Jesus is My Pimp Daddy

Pimps tend to be a very competitive breed. The king has the most bling, lowest ride and largest stable. Prostitution, as one of the early growth industries, had Jesus Christ written all over it. JC had the people skills, the right demographic and that beleaguered look going that never failed to win over the young, naive runaways that littered Herod Antipas' dark and dingy Greyhound bus stations. Rounding out the posse was legendary courtesan, Mary Magdalene. She was as good with the books as she was in bed, making her the ideal Madame.

The ever inventive JC's side business as Pimp Daddy flourished, keeping him flush with mad money, but became more and more vexing for his praetorian guard, the Knights Templar, tasked with safeguarding the loot. People began to talk. People in general, that is. Not just the johns stuck with Mary's steepening rates. Christ's success in the sex trade business became the ace in the hole for the Priory of Sion in extorting favors from the Vatican, and not Mary's bun in the oven as so often contended. Although JC's heir definitely sweetened the deal.

Peddling the heady combination of flesh and religion as opiate cocktail would serve as the cornerstone for Christianity's historic hypocrisy towards sex and its view of women as little more than chattel.

This view of JC's glory days may differ somewhat from your and my interpretation of the Bible, but it seems to be the modern day reading by several of Christ's more popular apostles. Jimmy Swaggart's appetite for hookers was as insatiable as his appetite for tithings; Jim Bakker defrauded parishioners of millions and paid for the silence of a woman who alleged rape; and Ted Haggart's hate filled condemnation of homosexuality was eclipsed by his own drug fueled romps with male escorts.

With the introduction of feel-good mega-churches to the mix, the status of today's Evangelicals has been elevated to minor pop star status. Slightly off key. It's a one way love in which the celebupreacher is bathed; the adoring deification from his glassy-eyed parishioners transposed to the key of Ben Franklin by the mercenary cornea of God's mouthpiece. The celebupreacher sees a sea of human ATM machines; not a sea of faithful.

Sermons are staged as full blown theatrical productions, complete with live bands, sound and light engineers. These populist pantheons retain public relations agencies to engineer complex marketing plans to better sell their alchemy. All of this has served to bring much of contemporary Christianity squarely within the quick fix, tabloid cult of celebrity. Sin on Saturday; buy absolution on Sunday. In all fairness, Catholics pioneered this business model, so our newly minted saviors do not get high marks for originality. They do, however, excel in devising efficient delivery mechanisms for their opiate.

Christian branding targeting the tween to twenty-something demographic reached its market segment through the propaganda of cable shows, theme parks, Internet sites and Christian music. The latter, faith based music, has been a phenomenal success. CCM or "Contemporary Christian Music" has quickly developed a large following.

Take gospel music for example. Or Take 6. A question echoed by a multitude of female voices on Internet social networking sites is, "Have you been McKnighted?" The ten time Grammy award winning gospel group, Take 6, was founded by the charismatic and talented tenor, Claude McKnight. McKnight, indisputably a very gifted vocalist and performer, personifies the dogmatic hypocrisy that is the dry rot afflicting much of today's moderne Christianity. He puts bread on the table by pandering to a predominately Christian based audience performing Christian based gospel music. Yet, until recently, he did not attend church -- except to sing and collect a paycheck -- and was not a particularly religious man.

The manner in which he conducted his personal affairs -- plural -- would make the most devote secular humanist blush. McKnight created multiple profiles on social networking sites that included Facebook, My Space, Interracial Dating.com, Match.com and Black Planet. Virtual relationships took on physical form, implicating real world trysts with multiple women, often within the same month, week or day. Since McKnight's group is constantly on the road, geography and logistics that might otherwise have proved obstacles proved an advantage: there was always an excuse for his unavailability to one partner while in the company of another. The online Lothario had women queued up in countries spanning the globe.

Were this just another instance of sexual addiction or the oversexed, narcissistic musician, it would have been a non-story. Had all McKnight desired was casual sex, there were plenty of Gospel Groupies eager to polish the Pastoral Staff. The destructive behavior, however, extended beyond serial sexual encounters: McKnight worked intently at nurturing long-term relationships with dozens of women contemporaneously. In interviewing some of the con man's marks, it became clear that sexual gratification was a component of his dysfunction, but incidental to his need for emotional affirmation. These women weren't young Trixies trying to get their "hip card" punched. He indiscriminately targeted women of all ages and directed his full frontal assault at the heart strings: most marks considered McKnight their best friend. One casualty described the experience as "emotional rape". McKnight had deep seated abandonment issues originating from a tumultuous childhood. By winning the affection and devotion of each of these women, he attempted to compensate for childhood neglect.

The tragic irony in this was that as a direct consequence of his efforts to suppress feelings of abandonment by wooing multiple women simultaneously, when the truth came out many of these women wound up betrayed, deeply hurt and with abandonment issues of their own. In his efforts to heal one man, himself, McKnight perpetuated the affliction by leaving others as broken as he was or more so.

Take 6 built its following from devotees of Christianity, both domestically and abroad. The group enjoys an international reputation amongst God-fearing, ten commandment subscribing practitioners of various denominations. McKnight's wake of broken hearts was broad and long with a global reach. Spurned lovers include women in Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada. He pledged his love to each woman, stressing that their relationship was exclusive. Some of the relationships spanned a period of years; yet, when inconvenient or uncomfortable, he would casually terminate the relationship and discard the woman, telling her that he never had genuine feelings for her. That it had all been a ruse. This caused one of his castoffs to ponder whether it was possible to cheat if the man never recognized the existence of a relationship. That "cheating" presupposed the existence of a relationship in the mind's eye of the cheater, if not the cheated. While a provocative philosophical query, the very fact it was posited underscores the tragedy of the dynamic.

