After her daughter died at Sandy Hook seven years ago, Nelba Márquez-Greene founded the Ana Grace Project — a non-profit organization which promotes music, the arts, and child development, with the goals of fostering love and a sense of community.
But now televangelist Joel Osteen has come under fire for blocking Marquez-Greene on Twitter, and the reasons he blocked her aren’t entirely clear. Some Twitter users believe Osteen may have taken offense to a tweet she posted yesterday.
“A church that preaches prosperity gospel when so many Americans are living in poverty, under daily threat of gun violence, addiction, broken systems, and so much other stuff + says nothing to challenge Herod is not church,” she tweeted. “It’s a racist country club.”
https://twitter.com/Nelba_MG/status/1203744410904780801
So Shannon R. Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, decided to respond by sharing Osteen’s snarky tweet and adding her own thoughts.
“Let this sink in: So-called pastor Joel Osteen just blocked the mother of a child killed at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. ‘For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ…'”
Let this sink in: So-called pastor Joel Osteen just blocked the mother of a child killed at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ…” https://t.co/lbeaN2LodJ
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 9, 2019
Osteen has developed a reputation for being selfish in the face of adversity. When Hurricane Harvey struck Texas in 2017, the Houston-based megachurch founder locked the doors of the huge church and turned away victims seeking shelter, The Guardian notes. As one of America’s wealthiest pastors, he and his wife Victoria have a net worth that was evaluated at $55 million in 2012. Those doors remained closed for several days, and Osteen claimed the church had been flooded. In the meantime, other churches, including mosques, fed and sheltered victims for several days.
But that’s not all. During his first sermon after the hurricane, he criticized hurricane victims for having a “poor old me” mentality. Perhaps this helps to explain his reaction to Marquez-Greene, whose child was so cruelly taken from her.
Featured image via screen grab
