“God don’t like ugly.”
-The Bible

In my previous column for the Negro Manosphere published on Apr 2, 2017 entitled “The Sistahood Has No Clothes”, I discussed the woefully misguided efforts of attorney, author, freelance journalist and talking head Sophia A. Nelson, to “represent for the sistahood”. Specifically, I responded to a recent column she wrote for the New York Daily News, where she bemoaned what she saw as a systematic attempt on the powers that be to make all Black women look bad.

However, my piece in response was to highlight the fact that the “sistas” Nelson was going to the mat for – US Congresswoman Maxine Waters and White House correspondent April Ryan – were hardly paragons of virtue, regardless of color or gender. Waters has come under scrutiny for ethics violations, while Ryan is widely recognized as an Obama-era hack and, at best, a mediocre reporter.

I sum up my last column in this way:

“As I’ve noted numerous times on my popular podcast shows heard on YouTube, the fundamental problem Black women Nelson especially, face is that we no longer live in the past. We are now in the 21st century – where information is shared instantly and where it is no longer feasible to “hide one’s dirty laundry”. The “Queen” is standing in the public square stark naked – and it ain’t pretty. And no amount of attempts toward throwing fits, flopping all over the fainting couch, trying to silence or censor critics, etc., is going to work.

Instead of being “offended”, perhaps Nelson would be best advised to help her “sistas” act right.”

Sadly, it seems, Ms. Nelson has chosen to “go low”, contrary to her oft-quotations of her “hero” former First Lady Michelle Obama, “to go high”.

Sources close to the Negro Manosphere have learned that Ms. Nelson was recently chatting about her trip to a tony spa and resort in Virginia with Ms. Pat Smith, wife of football great Emmit Smith and Rev. Renee Fowler-Hornbuckle, wife of the convicted rapist Rev. Terry Hornbuckle. On Nelson’s Twitter feed, she revels in their membership in two of the “Divine Nine”‘s storied sororities and ends the tweet with the hashtag #sisterhood.

That’s right, folks. Ms. Sophia A. Nelson – self-professed deeply devout Christian, a soldier for the rights of Black women, is right there chopping it up with the wife of a convicted rapist who did it all in the name of Christ.

You just cannot make this stuff up.

In case you may not be aware of what I’m talking about, here’s the rundown:

Back in the summer of 2006, Bishop Terry Hornbuckle, of the Agape Christian Fellowship which he started in 1986, was convicted on three counts of drugging and sexually assaulting three women – two of whom were members of his church.

“Hornbuckle was found guilty on Aug. 22, 2006, of drugging and sexually assaulting three women, two of them members of his Agape Christian Fellowship congregation.

Hornbuckle was handed down sentences of 15, 10 and 14 years and fined $30,000. The court ordered him to serve 15 years with the other two sentences concurrently.”

By the way, the Agape Christian Fellowship? It’s been valued at about $4M USD.

 

Nice work if you can get it!

Here’s more background on the rise and fall of the good Bishop Hornbuckle:

“Convicted rapist and ex-pastor Terry Hornbuckle isn’t going anywhere right now.

The parole request for the once prominent minister, who built a large nondenominational church in Arlington and mingled with celebrities, has been rejected. Hornbuckle, 51, founder of Agape Christian Fellowship, remains in prison serving his 15-year sentence for sexually assaulting three women, two of whom were members of his church. Testimony from his 2006 trial included details about how Hornbuckle drugged some of the women and smoked methamphetamine.

Hornbuckle’s is serving his 15-year sentence at the Powledge Prison Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections in Palestine, Texas.

If Hornbuckle isn’t granted parole in future attempts, he would be released by August 2020.

Despite the scandal, the church is still operating and is now run by his ex-wife Renee Fowler.

Despite the scandal, the church is still operating and is now run by his ex-wife Renee Fowler Hornbuckle.

The church went through bankruptcy following the legal troubles and lawsuits.

Renee Fowler Hornbuckle wrote that she initially believed the claims against her husband were attempts to get their money.

