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s of Trouble Appear, Mayor Adams Turns to His Religious Base Give this article Account70

When Signs of Trouble Appear, Mayor

Adams Turns to His Religious Base
Mr. Adams has leaned heavily on the religious segment of his
multiethnic, outer Manhattan base for support.

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Mayor Eric Adams has used church appearances to defend his tenure and suggest that
his critics were attacking him because of his race and religion. Benjamin Norman for The
New York Times

By Jeffery C. Mays

July 13, 2023

After a rough two weeks in office, Mayor Eric Adams of New York
City sought a familiar refuge on Sunday: the pulpit at Christian
Cultural Center, a nondenominational megachurch in Brooklyn.

He gave a 10-minute fiery sermon in which he said the hardest part

of running the largest city in the country was getting the respect he
deserved, and that he was being demonized for talking about his
faith. Some in the congregation, mostly comprising Black middle-
worshipers, stood to their feet and roared with approval.

Midway through his second year as mayor, Mr. Adams has come to
rely more heavily than ever on the religious segment of his
multiethnic, outer Manhattan base for support, especially when
signs of trouble arise, as they have in recent weeks.

Late last month, Mr. Adams drew criticism for his response to a
tenant-rights activist whose family had escaped the Holocaust. The
mayor believed the 84-year-old activist had made disrespectful
comments , and publicly likened her to a plantation owner.

The following week, The New York Times revealed that a photo of
a police officer killed in the line of duty — which the mayor said he
had carried in his wallet for 30 years — had been recently created
by employees in the mayor’s office. The next day, a longtime
associate of Mr. Adams had been charged in a straw donor scheme
to raise money for his mayoral campaign; the mayor was not
implicated.

Amid the wave of negative news, Mr. Adams chose to lie low. He
held no public events or news conferences for several consecutive
days last week, until he finally emerged on Sunday at Christian
Cultural Center.

“Hard is having someone talk down to you and expect for you to
take it no matter what they say and what they do,” Mr. Adams told
the parishioners. “I am the symbol of Black manhood in the city, in
this country, and what it represents. I’m the mayor of the most
powerful city on the globe, and people need to recognize tha t.”

The next morning, the Rev. Dr. V. Simpson Turner, a pastor at Mt.
Carmel Baptist Church and the Fire Department chaplain,
conducted a morning prayer with Mr. Adams. An ad for the prayer
service carried an all-caps headline: “We stand united in prayer for
Mayor Eric Adams, his administration and our city.”

The mayor is not the first politician to take cover behind the warm
embrace of religion, specifically the Black church, during times of
trouble. When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was being investigated for
sexual harassment, he visited a Black church in Harlem with
political leaders, and was often photographed with Latino and
Black members of the clergy.

“ The demographic that supported an Eric Adams, who is more

centrist and moderate, are the people that go to church,” said the
Rev. Al Sharpton, an Adams ally. “That’s his base .”

But Mr. Adams has leaned much harder into his religious
background than most elected officials, especially Democrats.

“You want to see people get angry?” Mr. Adams said on Sunday.
“Tell them you believe in God. You want to expose the devil? Say ‘I
believe in God and the devil is a liar.’”

At an interfaith prayer breakfast in February, he backed up

comments by his chief political adviser, Ingrid P. Lewis-Martin ,
that his administration “doesn’t believe” in the separation of church
and state.

“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state,” the mayor

said to scattered applause. “State is the body. Church is the heart.
You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”

In the same speech, the mayor also criticized the Supreme Court
decision to remove mandated prayer in schools, saying it
contributed to gun violence. And Mr. Adams has said that God told
him three decades ago the exact date that he would become mayor
and commanded him to “talk about God.”

He has also hired three people in his administration, including two

in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, who had
expressed opposition to gay marriage because of religious beliefs.

Norman Siegel, one of Mr. Adams’s informal advisers, and former

head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he was concerned
by the mayor’s focus on religion.

“You’re the mayor of the City of New York,” Mr. Siegel said. “You’re
the government. You shouldn’t be doing that.”

The Rev. Johnnie Green Jr., pastor of Mount Neboh Baptist Church
in Harlem, considers himself a supporter of Mr. Adams. He said he
does not agree with Mr. Adams’s views about the separation of
church and state, but that he understands the mayor’s comments
about faith informing his work as a politician.

“When you’re an elected official, I think that you have to walk a

fine line when it comes to religion in politics,” the pastor said in an
interview, adding that he didn’t think the mayor was trying to
impose his religious beliefs on anyone but that some might feel
differently in the country’s current political climate.

“ A lot of the folks at the Jan. 6 insurrection were holding up signs

that said ‘Jesus saves’ and ‘God is with us,’” said the Rev. LaKeesha
Walrond , president of the New York Theological Seminary, who
praised the mayor’s efforts at talking about faith. “But we also have
to be careful to recognize that religious freedom is a true gift in
these United States that we live in.”

The mayor attended a nondenominational church of the Church of

Christ while growing up in Southeast Queens and maintains an
affiliation to that church, said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the
mayor.

The founder and pastor of Christian Cultural Center, the Rev. A.R.
Bernard , said that Mr. Adams’s comments about faith indicate that
“he’s practicing the social ethic that people closest to the problem
know best how to solve the problem, and it takes government to
empower those individuals” to make change.

In one example of government interacting with faith, the Office of

Faith-Based and Community Partnerships is leading an effort to
coordinate with 50 houses of worship to house at least 1,000 asylum
seekers. The city has received more than 80,000 asylum seekers
since the spring and currently has 52,000 in its care. The effort
could send millions of dollars to participating religious institutions.

Mr. Bernard said he expected an impassioned speech from Mr.

Adams who “knows how to connect with his people.” He described
his congregation as a “sophisticated” and “educated electorate”
who can tell whether you are “fake or real” quickly.

“ He was a preacher,” Mr. Bernard said. “We had two sermons; I did
one and he did one.”

Jeffery C. Mays is a reporter on the Metro desk who covers politics with a focus on New
York City Hall. A native of Brooklyn, he is a graduate of Columbia University. More about
Jeffery C. Mays

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Explore Our Coverage of the Adams Administration

2021 Campaign: A retired inspector who worked with Mayor Eric Adams when
they were both members of the N.Y.P.D. was charged with five other people with
conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.
A True Story?: Adams has often talked about a wrinkled photo of a fallen police
officer that he kept in his wallet. Now that picture and the story behind it have
been called into question .

Jewish Advisory Council: At least 23 members of New York City’s first-ever 37-
ember Jewish Advisory Council, whose creation Adams recently announced, are
Orthodox, and only nine are women — a makeup that has drawn criticism from
several Jewish leaders and groups.
New N.Y.P.D. Commissioner: Edward Caban, the N.Y.P.D.’s first deputy
commissioner and an ally of the mayor , will become the interim head of the
agency after Keechant Sewell abruptly announced her resignation .

N.Y.C. Budget Deal: Adams and the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, said
that they had reached agreement on a $107 billion budget for New York City that
would restore funding to several Council priorities that the mayor had initially
sought to cut.

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