Sen. Raphael Warnock has used his pulpit at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for nearly two decades to get his message across.
The red brick church on the corner of Jackson and Auburn Street is where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. was baptized, ordained, and served as pastor from 1960 to his assassination in 1968. The church has always been at the forefront of religious, political, and social change. Ebenezer’s congregants have run the gamut, from those down on their luck to U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
For Warnock, Ebenezer has been home since 2005 and has not only played an instrumental role in shaping his views on religion and politics but has given him a powerful platform to share those ideas.
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“When you think of Rev. Warnock, you think of Ebenezer,” Augusta resident Leslie Griggs told the Washington Examiner. “The two will always be connected.”
Warnock’s sermons over the years have been carefully crafted to make congregants uncomfortable at times. He’s called for black churches to be more inclusive of gay people and claimed they were woefully behind the times when it came to gender equality. He’s also taken on white churches, faulting some for being complicit in “slavery, segregation, and other manifestations of white supremacy.”
Ebenezer is also a place where Warnock has celebrated professional and personal milestones.
During a Watch Night Service on New Year’s Eve in 2015, he asked then-girlfriend Ouleye Ndoye, 16 years his junior, to come forward. There were whoops and hollers from the crowd, and one woman was heard shouting, “Work it, pastor!” according to news reports at the time. When the clock struck midnight and 2016 was ushered in, Warnock pulled out a red box, dropped to one knee, and popped the question.
“So, will you do me a favor and be my good thing?” he asked. “Will you marry me?”
The couple got married at Ebenezer on Valentine’s Day. They had two children but divorced in 2020.
A few years after becoming the church’s youngest senior pastor, Warnock invited congregant Rep. John Lewis to lunch and told him he was thinking about running for office. Warnock wanted Lewis, an iconic civil rights leader and longtime congressman who died in 2020, to mentor him. The two had met when Warnock was studying at Morehouse College, and Lewis had held a hero-like status in Warnock’s mind and heart.
However, a life in politics wasn’t something many saw for Warnock, who grew up in the projects of Savannah and was the 11th of 12 children in a blended household. His father salvaged cars and preached on Sundays in a Pentecostal Holiness church.
“My parents were very, very conservative Evangelicals,” his sister Joyce Hall told the New York Times. “Raphael was shaped in an environment where our parents taught us biblical values. And they let us choose.”
The family celebrated when Warnock was accepted to Morehouse — but they were low on money. He used a Pell Grant, low-interest loans, and scholarships to pay for tuition. During a summer internship at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Alabama, Warnock pivoted from a primarily prayer-based outlook to one that advocated activism. It would be the lessons he learned there that would stay with him and fuel his career as a pastor and a politician.
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A few months after he was hired at the famed Atlanta church, Warnock led a caravan of displaced Hurricane Katrina residents back to New Orleans so they could vote. He also took up the case of a young black student who was sentenced to a decade behind bars for having a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old when he was 17.
After Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who was wearing a hoodie when he was fatally shot in Florida, Warnock showed up to his Sunday sermon wearing a maroon Morehouse hoodie in solidarity.
In 2020, Warnock entered the race to unseat Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who had been appointed to the post by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp after Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned.
The crowded field started off with 20 candidates and was whittled down. No candidate received 50% of the vote on Election Day, so the top two, Warnock and Loeffler, headed into a runoff race.
Warnock pulled in impressive endorsements from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), to name a few. He also secured endorsements from Obama, Carter, and Stacey Abrams, as well as several from Atlanta Dream players, a WNBA team Loeffler had co-owned at the time. Loeffler had made controversial statements about the Black Lives Matter movement and received backlash from those on her payroll.
Loeffler and her allies tried to portray Warnock as a candidate who was “dangerous” and “radical” and hellbent on pushing progressive policies on Georgians.
Two weeks before the runoffs, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson ran a video of Warnock’s then-wife that had been captured by a police body camera.
“I’ve tried to keep the way that he acts under wraps for a long time, and today, he crossed that line,” she is heard telling the authorities. “So, that is what is going on here, and he’s a great actor. He is phenomenal at putting on a really good show.”
The footage was weaponized and used in ads against Warnock, alleging that he abused his wife. Warnock has denied his ex-wife’s accusations.
Despite the allegations, Walker defeated Loeffler, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, to become Georgia’s first black senator. His win was driven by a surge in African American voters across the state — in cities like Atlanta and Augusta as well as in smaller rustic towns.
After he won, he returned to his pulpit, ready to discuss not only his historic win but also the attack at the U.S. Capitol the day after.
“Whoever would have thought that, in Georgia, we would see the people rise up and send an African American man who grew up in public housing … to the United States Senate?” he said.
“Then, as we are basking in the glory of all that represented, it seemed like we could only have a few hours to celebrate,” he added. “The ugly side of our story, our great and grand American story, began to emerge as the crude, the angry, the disrespectful, and the violent broke their way into the People’s House, some carrying Confederate flags, signs, and symbols of an old world order passing away.”
Among his first acts after being sworn into the Senate was voting to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He would later go on to co-sponsor legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. On March 17, 2021, the preacher-turned-politician made his first speech on the Senate floor in support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Warnock also announced he would seek election to a full term.
Georgia football legend Herschel Walker, a Republican and political newcomer, was tapped to take on Warnock. Despite being knee-deep in scandals, Walker and Warnock ran neck and neck in the general election.
Neither candidate had enough votes for an outright win on Nov. 8, and the two have been forced into a Dec. 6 runoff, per Georgia law.
Millions of dollars have already flooded into the race as the candidates pitched themselves to voters once again.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson (D), a longtime friend of Warnock, told the Washington Examiner that the race has less to do with Walker and more to do with unseating Warnock.
“Of the Republican candidates that were vying for the seat, Herschel Walker met the demographic and was the most controllable,” he said, adding that Republicans have told him that they know Walker is “an extremely flawed candidate” but that “it’s not about Herschel Walker. It’s about the seat.”
Johnson cheekily added he’d vote for Walker if there was a “flag football contest” but said the Heisman Trophy winner lacks the political chops to represent and advocate for Georgians effectively.
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Johnson said Warnock has been practicing for the role his entire life.
“Personally, I’ve always thought he was someone who God had his hand on,” he said. “We see someone who has been able to work out their philosophical beliefs into legislative and policy action. We have seen him be consistent not only throughout his career but also in the Senate.”
