The real bishops of Beverly hills
In Gonzales Park in Compton, Los Angeles, a former Crip gangster gets out of a gleaming black Mercedes. He’s wearing a black leather trench coat, dark glasses and a black wide-brimmed hat. When he takes off his black leather gloves, his fingers sparkle with gems.
“I brought Mr Glock just in case,” he says, pulling a gun from his briefcase and ejecting the clip. “Fully loaded. So if anything happens, we got nine rounds.”
Ron Gibson, 58, could pass for a hitman. But he’s not – he’s a bishop, one of six on a new reality show that debuted last year called Preachers of LA from the Oxygen Network. Five are African American like Gibson, and then there’s a token white guy – introduced at the insistence of the network – but all are outlandish characters who preach the prosperity gospel, that quintessentially American strain of Christianity that maintains that you can pray yourself rich, that bling equates with blessings and it’s OK to flaunt it too, all the better to advertise what God can do.
“People see my glory but they don’t know my story!” says Gibson, trotting out one of his favourite lines. As we sit on a bench on a chilly morning, he tells me his come-to-Jesus story – how he grew up poor, joined a gang and would go to the Hollywood hills to mug people. “White people,” he notes. “We didn’t rob black people. And I didn’t steal from houses. I’m no thief. Thieves hit you when you’re not looking but I’d jack you to your face. My mom taught me values.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10636658/The-real-bishops-of-Beverly-hills.html