As the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) opened in Chicago Monday night (Aug. 19), Sen. Raphael Warnock fired up attendees with a sermon-like speech about healing the land. The Georgia Democrat, who also serves as senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, told a cheering crowd that America can unite and move forward from the “plague” of former President Donald Trump.
During his 14-minute speech, Warnock described a vote as “a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children.” He condemned voter-suppression efforts as well as the “cancer” of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. While endorsing Kamala Harris for president, the pro-choice senator also said America must move forward on reproductive rights.
Of Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, Warnock said, “People who have no vision traffic in division.” The senator also chastised Trump for endorsing a Bible, saying, “He should try reading it.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock: Donald Trump Is ‘Weaponizing’ Faith Symbols
During an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday (Aug. 20), Warnock further criticized Trump. “As a pastor, as a person of faith, I take great offense with the way in which [Trump] is weaponizing the symbols of our great country and also the symbols of the faith, towards this kind of hate,” the senator said on “Morning Joe.”
He added, “The Christian church is going to have to come to terms with the fact that there is no full accounting for this phenomenon of Trumpism without reference to the church.”
Warnock also urged religious Democrats to resist the concept of Christian nationalism. If we’re created in God’s image, he said Tuesday, then we “ought to respect the humanity of all of God’s people, those of other faith traditions, those who claim no faith at all. That is this grand American experiment, and we get to write the next chapter.”
In his DNC speech, Warnock explained that the COVID pandemic showed how Americans can “heal the wounds that divide us…heal a planet in peril…[and] heal the land.” The crisis revealed we have “a personal stake in the health of my neighbor,” he said, and “we are as close in our humanity as a cough.”
Comments About Children Spark Reactions
Monday night, Sen. Raphael Warnock spoke of an America that “gives every child a chance.” He lauded President Biden’s efforts to expand the child tax credit and cut child poverty. In a rousing conclusion, the senator told DNC attendees:
I need my neighbors’ children to be okay so that my children will be okay. I need all of my neighbors’ children to be ok. Poor inner-city children in Atlanta, poor children of Appalachia, the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza, the Israelis and Palestinians. I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine, I need American children on both sides of the tracks to be okay. Because we are all God’s children. And so let’s work together, let’s organize together, let’s pray together, let’s stand together, let’s heal the land.
After the group Evangelicals for Harris posted a clip of Warnock proclaiming, “We are all God’s children,” some people pushed back about Harris’s pro-choice policies. Andrew T. Walker, an ethics professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, commented, “Except the unwanted children that get aborted, apparently. They get discarded as medical waste.”
Jonathan Franzone, a former worship leader, responded, “Wolves and Goats for Harris. Abortion is murder. Full stop.”
 opened in Chicago Monday night (Aug. 19), Sen. Raphael Warnock fired up attendees with a sermon-like speech about healing the land.){kind=link}