senior pastor, the Rev. Brad Braxton, more than $600,000 in annual compensation.
That’s twice what Braxton’s predecessor, James Forbes, one of the country’s best-known preachers, was getting after running Riverside for more than 18 years.
It amounts to almost 10 times what William Sloane Coffin, the legendary anti-Vietnam War clergyman, was paid in his last year as senior minister at Riverside in 1987.
Braxton was selected in a vote of the congregation last fall and is to be officially installed Sunday.
A group of church dissidents claims the members were never told about the lavish package.
Those dissidents filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court last week to stop Braxton’s installation, revealing a growing divide among the church’s 1,500 members.
The Wall Street-like package, the dissidents say, is outrageous for a man of the cloth—especially when you consider Riverside’s long history of advocating social justice.
Church sources say it includes:
* $250,000 in salary.
On top of that, Braxton immediately hired a new second in command at more than $300,000 a year.
{snip}
In a hearing Tuesday, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lewis Bart Stone denied the dissidents’ request to delay Sunday’s installation. The judge urged church leaders to provide the opposition a fair chance to be heard by the church membership.
{snip}
“If the members of the church had known what his total compensation was when we voted, we wouldn’t have chosen him,” said Virl Andrick, a 25-year member of the church and of its budget and planning commission.
{snip}
The Rev. Brad Braxton.
Original article
Email
Juan Gonzalez
at jgonzalez@nydailynews.com .
(Posted on April 23, 2009)
Comments
Just look at this man’s warm, generous, worshipful, beatific visage and tell me he isn’t worth every penny of his congregation’s $600,000.00.
This is one reason I will never donate to a religious organization. His race is irrelevant. The tithe is not meant to make anyone rich.
Christ would be rolling over in his grave.
“If the members of the church had known what his total compensation was when we voted, we wouldn’t have chosen him,”
Which begs the question, why didn’t anyone know?
Did he hand them a blank contract, ask them to sign their names, and then he filled in the rest later?
Is there no oversight of anything anymore?
Any man who requires a $600,000 annual salary to preach the word of god is no Christian, but rather, a charlatan. In the southern United States where I live, many blacks choose ‘preacher’ as their profession as a means to achieve richness and what they perceive to be a position of influence and importance in their immediate black community. Helping the poor is the last thing on their minds. This would not be possible; however, without all of the idiots who attend these churches and forfeit either their hard-earned money or their unearned welfare. I guess they get what they deserve.
If “Virl Andrick, a 25-year member of the church and of its budget and planning commission” didn’t know what was going on with Braxton’s salary, then who did?
Most (mainline) churches have a governing board and a budget committee to oversee salaries. Their jobs are to report back to church members before such decisions are made so the will of the congregation can be determined.
Pastors, priests, etc. may come and go but the well-being of the actual church is in the hands of those who are chosen by the members to represent it.
And all the glitter and gold is exactly what is wrong with christianity today. It has become a joke. And a big money scam. The churches are emptying at an alarming rate due to the “cost of salvation”. Hell is going to be overcrowded with these “money men and women”. Is his “second-in-command” going to deal with scamming the people or talking directly with God, or what?
“Any man who requires a $600,000 annual salary to preach the word of god is no Christian, but rather, a charlatan. In the southern United States where I live, many blacks choose ‘preacher’ as their profession as a means to achieve richness and what they perceive to be a position of influence and importance in their immediate black community. Helping the poor is the last thing on their minds.”
Their principal aim is getting money and getting laid. You may choose the order of priorities. Remember that image of the “Irreverend” Jeremiah Wright pelvic thrusting up in his pulpit? I wonder how many devout church ladies HE shtuped during his illustrious career.
I think it strange that while so many black folk profess to possess a great and deep Christian faith, and many probably do, they fail to see the obvious: They have been permanently enslaved by adopting their enslavers belief system over their “root” religion. The wrong or right of said belief system is debatable (to clear-thinking people, anyway), so a “real” “african-american” should, I think, want to embrace their ancestors belief system, not “whiteys”, for heavens sake.
One reason so few blacks become priests and nuns is that the Catholic clergy have to take a vow of poverty.
Makes it harder to live the Al Sharpton/ pimp lifestyle.
This article reminds me why I don’t attend Church anymore. It’s a business. It’s very unlikely the pastors are there for the Holy Spirit.
This is so much like that farce in Greenville, TX. . , calling itself the Nigerian American Church headed by self-styled bishop Adeboye. This worthy “bishop” coerced and browbeat his flock into doing without in order to buy 500 acres of prime farmland. Then build a multi-million dollar church complex for the flock.
Not mention: That those millions could have been far, far better spent, improving the lives of both African and American Blacks. But the worthy bishop deemed the building of this complex a much more needed boost to his personal vanity. But then like with Braxton in New York, there’s a common denominator involved.
where I live, many blacks choose ‘preacher’ as their profession as a means to achieve richness and what they perceive to be a position of influence and importance in their immediate black community.
