For a long time I’ve been saying the only thing that can lift us up out of our spiritual crisis in America is the transformative witness of the Black church. We had a vivid foretaste of what that might look like Monday when Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., addressed the Democratic National Convention. I found it especially heartening that he had a kind word for the humanity of the Palestinian people.
Warnock is the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atanta, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s church, and it should come as no surprise his speech was electrifying. Nor that it ended with what sounded to me like a political altar call. Most political speeches build up at the end to an ask — get out and vote, let’s elect so-and-so — but Warnock’s swept through the hall like rolling thunder. And it left me, even watching it on the internet, inspired, even called, to “stand together” with him and “heal the land.”
Warnock’s conclusion, the altar call, began with an odd — yet, I think, calculated and very effective — appeal to common humanity. Odd because it harkened back to the COVID-19 pandemic, a subject many politicians find divisive. But in the pandemic Warnock found a message of healing.
“And so I’m inspired tonight,” he began (at 10:30 in the linked transcript). “I’m inspired by all of you. I’m inspired by the resilience of an American spirit that has rebounded from the pandemic and is holding at bay the forces that are trying to divide us.” He went on to recall his father, a junkman and a preacher who worked with “old broken cars” in his day job and “lifted broken people whom other people had discarded and told them that they were God’s somebody” from the pulpit.1 “I’m convinced tonight,” he said, his voice rising as his audience began to applaud, “that we can heal sick bodies. We can heal the wounds that divide us. We can heal a planet in peril. We can heal the land.”
After waiting out the applause, Warnock returned to the pandemic:
And in a strange way, the pandemic taught us how [to heal the land]. A contagious airborne disease means that I have a personal stake in the health of my neighbor. If she’s sick, I may get sick also. Her healthcare is good for my health. I’m just trying to tell you that we are as close in our humanity as a cough. I need my neighbor’s children to be okay so that my children will be okay.
Isn’t this just the Golden Rule, restated? Do unto others … But Warnock wasn’t done yet. Bringing his audience to their feet with cheers and sustained applause, he thundered on. They may not have been shouting glory — it was hard to make out exactly what they were shouting (I would have been shouting “amen, brother” and I’m not even a Baptist) — but the delegates certainly sounded ready to go out and do the Lord’s work. Warnock continued, in the polished cadences of a seasoned preacher:
I need all of my neighbor’s children to be okay. Poor inner city children in Atlanta and poor children of Appalachia. I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza. I need Israelis and Palestinians. I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine. I need American children on both sides of the track to be okay, because we’re all God’s children. And so let’s stand together. Let’s work together. Let’s organize together. Let’s pray together. Let’s stand together. Let’s heal the land. God bless you. Keep the faith.
To all of which I can only say amen, brother.
The mood in the hall, even observing it through the filter of a desktop computer 200 miles away, was electric. And what inspired me the most, given my experience visiting Lutheran churches and NGOs in Palestine (link HERE and scroll down to subhead “Lutherans in Palestine? The political gets personal”), was Warnock’s insistence that “the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza” be OK, that “Israelis and Palestinians” be OK.
We have heard a lot since Oct. 7 about how pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activists have split the Democratic Party, and we have ill-founded accusations of antisemitism from politicians eager to exploit that split. But as near as I could make it out listening to my desktop computer, the applause was not only sustained but building right up to “we’re all God’s children. And so let’s stand together.”
Warnock’s speech landed with me, because I’ve been inspired by the Black church since I was a college student and Dr. King was pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church. But apparently it hit home with others who don’t share my Southern background. One of the podcasts I watch regularly is an openly left-wing, avowedly secular show called The Majority Report with Sam Seder. Co-host Emma Vigeland, an anti-Zionist who is inclined to give presidential nominee Kamala Harris the. benefit of the doubt but loathes the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, said she liked Warnock’s speech (at 5:40) better than one by US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, that parroted Biden’s policy.
