U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., participates in a rally in protest of the Save America Act outside the U.S. Capitol on March 18 in Washington.
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Heather Diehl/Getty Images
Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, became the state’s junior U.S. senator a decade after being selected to serve as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, a church once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. His role as senator brought him to Washington National Cathedral in 2023, where he marked Juneteenth that year with a sermon based around the life of the Prophet Isaiah.
Warnock said during the sermon, “Every valley will be exalted, every mountain and hill will be made low, the crooked places will be made straight, the rough places will be made smooth, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.”
Warnock expands on that message in his new bookThe Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, Where he argues that democracy is “the political enactment of a spiritual idea.”
in an interview with morning edition Host Michelle Martin, Warnock said the country’s divisions are more moral than political. “What we’re dealing with right now is not the difference between right and left, it’s really the difference between right and wrong,” Warnock said. He further stated that “It’s really too bad when my party cedes so much of its beliefs and values to those… who are on the right.”
In his conversation with Martin, he explained that he believes faith must confront systemic injustice, not individual behavior, and that a broader moral imagination is needed in American politics.
Listen to the interview by clicking the blue play button above.
