‘Demon Buster’ Florida Rep. Kim Daniels addresses ‘I thank God for slavery’ comments
Florida state Rep. Kimberly Daniels who is renowned in Christian circles around the world as “the Demon Buster,” has responded to growing criticism about her role in developing new black history standards in that state after the emergence of a 15-year-old clip of her declaring to a church that “I thank God for slavery.”
“The ‘Thank God for Slavery’ political ploy was taken out of context from a message I preached 15 years ago. The message was not about slavery but about overcoming obstacles in life as a believer of Jesus Christ,” Daniels said in a statement to The Christian Post Tuesday. “Taking it out of that setting and putting it in any other context is simply slanderous.”
In the 18-second clip from her 15-year-old message, Daniels appears to be crediting historic slavery for her Christian faith.
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“I thank God for slavery. I thank God for the crack house. If it wasn’t for the crack house, God would have never been able to use me how he used me now,” said Daniels, a former at-large city councilwoman from Jacksonville, who also leads the nondenominational Spoken Word Ministries. “If it wasn’t for slavery, I might be somewhere in Africa worshiping a tree.”
History shows, however, that Christianity existed in Africa long before it spread to the West.
“Christianity first arrived in North Africa, in the 1st or early 2nd century AD. The Christian communities in North Africa were among the earliest in the world,” the BBC noted. “Legend has it that Christianity was brought from Jerusalem to Alexandria on the Egyptian coast by Mark, one of the four evangelists, in 60 AD.”
Daniels currently sits on the board of the African American History Task Force, which helped to develop the black history standards that were approved last week for public school students in the state. The standards include a line about teaching “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
In her statement to CP, Daniels acknowledged that even though she was appointed to the task force by Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, “I never participated in any conversation about the state's Black History standards.”
“I was never consulted about these standards. I disagree with and would have immediately challenged and resisted any notion that slavery was a benefit to African Americans,” the Florida Democrat said. “I am a Black woman who was born in the early 1960s. I understand the atrocities of racial oppression and Jim Crow. I lived it.”
Last Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris denounced the state’s new black history curriculum as “propaganda.”
“They dare to push propaganda to our children,” she said in Jacksonville according to the Associated Press. “How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also a Republican presidential candidate defended the new black history standards as a defense against left-wing indoctrination.
He said while he was not involved in developing the standards, what “they’re probably going to show is some of the folks that eventually parlayed being a blacksmith into doing things later, later in life. But the reality is: All of that is rooted in whatever is factual.”
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