Racism lost and Democracy won
How Raphael Warnock defeated the devil of white supremacy down in Georgia
Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia for a six-year term as a United States Senator was historic, and for many reasons much deeper than politics.
First is what Hershel Walker’s electoral defeat tells us about Black voters who felt humiliated, insulted and assaulted by this candidate put up by Donald Trump and Republicans. Those were the words I most often heard in conversations with and comments from Black Americans in Georgia and around the country. Black citizens are telling us they want to be represented by competence and character, neither of which Walker had.
The few press conferences Walker held were with white Senators sitting on either side of the flawed ex-football star to handle him, and white handlers would have certainly stepped up to control Walker had he won.
But African-Americans in Georgia said they want to be represented by qualified candidates, not unqualified celebrities. It appears that a portion of white independents and moderate Republicans also helped Warnock, choosing character over party. All parties should learn that a racially diverse coalition of voters prefers elected leaders that offer substance and solutions to the complex problems our country faces.
Second, as Warnock made clear in his speech, his victory does not suggest that voter suppression didn’t occur in Georgia. On the contrary, Warnock said:
“Let me be clear, just because people endured long lines that wrapped around buildings, some blocks long. Just because they endured the rain and the cold, and all kinds of tricks in order to vote doesn’t mean that voter suppression does not exist. It simply means you the people have decided your voices will not be silent.”
The lesson here is that as real as it is, voter suppression can be defeated. In Georgia, in this election, Republicans tried and in some cases succeeded in cutting down early voting days and places, shutting down polling places, leading to huge, around-the-block lines and long waits for Atlanta-area voters, according to the New York Times.
A Georgia law passed in 2021, SB 202, enacted a series of politically targeted and morally bankrupt restrictions designed to make it harder for people of color to vote. But it was defeated by voter persistence and resilience. Raphael Warnock won in spite of voter suppression because Black voters would not be suppressed.
Third, and perhaps most important to me, is Raphael Warnock’s ability to put his faith into politics throughout his campaign and in his victory speech — or, you might say, his powerful sermon. When was the last time you heard a Democrat say, “To God be the glory, for the great things God has done?” The Senator reiterated his oft-repeated belief that “A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children.” He thanked Georgians for praying with “your lips and with your legs, with your hands and your feet, with your head and your heart.” Raphael Warnock is clearly a son of the civil rights movement led by Black churches that always spoke of praying with your feet.
When Warnock cited what he called, “The four most powerful words in a democracy: the people have spoken,” it sent chills down my spine. Then he went to the theological foundations of democracy when he praised the people for rising and standing up against all odds from the “ugly side of our complicated American story … because you believe as I do, that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. The notion each of us has within the spark of the divine, that we were created in the image of God, imago dei.”
That text from the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis 1:26, is the same text we used in our training of 800 poll chaplains around the country, including Georgia, by the multi-racial, multi-faith, and multi-generational Faiths United to Save Democracy.
After clearly stating his faith as a basis for his politics, including his determined leadership on voting rights, Warnock showed the kind of religion that can inspire but not dominate. He included those for whom religious language isn’t comfortable: “And if you are not into that kind of religious language, that’s fine. Our tent is big. Let me put it this way: Each of us has value. And if we have value, we ought to have a voice. And the way to have a voice, you have a vote to determine the direction of your country, and your destiny within it.”
When Democrats are reluctant to share how their faith motivates and shapes their politics, it allows Republicans to claim faith as belonging to them against “secularists.” When our Faith and Justice Academy seminarians came to Georgetown this summer, they asked Democratic senators and representatives on Capitol Hill why they are not more ready to speak about their faith in public. Raphael Warnock is the best answer to that question. He brings into his public life the kind of faith that holds all politicians accountable, especially in relation to the “least of these,” as Jesus describes those so central to his ministry, but who are often least considered in Washington. Warnock wants to reverse that, as he told struggling parents, students, elderly, essential workers, farmers, and especially people with low-incomes that he “sees them” and wants to serve them.
It was also appropriate and moving to hear the re-elected Senator from Georgia say this:
“We stand here tonight on broad shoulders. Our ballot is a bloodstained ballot. We are standing on the shoulders of the martyrs: Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, two Jews and an African-American who lost their lives fighting for that great American right to vote. Viola Liuzzo, James Reeb, a white sister and brother who also lost their lives. Fannie Lou Hamer, that indomitable Mississippi sharecropper. And my parishioner, God bless his memory, John Lewis, who one day crossed a bridge, knowing that there was danger on the other side. And yet he crossed that bridge while building a bridge for the future. And now it is on us, the latest generation of Americans and Georgians, to keep building that bridge. To keep walking that long walk. Pushing the nation towards our ideals.”
Warnock was preaching and giving an altar call to all of us to keep walking and the building of that difficult bridge to a more just future for America.
This is something powerful and potentially transformational to have the first Black Senator from Georgia elected to a full six-year term, and one of only 11 Black Americans to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, be a successor to the pulpit in Ebenezer Baptist Church where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached and John Lewis worshiped. (I really appreciate how Raphael Warnock calls himself not a “former pastor,” but a pastor who also happens to be a United States Senator.) Those faith and justice politics are deeper than any party platform and could help pave the way for a better, more civil, and more constructive vision of the common good and human flourishing for all of God’s children.
But for all that to happen, racism has to lose in America and democracy has to win. And Warnock had us remember faith as he finished his sermon about hope in the difficult work we have still to do, “But the scripture says light shines in the darkness and the darkness overcometh it not, and I know with all my heart that our best days are ahead of us.”
The best word to describe my reaction after the speech last night was (please pardon my religious language) HALLELUJAH!
Thank you, Rev. Jim, for expressing a lot of truths close to my/our heart. Senator Rev. Warnock's acceptance speech Tues night was one for the ages. It can be viewed a number of places online, but the full transcript is worth having-- one can read it at https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/raphael-warnock-full-victory-speech-transcript
For decades i've wished that more Democrats running for or holding office would speak of their politics/policies as originating from an inclusive religious faith and its principles & values such as the ancient Jewish idea of justice (tzedek) and Jesus' Social Gospel, which gets expressed, for instance, in the official Catholic economic doctrine "the universal destination of goods" (God created the goods of the Earth for the good of all, not just the privileged few).
Rev. Warnock expressed some of these values and principles beautifully the other night.
*Allelujah* (indeed!)
This is the way to beat the apparently Godless Republicans who love to claim that they are the righteous party of "God," behaving more like pre-transformation Ebeneezer Scrooge and an American Taliban.....
Amen!!!