And so it continued for a twenty-year period until Valentine's Day, 2009. McKnight had been involved with a Floridian for three years. The two met in October of 2006. Madam X was a successful businessperson and carefully vetted the men in her life. McKnight was no exception. He passed muster and had her convinced that she was his sole love interest. For two years she took him at his word. She would meet his family; he hers; they vacationed together. In December of 2008, she suspected infidelity. The singer would delete any personal comments Madam X posted to his Facebook profile page, lest other women he was playing see the comments and question his devotion to them. Of course, other women were posting similar affectionate missives. Since his prey were scattered across several continents, often the postings would appear while he slept. Occasionally one of his lovers would see an endearment left by another before he could delete it. When Madam X confronted McKnight, he attempted to dismiss the posts as a school girl crush by an adoring fan or three. Perhaps a little too adoring.

Madam X found that one of the singer's entourage, an interior designer, was living at his house that latter part of January 2009 while he was on tour in Japan. She was redecorating McKnight's townhouse, but it was apparent this was much more than a casual business relationship. Prior to that, she overheard him reviewing a business plan with a woman he held out as a colleague, but, again, he was addressing her as an intimate and not a Platonic associate.

Claude V. McKnight III had a ready and plausible retort for any discrepancy presented him, even as evidence of his libidinous 'wandering webcam' began to mount. Madam X would accompany the singer to the 2009 Grammy Awards Ceremony on February 08, 2009. The raven haired beauty with keen wit and sculpted body had been arm candy for McKnight at several red carpet events. She wasn't aware that McKnight had extended similar invitations to two other women: a girlfriend in Canada and an LA based love interest with whom he had enjoyed a four year, physical relationship. He delayed Madam X's arrival in LA by one day so he could un-invite and placate these two women. The singer and Floridian spent the weekend of the awards show at his brother's home outside LA. The night prior to the event, Madam X slept as McKnight had webcam sex in the adjacent room with his Canadian consort.

On Valentine's Day, February 14, 2009, Madam X set a fool proof trap for McKnight. McKnight had a three day performance that weekend in New York. She told the singer that she intended to meet him in the city for a romantic weekend. In the 11th hour she was intentionally evasive and delayed booking her flight, curious to see if he would panic and recruit another love interest to warm his bed on Valentine's Day. She suspected McKnight would call in her understudy, a love interest in Connecticut, were she unavailable. He did just that, and Madam X was able to verify this after the fact from the source when she confronted her stunt double with McKnight's ménage a trahison.

February 19th, Madam X confronted McKnight a final time after discovering forty-eight pages of contact information for various women on his computer. The list was compiled over a two month period. One woman listed per line. Doing the rough math: thirty-four lines per page; forty-eight pages with single line entries for each woman: that placed the total headcount on or about 1632 notches on his virtual bedpost. Even if one were to give him the benefit of the doubt and assumed Madam X was angry enough to see double at that point, that's still eight hundred women the singer added to his list of receptacles in a mere two months. One can only venture a guess at how many bound volumes a black book containing twenty years worth of McKnight conquests would occupy. Realizing this was an end game, he pulled his MySpace and Facebook pages the following day. February 21rst, the pious poseur found Christ and posted a mea culpa on his Take 6 blog entitled, "To the Glory of God". That same day he also enrolled in a sixty day online Bible study course purportedly designed to help those with sex addiction. Slightly disingenuous as he continued to correspond with his various playthings before, during and after the course.

Even though McKnight's 'come to Jesus' recovery course was to run through April 21, 2009, on March 10th, Madam X discovered McKnight had registered a new account on the online dating site, Match.com. When on March 12th, Madam X brought this discrepancy to his attention, the singer updated his Match.com profile to include mention of his online recovery and past relationship with Madam X. Shortly thereafter the profile was removed entirely.

Determined to incriminate himself with one or two more amateurish overtures, March 23rd, McKnight joined in the dialogue on a forum of jilted McKnight lovers, posing as one of the women. Invoking Christ's name thirty five times in 2.5 pages of text, McKnight in drag beseeches the angry mob to forgive the singer and, to everyone's amusement, forgive themselves for being so weak and co-dependent. His fictitious persona as one of the aggrieved women provides insight into how he views women, as a whole: morally bankrupt, unable to avoid temptation of the flesh, easily mislead, and emotional voids without a man in tow. His alter anima ego is portrayed as an inherently sinful creature without Jesus' paternal guidance. He goes on to suggest that the women ask JC for forgiveness, presumably for their collective sins as the iconic temptress. Sirens in the night causing the singer to stray from God's righteous path. Succubus. I quote, "Therefore, we must all forgive Claude and one another as well." Then he thoughtfully refers the fallen to "Saved.com" for redemption before citing biblical verse referencing God's capacity for forgiveness.

Madam X would later learn that while she was hosted by Claude McKnight on an October 2008 birthday cruise, he was wiring money to another of his companions to cover the cost of an emergency abortion. Always the romantic. McKnight never used condoms. Unwanted pregnancies were but one of many risks this walking Petri dish posed the fairer sex.

As word of the cocksman's antics have begun to spread, his spin doctors have stepped in to do damage control. April 10th he appears as guest on a Netcast couples counseling show to share ". . . his battle and recent recovery from his sexual addiction." The call-in radio show is hosted, conveniently, by a fellow Take 6 band member and his wife -- neither of whom are trained therapists.

So was Jesus Christ Mac Daddy Pimp? Your guess is as good as mine, but if one were to base his interpretation of the gospels on Mr. McKnight's, JC was that and then some.

Jason M. Kays is a published author, jazz musician and intellectual property attorney. He has had extensive hands on experience debunking con men. Please visit his site at http://www.virtualvice.net