• Home
  • Metro Asian News
  • Misc Asia
  • Lifestyle
  • Business
  • Art
  • Health
  • Eat Out
  • Events
  • Podcasts
ABOUT
Advertise in GAT
Contact us
Monday, March 27, 2023
Georgia Asian Times
International Insurance of Georgia
  • Home
  • Metro Asian News
  • Misc Asia
  • Lifestyle
  • Business
  • Art
  • Health
  • Eat Out
  • Events
  • Podcasts
  • Login
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Metro Asian News
  • Misc Asia
  • Lifestyle
  • Business
  • Art
  • Health
  • Eat Out
  • Events
  • Podcasts
No Result
View All Result
Georgia Asian Times
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Metro Asian News
  • Misc Asia
  • Lifestyle
  • Business
  • Art
  • Health
  • Eat Out
  • Events
  • Podcasts
Home Feature

In Georgia, Warnock brings faith and activism to the arena

Georgia Asian Times by Georgia Asian Times
December 20, 2020
in Feature, Metro Asian News
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By SUDHIN THANAWALA

Atlanta, Dec 20, 2020 — In 2008, when Barack Obama was under fire for a sermon his former pastor delivered years earlier, the aspiring president distanced himself from the preacher’s fiery words that channeled Black Americans’ anger over racism.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock defended Jeremiah Wright. “When preachers tell the truth, very often it makes people uncomfortable,” he said on Fox News.

Now Warnock is the politician running for office and the one under attack for his sometimes impassioned words from the pulpit. And once again, he is not backing down. Warnock, 51, says his run for U.S. Senate in Georgia — one of two races on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate — is an extension of his years of progressive activism as head of the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

AD: High Museum of Atlanta

Warnock is calling for bail reform and an end to mass incarceration; a living wage and job training for a green economy; expanded access to voting and health care, and student loan forgiveness. It’s an unabashedly liberal platform that may galvanize the Democrats he needs to turn out to vote in the runoff election.

But it also carries risks. His opponent, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, has blasted his rhetoric and proposals as “radical,” socialist and out of step with Georgia residents. It’s a line of attack that could sway moderate suburban voters in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 20 years.

“I’m a pastor who is running for political office, but I don’t think of myself as a politician,” he told The Associated Press. “I honestly don’t know anything to be other than authentic.”

Warnock would join a small group of other ministers in Congress, including at least one other Black pastor, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. He said his model was King, “who used his faith to activate change in the public square.” In high school, he listened to the civil rights icon’s sermons and was particularly drawn to “A Knock At Midnight,” in which King exhorts churches to serve as the “critic of the state” and fight for peace and economic and racial justice.

Warnock has embraced that mission. In 2007, he warned that the U.S. could “lose its soul” in a speech that condemned President George W. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq. At the Georgia Capitol in 2014, he was arrested while protesting the refusal of state Republicans to expand Medicaid. After the killing of George Floyd by police in May, he expounded on the country’s struggle with a “virus” he dubbed “COVID-1619” for the year when some of the first slaves arrived in English North America.

His campaign draws heavily from his early life. Warnock grew up poor in public housing in Savannah, Georgia. He cites his father’s small business hauling old cars to a local steel yard to push back on attacks he is against free enterprise.

He attended Morehouse College and earned a Ph.D. in theology from Union Theological Seminary, funding his education with help from student loans and federal grants. His older brother Keith, one of 11 siblings, served more than 20 years in prison for a first-time, drug-related offense, and Warnock has used his case to argue for criminal justice reform.

“He knew what it is to struggle. He knew what it is to go without,” Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Georgia, said of Raphael Warnock, whom he supports. “He’s able to speak to where a lot of people are.”

Warnock knew early on that he wanted to enter the ministry. His father was also a preacher, and enlisted his son at a young age to help him read the small print in a biblical reference book because he refused to get prescription glasses. Warnock recalled giving his first sermon, “It’s Time I be about My Father’s Business,” at 11.

His social activism is part of a tradition of resistance in many Black churches that developed from the fight against racial inequality. Black pastors have called out the country’s troubled racial history using terms that can be discomforting to outsiders.

In his much-scrutinized sermon, Wright decried the country’s mistreatment of Blacks with the exclamation, “God damn America.” Loeffler has used the clip in an ad that accuses Warnock of defending Wright’s “hatred.”

Loeffler has also used snippets of Warnock’s own sermons to argue that he is against police and the military. In one clip, Warnock says that nobody can serve “God and the military.” Warnock, who has two brothers who are veterans and whose father served in World War II, has said he was preaching from a biblical text and trying to impart a lesson about prioritizing God and laying a moral foundation for life.