The couple preach a prosperity gospel and were building a million dollar house in an exclusive gated community in Colleyville, Texas when the charges were filed.”

Speaking of the First Lady of the Church, the following excerpt from the website bishop-accountability.org observes the proceedings of the fallen Bishop Hornbuckle’s trial and the role the missus played in it:

“On judgment day, the bishop’s women have all come together in one exquisitely cold place: the 372nd District Court in Fort Worth, where a jury has just agreed on a sentence for the Reverend Terry Hornbuckle.

The pastor has been convicted of drugging and raping three women, two of them former members of his Arlington church.

The bishop’s women are arrayed in various places in state District Judge Scott Wisch’s courtroom.

There is the wife, Renee Hornbuckle, cocoa-skinned and immaculately finished in a brown pantsuit, who stares an empty stare at her husband, a man known to many of his congregants simply as Bishop.

For 20 years, he sat beside his wife on a church stage, enthroned like a king with his queen. She was the delicate ornament on display, he was the street-talking black preacher of humble southern Dallas origins whose charisma landed him in a world of money, minor celebrity and access to the occasional Dallas Cowboy.

To this world he later added the ingredients of sex–with scores of women, judging by the accounts of former church members–and drugs. Today it is about to come crashing down.

Renee sits literally at the bishop’s right hand, two rows back. She brings a little purple pillow to cushion her on the wooden bench reserved for the defendant’s family. She has sat in precisely the same spot every day through the five-week trial, expressionless behind mirrored glasses.

In her hands is a small, green leather-bound Bible with an inscription in tiny gold italics: “Pastor Renee Hornbuckle.”

Beside her are her “armor-bearers.” In black church tradition, these are the men and women who faithfully attend to a minister’s personal needs. They include her bodyguard, a man who never takes out his Bluetooth earpiece, and two plus-sized fashion plates who’ve spent every day of this trial at her side.

Then there is the girlfriend. There is no guaranteed seat for her behind the bishop; she sits in the back row of the courtroom, with her own posse of fashion-conscious female friends standing by in support. With coffee-colored skin and a voluminous head of spiral curls, the girlfriend is not welcome on the family bench. She exchanges the occasional icy look with Renee.

Then there are the women Hornbuckle raped.

The little red “Reserved” sign on the victims’ bench doesn’t specify who’s supposed to sit there, but it is easy to see that Kate Jones–her pseudonym for this trial–sees not a man of God at the defense table, but a devil.

The dishwater blonde, a former drug user, wears a plain, cream-colored sweater and carries a cheap purse.

She stares intently at the back of Hornbuckle’s head as if she is trying to force this man to bear her rage.

She is the only one of the three rape victims at this trial who was not a member of Agape Christian Fellowship, Hornbuckle’s church.

The preacher picked her up at a gym in the Mid-Cities, smoked meth with her, drugged her and then raped her.

Hornbuckle’s defense attorney derided her as a “meth ho.

Krystal Buchanan, who never knew Hornbuckle as anything but her pastor.

Hornbuckle lured Krystal to a Euless apartment in the summer of 2003 with the promise of a birthday present. He gave her $120. He also drugged and raped her. Before that night, she told the court, she was a virgin. Why did she accompany him in the first place? Her plaintive answer: “He was my bishop.”

Last, there are current and former Agape parishioners, mostly women, both supporters and detractors of the bishop, who’ve scrambled for open seats every day in this courtroom.

The loyal wife, the sexy girlfriend, the meth user, the former virgin and the divided congregation were never meant to come together in one place.

What is missing from the blanket coverage is any sense of why: Why Bishop Terry Hornbuckle made this descent from man of God to meth-smoking rapist. Why many of his congregation members stood by him. Why his wife put up with him when his indiscretions were widely known within the church.

And just what kind of church was this? Who went there and why?

In the end, jury members and the public were left with pieces of a puzzle: a self-appointed bishop who’d so finely tuned the mechanics of seduction that he was able to get away with it for more than a decade right under the noses of his wife and his elders–leaders who apparently looked the other way as the lives and faith of several of their fellow church members were shattered.

