There’s a black Baptist pastor running for the Senate on Tuesday in Georgia; a Baptist who’s in a dead heat for a very contested seat.
“Baptist” can mean a plurality of things, even in the Deep South.
Truth is, this Baptist, one Rev. Raphael Warnock, is a complicated man. In a series of four articles about the major contenders for Georgia’s two Senate seats, the New York Times profiled Warnock in a largely uncritical piece that put the man’s take on Christianity front and center.
The marriage problems and domestic violence allegations went toward the bottom of the piece. His religious credentials rose to the top. Which is not a bad thing but oddly, the other three pieces didn’t say a thing about those candidates’ faith and –- this being the Bible Belt -– one can assume they do attend a house of worship somewhere, especially the Republicans.
In fact, one of the other candidates (Kelly Loeffler, a Catholic) attacked Warnock last month for some of his liberal Christian beliefs. Loeffler got some bad PR on that unwise move.
Another candidate, Jon Ossoff, is Jewish and the fourth, David Perdue, is Methodist. So you got a liberal Baptist, a conservative Catholic, a Methodist and a Jew. Even USA Today understood what a field day on the religion beat this election fight is.
But we will start with the Times:
Mr. Warnock is betting that the time is ripe for a Black Baptist preacher in robes trimmed with kente cloth, who speaks of police brutality and voter suppression from one of the world’s most famous pulpits. While he has built a résumé that piles credential on top of credential, he has not hesitated to share personal experiences like being suspected of shoplifting and having an incarcerated brother.
Republicans have tried to paint him as a dangerous radical, noting his denunciation of white privilege, his defense of Black pastors who have criticized the United States and his support of abortion rights. Incidents from his past have come under greater scrutiny, including an arrest for which the charges were later dropped and an incident last year where his now ex-wife called the police after a conflict outside her home.
As the story moves on, Warnock is first identified as Pentecostal, then as an “evangelical” and then as an intern at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The church appears to not be part of a larger (Missionary, Southern or American Baptist) denomination but independent.
Just like tmatt has chronicled the devaluation of the word “evangelical” in many news reports, it is likewise tough to define “Baptist” and even “Pentecostal” these days. The definitions have become blurred.
It was there that Mr. Warnock moved from a tradition that emphasized prayer and personal salvation to one that took a more activist approach, he explained in an interview. “It was the Baptists who preached a kind of Social Gospel that captured my attention and imagination,” he said.
That is the key paragraph there and representative of a major switch in Warnock’s beliefs.
After that, you hear of Warnock’s political climb to Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, once pastored by the Rev. Martin Luther King, and -– toward the end –- of his substantial marriage problems along with a domestic violence accusation. As for the content of his faith and his doctrinal views, all is subsumed into politics. That’s a major GetReligion theme: Politics is real. Religion isn’t all that important.
The Christian Science Monitor team framed its profile in much more graphic faith terms. It does what the Times does not: Explain how personal salvation vs social justice traditions in conservative Protestantism lead to wildly different outcomes.
To Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the gospel that her opponent preaches from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta is a threat to capitalism and the American way of life.
She has not minced words. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, whom she faces in a Jan. 5 runoff for United States Senate, is a “radical liberal,” she repeatedly says. At a rally for Senator Loeffler, former Rep. Doug Collins went further: “There is no such thing as a pro-choice pastor. What you have is a lie from the bed of hell. It is time to send it back to Ebenezer Baptist Church.”…
Yet the targeting of Mr. Warnock’s beliefs has taken the election beyond politics. It has revealed the deep differences in the South between a white Christian tradition founded on personal salvation, and a Black Christian tradition that preaches liberation and social justice. In that way, the political balance of power in Washington could hinge on how Georgia resolves tensions about faith that date back to America’s founding.
In the past, when those two strands of Christianity have clashed, Ebenezer has been a salve, honored as the church of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But the religious nature of the attacks on Mr. Warnock suggests not just a base-energizing strategy, but a willingness to risk the bonds of those efforts to find common ground and healing.
Wait. All Black churches are united by this stress on liberation, as opposed to preaching social justice and the need for repentance and salvation?
Near the end, here are the two paragraphs I wish the Times feature had included:
In such a high-stakes election it is natural that religion would become a key motivator.
“Churches have power,” says Trelleny Joiner, a faith organizer at the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan voter registration effort. “Especially being here in the Bible Belt and Georgia having very deep faith and religious roots, there’s not really any separation between church and state when you consider how faith communities have such a big role in the political agenda of a state or a community – or the whole nation.”
Warnock’s faith was an easy target because he’s a minister. But what parish does Loeffler attend? Is Ossoff Reform, Conservative or Orthodox? And, considering that Perdue made his millions off of being CEO of Dollar General, a store chain excoriated by ProPublica for enriching itself at the expense of poorly paid employees, why not go after him for ignoring Methodism’s historic concern for social justice?
Lots of missed opportunities here. As tmatt reminds us, Georgia is a shifting target. What about Warnock’s pro-choice stance, which has raised the hackles of his more conservative Black-church brethren? Was there some kind of moral tradeoff when Warnock went full social justice? What remains of his beliefs from his evangelical and Pentecostal past?
Perhaps the Times did as well as it could. But, should Warnock win, I look forward to his life story being revealed like the unwrapping of an intriguing onion. There’s a lot of layers to this man, if journalists are willing to ask serious religious questions.