And why not!! it works very well for those such as Al and Jesse, they are also, not rerquired to pass any tests! or be ordained to call themselves “Rev” or “the Honorable” which of course is good for the blacks.
Is this a black church? Or is is some sort of wierd society church for wealthy social also-rans….attracting the same sratum as the International Debutante Cotillion?
Oh, wait! I just went to Wikipedia. Apparently, Rockefeller funded the thing, and it’s raison d’etre is promotion of “activism and political debate”. Hmmm….guess I was right about the wealthy social also-rans. Very ‘distinguished’ history….Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, and Fidel Castro, have apparently been featured special guests. Lovely. Just lovely.
Well, if a certain someone could make $317,000.00 working part-time as a hospital ‘Diversity Coordinator’, then I see it as no stretch for a Baptist preacher to pull down double that figure. Check into the salaries of other basically useless people: golf pros, university football coaches, university presidents…OTHER BIG-CHURCH PREACHERS… It’s all about the same thing.
But preachers in certain denominations, particularly black ones, use their positions for more than just wealth and ‘influence’. They can also be in it for the women. They’re just like rock stars for some women. We’re close to the black family who clean our offices, and over two decades, the stories of black preacher malfeasance we’ve heard would make a really thick and juicy book.
Exactly what has caused so many to “cancel my subscription to the Resurrection” (Jim Morrison).
Too bad.
And no, Riverside did not start out black. It started out under the able leadership of classical liberal, Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick was walking the razor’s edge between personal religion and social activism.
Social activism won, became preoccupied with minorities … and Christianity continues to turn brown.
I am not against social activism—I just want it FOR OUR PEOPLE. A true social activist FOR OUR PEOPLE would have spoken out against our fratricidal wars, number one and number two, like Fosdick did. Now all the Christian social activism seems to be directed at non-Whites, and has been for fifty years.
Ah the agony when one is called to “suffer to preach”! Surely this man’s primary concern is for the salvation of souls by living a life of piety and quiet reflection.
As a practicing Martial Artist for over forty years, and one of the few white Americans who can read, write, speak, and understand Mandarin Chinese, I have heard the following story often my former teacher [Liu Institute. Com] about his teacher in China who had spent his entire life sleeping on a mat, eating rice, and teaching his students. One of this man’s former students, had become successful and had decided to donate five million dollars to the Buddhist monastery in honor of his teacher.
The teacher immediately took the money and donated the entire amount to the poor! He quietly returned to sleeping on his mat. There is a saying: “when a man owns nothing, nothing owns the man.”
Look closely at the enigmatic smile of this African American. Do you get the impression that this man would have donated the five million to the poor? Or perhaps his philosophy more than likely would be” God what be a helping those what be a helping demselves [the similar philosophy of the “Reverends(?)” Sharpton, Jackson, and Wright]!”
MoMo
“Christ would be rolling over in his grave.”
Surprised I’m the first to respond to that statement - Christ isn’t in a grave. That’s the entire point of Christianity.
However, you are correct in assuming that he would not approve. In fact, he would drive this phonies out with a whip the same way he did the moneychangers at the temple.
Out of respect for my wife’s family, I still attend a liberal “mainstream” church. The parishioners are mostly well educated and well off, and expect an intelligent, cultured minister. Some of the nearby congregations of this denomination have had diversity problems with their clergy, and I have wondered what would happen if our preacher were replaced with someone less sophisticated. Would the lawyers and professors sit through sermons composed by a fast talking, ignorant, dullard? Riverside Church is about to find out.
One reason so few blacks become priests and nuns is that the Catholic clergy have to take a vow of poverty.
Makes it harder to live the Al Sharpton/ pimp lifestyle.
Posted by Madison Grant at 12:32 AM on April
Madison,
You are right about the vow of poverty as it pertains to priests of a particular order of priests/monksa e.g Conventual Franciscans, Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, Dominicans, Augustinians etc.
In India where Catholicism accounts for a small segment of the vast population, there are numerous priestly vocations, one reason being that seminarians are given an education and a way out of poverty.
Many of our parish churches here in the US are staffed by priests from India and the Phillipines. Poland seems to be one of the few Western countries whose strong Catholic tradition has maintained a good number of priests.
I gather Riverside is one of these tony, white social-activist churches - the kind where being outraged at white….well, white anything is more important than the salvation of one’s soul.
Let them spend what they want - let them bankrupt themselves. I hope he spends most of his time spending his $600,000 in goodies. I would rather they have this jumped-up store-front preacher as thier frontman, rather than some dour white kill-joy who would spend every waking minute thinking of new ways to spread the joys of multiculturalism and diversity.
The Rev. Brad Braxton.