APTOPIX GOP 2016 Trump
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks last week during a campaign event at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center in South Carolina.
(Willis Glassgow, The Associated Press)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Rev. Darrell Scott, senior pastor of the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, is drawing national attention for his efforts to connect Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump with other black ministers.
Scott, according to reports by the Associated Press and others, helped organize a meeting scheduled for Monday at the real estate mogul's Trump Tower in New York.
Trump's campaign initially said a group of 100 pastors would endorse him at a news conference after the private gathering - an announcement met with curiosity given that the candidate has stoked racial tensions. Many invited expressed surprise that the meeting was being billed as an endorsement. And over the holiday weekend, plans for the news conference unraveled, with Scott taking the blame publicly.
In an interview with the New York Times, Scott cited a "miscommunication on my part, which led some folks to believe there would be a unilateral endorsement."
Scott did not immediately respond to messages Monday from cleveland.com.
Trump has suggested that a Black Lives Matter activist deserved the rough treatment he received at a Trump rally this month. Trump suspects that the pastors group had planned to endorse him but balked after pressure from the civil rights advocacy group.
"Probably some of the Black Lives Matter folks called them up [and said], 'Oh, you shouldn't be meeting with Trump, because he believes all lives matter,'" the billionaire said when calling in Monday to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
"I believe black lives do matter, but I believe all lives matter, very strongly."
Scott's backing of Trump is not in question. He appeared on CNN as a Trump supporter earlier this month and has sung Trump's praises to the Times.
The pastor is "not affiliated with the campaign," Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email to cleveland.com, "but we greatly appreciate his support."
So who is Scott? Here are a few things you should know.
Scott's spiritual journey took him from a life of drugs to the pulpit.
From a September 1998 profile in The Plain Dealer:
Darrell Scott was mixing PCP for sale and smoking crack the night his girlfriend found God and his life changed forever.
Early that evening in 1981, the couple had run out of rum and he sent Belinda for the 151-proof alcohol that would be used to pour on cotton stuck to the end of a coat hanger - an improvised torch to keep the crack pipe lit.
Already high, she would run into a devout neighbor on the way to the liquor store. "To shut him up," she agreed to go to his church, and ended up giving her life to God.
When she came back after midnight speaking in tongues, Scott at first thought his girlfriend had found her own party. But two weeks later, "to have her shut up," he found himself in the same church and ended up running home to flush $3,000 worth of drugs down the toilet. He was baptized that same night, and within a month, he and Belinda were married in the pastor's study.
The Scotts began their church in 1994 with only four parishioners.
The New Spirit Revival Center grew out of Thursday night Bible studies and within five years had 500 members, Darrell Scott told The Plain Dealer in 1999.
"The nondenominational church has put about $1.5 million into repairs, technology and sweeping renovations," at The Civic, a Cleveland Heights landmark that New Spirit had purchased, The Plain Dealer wrote in 2005.
"A 115,000-square-foot complex built as a synagogue in 1924 now houses a modern Pentecostal ministry with all the trappings: a day-care center, a banquet hall, a 5,000-watt radio station and about 3,500 active members."
Come 2006, the church counted 3,000 members.
The nondenominational congregation is rooted in "Pentecostal/charismatic persuasion," Scott said earlier this year in an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network.
In the past, Scott has described his church as more progressive.
"Traditional Pentecostal churches, I believe, need to divest themselves of the repressive traditions they hold," he said in a 2006 interview with The Plain Dealer. "They're not able to attract the current generation, and the churches are dying."
Scott has been less progressive when it comes to accepting gays.
In 1997, New Spirit came under fire for Scott's plans to host Angie and Debbie Winans, the gospel duo whose song "Not Natural" was criticized for including anti-gay lyrics.
Scott, according to a Plain Dealer article at the time, said his church believes the Bible is "anti-homosexuality."
In 1998, a Plain Dealer reporter observed Scott bring "the congregation to its feet with his condemnations of ... the open acceptance of homosexuality in other churches." More from that profile:
"The presence of the Lord is in this place. He's in your life. That's why you can't come over here and get away with that mess you used to get away with," Scott says. "He'll either convict you and get you to stop, or he'll send his judgment upon you to get you to stop.
"But either way, baby, when you get to this ministry, the mess is definitely going to stop."
An "American Idol" finalist got his start at Scott's church.
Scott Savol, who in 2005 finished fifth on the reality TV singing competition, worshiped with the predominantly black New Spirit congregation and sang in its elite choir.
"He has white skin and a black voice. Do you know how many doors that can open?" Scott told The Plain Dealer in March 2005, soon after Savol advanced to the top 12. "He can have a bigger impact than any of the other winners."
Scott even canceled church meetings on nights "American Idol" aired, arguing that it was more important for members to be voting to keep Savol on the show.
Scott is not a big political player.
Democrats long have dominated Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
Over the years, a number of area pastors have been influential on the political scene, among them the Revs. E.T. Caviness, Marvin McMickle and Otis Moss Jr. Lately, the Revs. Jawanza Colvin and R.A. Vernon have become known for their civic activism.
Scott, an evangelical and social conservative, has not asserted himself similarly. He told The Plain Dealer in 2004 that a younger blacks would no longer automatically vote Democratic. Scott, according to the article, admired then-President George W. Bush "for standing firm on abortion and same-sex marriages." But he emphasized that he was just as skeptical of Republicans as he was of Democrats.
The pastor, now 56, told the New York Times this month that he was a registered Democrat and had voted for President Barack Obama. Scott told the Christian Broadcasting Network that he met Trump adviser Michael Cohen through a mutual friend five years ago and later met Trump. He has participated in other meetings this year between Trump and black ministers.
"I was looking for some subtle hints of racism," Scott told the Times. "I didn't see it at all."