Senator Raphael Warnock expressed deep confusion over continued Evangelical Christian support of former President Donald Trump in a recent interview with David Remnick.
Warnock joined Remnick for a nearly hour-long discussion of the nation’s “moral and spiritual” battle for The New Yorker Radio Hour, which aired last weekend. Warnock was elected full-time Senator for Georgia in a run-off on January 5th. He also still preaches most Sundays at the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached.
Remnick brought up what he called a “big movement” in the country of people saying they want to live in a “Christian Nation with laws instituting Christian principles,” the vast majority of whom self-describe as pro-Trump Evangelicals.
“The enormous number of people of earnest faith, who look at someone who lives the way he does, who’s now been convicted of multiple felonies,” Remnick continued. “How do you analyze that?”
“Well, there were a number of Christians, a whole lot of Christians, who were pro-slavery,” Warnock replied. “And, there are a whole lot of Christians who were pro-segregation.”
“There’s a recurring line by Martin Luther King Jr in his letter from the Birmingham jail. He says it a few times, and in his speeches — he says, ‘I am so disappointed in the American church,’” Warnock continued. “‘What kind of people worship there? Who really is their God?’”
Warnock paraphrased King, Jr., saying, “That’s the question for this moment. Who really is their God? Particularly when we’ve been told by a lot of folks on the far right for years that their focus is family values.”
Warnock continued by expanding on what he sees as inconsistent beliefs from the pro-Trump Evangelicals, how they treat the poor, and a historic celebration of “matters of private morality, one’s conduct around issues of human sexuality, marriage, and the like.”
“And those same people now are lined up behind Donald Trump. A man who has, had several marriages who found himself caught up in the crosshairs of, his decision to having an affair with a porn star, and these same folks who raised these issues around family values and private morality are the ones who are speaking as if he is the Messiah of God,” Warnock summed up.
“I think the question that Doctor King asked all those years ago is especially relevant at this moment: Who really is their God?” he concluded.
Listen above via The New Yorker Radio Hour and WNYC.
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