By Robert Stitt
This last December, Bishop Charles E. Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ sued Earl Carter, a minister within the Church of God In Christ, for defamation. Blake is the presiding Bishop in the church. According to the lawsuit, Carter had been posting false allegations on the Internet, including “Bishop Blake is immoral, homosexual and a pedophile.” According to EurWeb, the Bishop claims that Carter wants to use the slanderous stories to draw people to his website “where he seeks to illegally profit off of Bishop Blake’s good name.”
Carter filed a counter suit.
Two months later, “Bishop Charles Blake, Presiding Bishop of the fifth largest Christian denomination, and an Obama appointee to the Advisory Council of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships” asked the courts to throw out the countersuit. The court agreed that the claim lacked the facts to hold up in court. “The counter-claim lacks any supporting factual allegations and is otherwise noncompliant with the pleading standards of Rules 8(a).”
After the ruling, Uleses Henderson, General Counsel for COGIC said, “We are delighted that the court dismissed Mr. Carter’s meritless counter-claim.”
The defamation lawsuit is still ongoing. Of this, Henderson added, “Mr. Carter’s purposeful and continual attempts to defame Bishop Blake are egregious. The filing of the defamation lawsuit was Bishop Blake’s only recourse to stop Mr. Carter’s harmful conduct and force the removal of defamatory videos from the Internet.”
Carter claims a grandmother told him about Blake’s abuse at one of the COGIC churches named the Community Church Of God in Christ. The church’s pastor, Dr. David Wright, responded, “Specifically, I am not privy to any information that would support Mr. Carter’s charge that Bishop Blake is a pedophile or child molester. Bishop Blake has never, to my knowledge, engaged in any improper conduct with any minor, young adult, or anyone else. I am also not aware of any “grandmother” who claims that Bishop Blake molested her grandson.”
Apparently, the whole thing started over a sermon Carter gave on homosexuality that Blake thought was too strong. They say that when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. Let us pray that the battle between these two men does not crush the faith of the parishioners.
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