The young women whose attentions the bishop cultivated during lengthy, exuberant church services fueled by the power of suggestion and incessant talk about money and success.”

Again, you just cannot make this stuff up.

So how’s life for Renee Fowler-Hornbuckle these days? The website PimpPreacher gives us a number of insightful clues:

“Ever the opportunist Pastor Renee Hornbuckle has also written a book that will be released in November about her experiences. She says her message now is that if she “can make it through this, other women can overcome and learn how to live in peace after the pain.”

The part of the story that is the most intriguing is after her husband’s reign of terror – Renee Hornbuckle has reopen the exact same church!

Sure Dr. Renee Hornbuckle has changed the name of the church and is no longer consider Terry Hornbuckle’s wife, but this church is still part of a Bishop Terry Hornbuckle’s pitiful legacy. Renee Hornbuckle is no victim – and never was – she was too much of an insider to be a victim. The First Lady has a view and perspective of church matters that’s unlike anyone else in the congregation, and by the time the Pew Sitters hear of the scandal – the First Lady knew it was coming a year ago – but kept her silence.

Renee Hornbuckle reopening of this Mega Church of Horrors is typical of a First Lady who can’t seem to let the money, and the Pimp Preacher life style go. As it is in the Dope Game, as it is in the Preaching Game.

Where Terry Hornbuckle left off – Renee Hornbuckle has now picked the church pimping. Instead of getting as far away from that Mega Church lifestyle, drew closer, submissive to the gravitational pull of the pulpit. In so many ways she has become her husband, minus the Meth, Rape Charges, and the Concubines.

She is now a Pimp Preacher. Meaning she is now living off church donations, selling products in order to maximize her earning potential from her congregation, and 100% addicted to Tithes & Offerings.

As I looked at the video embedded above, I couldn’t help but notice the huge amount of Pastor Worship that still exist at this church. It was that same level of Pastor Worship that struck her husband with Hemopastorphillia. Sadly, and I now see symptoms of the same disease in Renee Hornbuckle.

The Good News for Renee is she still has the opportunity to end all of the idolatry that surrounds her right now, by getting rid of the ever present female armor bearers, and redirect those members to service in Christ – not service in Church. We will continue to watch Mrs. Hornbuckle as she walks in her husband’s footsteps, and takes on his likeliness. As of right now there is nothing that has distinguished her Destiny Pointe Christian Center from her husband’s Agape Christian Fellowship and for that reason we welcome her to PimpPreacher.com.”

So, let’s get all this straight:

Sophia A. Nelson takes exception to a series of podcasts done by yours truly that are over a year old and that were based on writings and statements that she made in the public square about herself and never denies the veracity of my claims; she goes on a “crusade” to “protect” Black women and girls from the “cyberbullying” predations of Black men like me on YouTube and other social media – first by doing all she can to silence voices like mine on YouTube – second, to launch a Change.Org petition and to play a role in the creation of a “Black Woman’s Anti-Defamation League”. Yet, she goes hard in the paint for a corrupt career politician like Maxine Waters and a mediocre hack like April Ryan. And just last week in fact, she’s chumming it up with two “sisters”, one in particular who has profited mightily from her ex-hubbie’s vile misdeeds – a man of the cloth who abused his position of clerical power and authority to drug and rape at least three women, for which he is now serving time in prison. And, as the aforementioned PimpPreacher.com website makes clear, Pastor Renee Hornbuckle hasn’t changed all that much from the “prosperity gospel” ways of her former husband.

You tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

No wonder Ms. Nelson gets so hot and bothered by the phrase, “Black Female Fuckery”; it would appear, that she knows quite a bit about it.

Mumia Obsidian Ali is the Sunday columnist for the Negro Manosphere. He also hosts a daily podcast “talk radio show” called “Obsidian Radio” on YouTube. Follow him on Twitter @ObsidianFiles.