A friend from Europe took a stroll through Harlem, New York yesterday, and encountered this church sign on West 123rd Street.

All churches & members that support homos cursed be thou with cancer HIV syphilis stroke madness the itch then hell 1 Cor. 6:9

“Isn’t it nice, all those little church communities, each of them with their own vision of the surprises that God has in store for humanity,” my friend deadpanned.

What you can’t see in the photos is that the sign is topped by a big white cross with the words Jesus is Lord.

Incongruous? Pastor James David Manning of the ATLAH World Missionary Church doesn’t think so. He likes to use the sign to spread the wit and wisdom of his Savior. Here are a couple of his earlier messages.

Obama has released the homo demons on the black man. Look out black woman. A white homo may take your man.

And

Harlem is a sodomite free zone stop sodomizing our children across America

Pastor Manning’s church preachings are just as inspired.

I love watching his costumed helpers and choir singers in the front of the church, who all stoically act like this is run-of-the-mill Jesus-loves-you stuff. Listening to the cries and whoops of his adoring congregation is also an enlightening pastime.

To get the full effect of what Manning’s church stands for, you should probably know that he’s a 9/11 truther; is convinced that “black people have no honor“; and believes that it’s “the Biblical, noble, constitutional thing to do to drive Muslims from this land.”

He seems nice, don’t you think?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

P.S. As a young man, Manning spent three and a half years in prison in New York and Florida on burglary, robbery, larceny, and other charges, an experience that did nothing to dissuade him from pursuing a career telling other people how to live moral lives. That includes periodically advocating the stoning of “sodomites.” The ATLAH church was in the news last year when gay activist Jennifer Louise Lopez called its bluff by knocking on the door to request a stoning. The church worker who answered told her she’d have to come back the next day because he was fresh out of stones. Watch the video here.

P.P.S. You might think that Pastor Manning’s deluge of anti-Obama preaching runs afoul of the Internal Revenue Service’s no-electioneering rule, which holds that, for a church to keep its tax-free status, no overt political messages may be sent from the pulpit that favor or attack a political candidate. Americans United for Separation of Church and State thought so too, and filed a complaint against Manning’s ATLAH church in 2008. I could find no evidence that the IRS sent the church a warning letter, let alone a notification that ATLAH’s tax-free status had been revoked. Par for the course.