Loeffler has used another clip to accuse Warnock of denigrating police. But his remark about “police power showing up in a kind of gangster and thug mentality” in that sermon was a specific reference to police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, that the U.S. Justice Department investigated after a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, a Black teenager, in 2014.

“He has actually made sure that we know who he is in his own words,” Loeffler said at a debate in December. “Those aren’t my words.”

Warnock accused her of lying “on Jesus.”

Cleaver said the attacks on Warnock’s sermons using lines with no context are “woefully unfair” and show no understanding of the role of a Black preacher.

“I’m just made sick over what they’re trying to do,” he said.

At the debate in December, Loeffler also questioned Warnock about his arrest in 2002 on suspicion of obstructing a child abuse investigation at a camp in Maryland run by the Baltimore church he headed at the time. Warnock said he was trying to make sure young people had lawyers or family present when questioned by authorities. The charges were dropped.

Warnock’s estranged wife accused him earlier this year of running over her foot during an argument, but police said they found no visible signs of injury, and they did not charge Warnock with a crime.

The effort to paint Warnock as a radical is similar to the strategy Republicans used with some success against other Democrats in down-ballot races this year. But it also echoes the attacks that segregationists leveled against King and supporters of the civil rights movement. That could help turn out the state’s large African American population to vote in next month’s runoff.

Warnock is right to keep focusing on his platform of a living wage, expanded health care options and voting rights, said the Rev. William Barber II, president of the Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit group that fights poverty and discrimination.

“You don’t win by being Republican lite,” Barber said. “You win by lifting up people from the bottom.” – AP News

 

Tags: georgiaraphael warnockUS Senate
Previous Post

U.S. authorizes Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, elderly next in line for shots

Next Post

Congress reaches deal on COVID-19 aid package, plans votes for Monday

Georgia Asian Times

Georgia Asian Times

Related Posts

Georgia House and Senate in power struggle over budget
Metro Asian News

Georgia budget may cut university funds, boost scholarships

March 24, 2023
Georgia House and Senate in power struggle over budget
Metro Asian News

Georgia House and Senate in power struggle over budget

March 22, 2023
Georgia’s AAPI community remembers and commemorate 2nd Anniversary 3.16 Atlanta Spa Shooting
Metro Asian News

Georgia’s AAPI community remembers and commemorate 2nd Anniversary 3.16 Atlanta Spa Shooting

March 16, 2023
Sen. Ossoff Commemorates Second Anniversary of Atlanta Spa Shootings
Metro Asian News

Sen. Ossoff Commemorates Second Anniversary of Atlanta Spa Shootings

March 15, 2023
GAT host Legislative Luncheon at Georgia State Capitol
Metro Asian News

GAT host Legislative Luncheon at Georgia State Capitol

March 14, 2023
CPACS workers launch efforts to become Union
Metro Asian News

CPACS workers launch efforts to become Union

March 8, 2023
Next Post

Congress reaches deal on COVID-19 aid package, plans votes for Monday

Signup Free E-Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Apr 7
8:00 am - 3:30 pm

Symposium on Asia-USA Partnership Opportunities (SAUPO) 2023

May 6
9:00 am - 4:00 pm

GAT AAPI Summit 2023

Jul 14
6:00 pm - 10:30 pm

GAT 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia 2023

View Calendar
Logo

 

CONTACT US

Follow Us

MOST INFLUENTIAL

GAT 25 Most Influential Asian Americans Gala celebrates Asian voice

GAT 25 Most Influential Asian Americans Gala celebrates Asian voice

July 18, 2022

Video highlights of GAT 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia

July 17, 2022

2022 GAT 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia-Awards Gala

July 17, 2022

LINKS OF INTEREST

ATL Asian Film Festival

     

  • Contact Us
  • Advertise in GAT
  • About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use

© 2023 Georgia Asian Times - Empowered by 8SOL. Managed by Arckopolis.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Metro Asian News
  • Misc Asia
  • Lifestyle
  • Business
  • Art
  • Health
  • Eat Out
  • Events
  • Podcasts

© 2023 Georgia Asian Times - Empowered by 8SOL. Managed by Arckopolis.

Welcome Back!

Sign In with Google
OR

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

Subscribe

Stop scrolling through endless social media feeds for news. Sign up for our website FREE Newsletter and get news that matters to you. We filter out fluff, so you don’t have to.

    Loading
    Loading
    Loading
    Loading
    Loading
    Register for FREE to read the rest of this article, or log in to your account.

      Or Login Here :

      Login

      Are you sure want to unlock this post?
      Unlock left : 0
      Are you sure want to cancel subscription?