Vigeland also also shared speculation that Warnock’s mention of Gaza was significant, that “maybe this was an ad lib because it wasn’t in the official transcript.”After a video clip of the last minutes of the speech, this dialog (at 7:04) ensued:
VIGELAND: This ABC feed didn’t show it, but when he said Israel and Palestinians, the MSNBC feed showed the split screen — that’s when Harris and [vice presidential candidate Tim] Walz stood up. Whatever. This is all ceremonial, who knows? But I just liked — I mean, talking about the shared humanity, I would have much preferred for her [Ocasio-Cortez] to do that.
OFF-CAMERA VOICE: Than lie?
VIGELAND. Yeah, than to repeat the Biden administration line.
Hardly a ringing endorsement! But perhaps a testimony to Rev. Warnock’s ability to reach the unconverted.
As especially incisive commentary, both as to style and substance, was filed by Jeet Heer of the Nation. Here he is on style:
At a political convention, speeches are performances where style and delivery are as important as substance. Like improvised jazz, they rely on a preexisting material (an existing stock of arguments and talking points that are shared by the party) but come to life based on the panache and intensity of the performer.
In his speech on Monday night, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock relied on the same set list as almost all the other speakers […] But if the tropes were familiar, what Warnock did with them stood out. He didn’t invent a new style but rather revived the tradition of the progressive Black preacher that has been rarely heard in national politics since the heyday of Jesse Jackson (who, as it happens, was honored that night). It’s a venerable tradition, made globally famous by Martin Luther King Jr., that stretches back to slavery.
And here, on substance, more accurately on what the Black tradition can mean going forward:
The progressive Black religious tradition has made history in the past and is likely to continue to grow in power, especially as the Democratic Party expands in Georgia and North Carolina. In Warnock, this tradition has a powerful vessel, ready to sound forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.
To which, again, I say amen.
But the commentary I liked best came from Angela Johnson of The Root, the African American-oriented online magazine founded by Henry Louis Gates Jr. “His speech had both style and substance,” she said, citing Warnock’s political and pastoral credentials. “But convention goers who may have never spent time in a Black church probably had no idea that Warnock was going to take them there with a speech that left the crowd on their feet.”
Count me in the amen corner again.
Johnson cited several high points of Warnock’s speech, including his suggestion that Trump “should try reading” the bible instead of endorsing it:
Warnock then put an exclamation mark on his point, sharing Bible verses that no one would use to describe the Republican presidential nominee, including, “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Under a subhead proclaiming “He Preached a Message of Inclusion,” Johnson also touched on the passage about God’s Israeli and Palestinian children that brought the DNC delegates to their feet
In a moment that got a huge reaction from the crowd, Warnock reminded voters that our next president needs to focus on more than just their political base in a style that took us back to Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
And she found in it a message that went beyond the politics of the moment:
Warnock has a front row seat for all of the crazy on Capital Hill, but it’s clear that he still has hope for the future of the country with the right leadership.
“A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children, and our prayers are stronger when we pray together,” he said.
Amen. Again, I say amen. So be it. Let it be.
If there was a downside to the DNC, at least in my opinion, it was that no Palestinian-American delegate was allowed to speak to the delegates. That silencing led a group called Muslim Women for Harris to withdraw support and disband. It also deprived delegates of the opportunity to hear a powerful speech by Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, who was proposed by “uncommitted” delegates who oppose Biden’s policy on the conflict in Gaza.
Romman, who represents an suburban district north of Atlanta, told Mother Jones magazine that to be silenced the same day that Georgia’s former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan spoke to the Democrats came as “just absolutely a slap in the face.” Her speech, which she provided to the magazine, would have concluded:
Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.
To which, again, I can only say amen. Preach, sister! We need to hear your voice.
Ironic that DNC delegates would have heard from Romman’s family, Palestinian refugees who moved to Georgia when she was 8, essentially the same message of hope and inclusion as Warnock’s. I think it’s also ironic that in silencing Romman, the Democrats chose to silence a young woman who has won in a multiethnic, suburban legislative district in a swing state.
Across town, a 20-minute drive from the convention center on Chicago’s lakefront, a very similar message of hope and inclusiveness was heard the next evening, at an interfaith vigil for “those killed in Gaza over the past 10 months” hosted by the American Friends Service Committee, a peace and social justice advocacy group established by Quakers during World War I .
