Rev. Williams Jr, a black minister of the Salem Bible Church in Atlanta, delivered a fiery sermon at Aretha’s funeral, where he lamented how black America was losing its soul and is being hindered by a large percentage of single black women leading households and raising children alone.
“Rev. Jasper Williams spent more than 50 minutes speaking and at no time did he properly eulogize her, We found the comments to be offensive and distasteful,” said Vaughn Franklin, the soul singer’s nephew, in a statement made to BuzzFeed News on behalf of his family.
Vaughn said that his aunt never asked for Williams to deliver her funeral address, “because dying is a topic that she never discussed with anyone.” He said the family only asked the pastor to perform the eulogy because he had memorialized other family members, including Aretha Franklin’s father, minister and civil rights activist C.L. Franklin. He went on to suggest that his aunt would have prefered more outstanding individuals like Rev. Al Sharpton to deliver her eulogy.
During the elaborate ceremony honouring the 76-year-old’s life, Williams described children raised without a father as “abortion after birth.”