According to a Religion News Service report, the AFSC vigil presented quite a different scene from the DNC, where former President Obama was speaking the same day. As the sun set over the city, about 100 people, many of them activists “taking time to stop and to find refuge in their faith and the bonds of friendship,” gathered along Lake Michigan:
Small clusters of older women and men, some wearing kaffiyehs, the familiar Palestinian scarf, greeted one another with hugs. Families with kids and young activists made their way to the lakefront, where they were met with a table topped with battery-powered votive candles, pins reading “Remember Gaza” and AFSC literature.
RNS reported they sat on a set of steps facing the lake, while occasional joggers passed by, to hear speakers from Christian, and Jewish faith traditions:
Among the first speakers of the evening was Laura Boyce, AFSC’s associate general secretary for U.S. programs. For Boyce, advocacy for Palestinians reflects her Quaker belief that “there is that of the divine in all people.”
Above all, Boyce and the AFSC want to be “very clear that we need to see a cease-fire.”
AFSC has been heavily involved in Gaza since the Nakba, or forced displacedment of Palestinians in 1948, and the vigil’s program included a message from Firas Ramlawi, office manager of AFSC’s operations in Gaza. Forced to flee from his home in the early stages of the war, he and his colleagues still provide food aid, when available, and work with children traumatized by continuous bombardment. His message was primarily one of thanks, according to the RNS reporters:
During the vigil, Boyce read a message written by Firas Ramlawi, an AFSC colleague in Gaza, addressed to those gathered at the vigil. Ramlawi sent his thanks and said the “unwavering support and steadfast belief in our just cause” was a grounding constant for him, said Boyce.
“We are human beings, longing for life in all its details, striving to live with freedom and dignity, because there is so much on this earth that is worth living for,” said Boyce, quoting from Ramlawi’s message. “Let us be tireless in our efforts to end this violence.”
Boyce added that in times of strife, “you just have to keep trying,” to which some replied “Amen!
To all of which, again, I can only reply amen. Preach, brothers and sisters!
Notes
1 I have emended “Gods, somebody” in the transcript to read “God’s, somebody.” As an old English teacher, I think apostrophes matter, and this one makes the phrase: (1) more theologically consistent; and (2) more consistent with Warnock’s emphasis on “all of God’s children.” It still doesn’t parse right, but I hear in it an echo of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s mantra for Black youth, “I am somebody.” I think Warnock also echoes President Obama’s 2008 campaign theme, “Yes We Can,” and I suspect that’s not by accident. Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American who was denied an opportunity to speak, also would have echoed Obama’s theme.
Links and Citations
Abubaker Abed, “Aid workers try to treat trauma under worst possible conditions,” Electronic Intifada, June 20, 2024 https://electronicintifada.net/content/aid-workers-try-treat-trauma-under-worst-possible-conditions/47216.
“DNC’s Disappointing Ceasefire Rhetoric,” The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder, Aug. 20, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7DpcAoo2qI.
“‘It’s not even a dogwhistle’: Trump attacks ‘Jewish governor’ Josh Shapiro,” MSNBC, Aug. 22, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8XDMeLdb6g.
Jeet Heer, “Raphael Warnock Lights Up the Convention With a Preacher’s Fire,” Nation, Aug. 202, 2024 https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/raphael-warnock-dnc/.
“Raphael Warnock speaks at Democratic National Convention,” Rev, Transcript Library, Aug. 20, 2024 https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/raphael-warnock-speaks-at-democratic-national-convention#.
Bob Smietana and Reina Coulibaly, “Parallel to DNC, a Chicago interfaith vigil mourns the loss of life in Gaza,” Religion News Service, Aug. 21, 2024 https://religionnews.com/2024/08/21/parallel-to-dnc-a-chicago-interfaith-vigil-mourns-the-loss-of-life-in-gaza/
Adria R Walker, “Muslim Women for Harris disbands and withdraws support for candidate,” Guardian, Aug. 22, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/22/muslim-women-kamala-harris-disbands.
Also, my post to this blog, “‘Sumud’: The political gets personal — and spiritual — with a Lutheran social justice program in Palestine,” Feb. 24, 2024 https://ordinaryzenlutheran.com/2024/02/25/sumud/.
[Revised and uplinked, Aug. 26, 2024]
Ordinary Time 