Raphael Warnock Thinks America Needs A Spiritual Rebirth

ATLANTA — This has long been a capital of Black America, with preachers and politicians alike commanding attention well beyond the Fulton County line. Atlanta's central role first flowed from the Black church, and most prominently, the pulpit commanded by two generations of Martin Luther Kings.

Yet after the fall of Jim Crow, "The City Too Busy To Hate" elevated a series of African American elected officials who came from the movement but not the pastorate: Maynard Jackson, Julian Bond, John Lewis and Shirley Franklin. There were exceptions — the legendary Andrew Young being the most obvious — but there has not been a church figure who could find his way on a presidential ticket.

Until now.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) remains the pastor at the Kings' church, Ebenezer Baptist, and is also considering a jump into the 2028 presidential race.

Over biscuits, eggs and out-of-this-world grits at The Flying Biscuit a few miles from his church, I talked to Warnock about that prospect. We also discussed the possibility of fellow Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff running (imagine those awkward ATL-DCA Delta flights), and why he thinks his party will never sustain a Senate majority without winning more Southern states.

Then we walked around the grounds of Ebenezer Baptist, National Park Service site, MLK shrine and activism hub — a sort of St. Peter's Square for the Black church.

It's a place a lot of Democrats will soon become quite familiar with if Warnock runs in 2028 — and even if he doesn’t, other presidential hopefuls will surely make the pilgrimage to see a Morehouse Man, the preacher-turned-politician of Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn.

Watch the full video on YouTube or listen to it as a podcast for the whole story.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You've been traveling a bunch, haven't you? 

I have.

All over the country. 

Yeah, been across the South. I mean, we've got some really important races. And I just want to make sure we get a Senate majority. Nobody thought we could two years ago.

It does feel now closer to a reality. It feels almost probable now, right? Doesn't it? 

I am nauseously optimistic.

Nauseously optimistic. You're one of those Democrats — you've been scarred so badly. 

Look, the stakes are so high. And we've seen that in Georgia. We've seen that in other places. The consequences are large. And in many instances, the margins are small. So we can't take anything for granted. The way to lose is to become overly confident. We've got to run all the way through the ticker tape.

But today you get the majority, right? 

I think we have a great shot. A great shot. We're definitely gonna flip the House. I think so, and I think we have a great shot at the Senate.

There's two states that have come on late in the South. One is Mississippi. The other is South Carolina. We'll get to Georgia in a minute. But I want to ask you about Mississippi and South Carolina, different states, different candidates. Tell me about each of those and tell me your view of which of those is gonna flip. 

The fact that both of those states are in play right now is a reflection of how badly this administration has screwed up. People are really feeling the pain all over the country. But I have been, for a long time, trying to get my party to pay more attention to the South. I believe that the road to a sustainable majority in the Senate for Democrats runs right through the South. I actually think Mississippi is a blue state that just needs to be organized. And so that's why you saw me on the ground doing the work there. I've been behind the scenes making that case long before you saw me there.

To who? Sen. [Chuck] Schumer? 

To the whole party. And people have seen it.

Donors, too, you mean? 

Donors and all, yeah. I'll go places, and sometimes a donor or someone will ask me, “Well, I'm helping you. Where else should I be looking?” And I say Mississippi. And people are like, Mississippi? They can't believe I'm even saying that. And I think it's because people have a view that this is a deep-red state. But when you look at what we achieved in Georgia, Mississippi has the conditions for that, I think, and in some ways, even better.

Those same donors, if you had said Georgia 10 years ago, may have given you the same look. 

That is my point. And I think, with each cycle, when we came close, and then we didn't quite make it, it felt to a lot of people like Lucy and the football. And so I think there was the mistake and the temptation then to shrink back. But we saw those margins get closer and closer, cycle after cycle. And when the right moment came, we flipped not one Senate seat, but two, and I think we're going to win the governor's mansion in Georgia as well. So what I want to see Democrats do is prepare to invest in Mississippi the day after the election, no matter the outcome.

Do you include Texas on that same trajectory? 

Oh, absolutely, and what a great win that would be. We've got an excellent candidate. Obviously, I'm happy.

Could [Texas Senate candidate James] Talarico, do you think, bring his skills to Ebenezer Baptist in the pulpit there? 

Oh, I'd love to have him. He's a little busy right now, but when the dust settles, I'd be happy to have another senator in the pulpit of Ebenezer, and I'd love to have another pastor on the floor.

Do you think America needs a spiritual rebirth? 

Oh, absolutely. I think Donald Trump is a problem. He's a serious problem for our country. He's a danger. But he's also symptomatic of —

Yeah, I was gonna say, isn't he a symptom of a larger issue? 

He's symptomatic of a deeper problem. Only a nation that is spiritually sick could elect Donald Trump twice. There is a brokenness, and for people who think we just need to get through this moment so that we can get back to normalcy, if that is your diagnosis of where you are, you have missed where we really are. It's only because so many people were being left behind in the first place that somebody like Trump could even get ahead. And I have to tell you, I move across this state and across our country, and everywhere I go, you can feel the heaviness. Like the moment feels heavy. The whole country's traumatized by what he and his enablers are doing to this country. I literally have people, honestly, sometimes physically pull on me, and they say, “Senator, fight for us. Stand up for us.”

It's bigger than Trump, I would posit, and even some of his enthusiasts don't like the moment, necessarily, that we're in. They know something is wrong. I think about this a lot: that politics in an earlier time — in the 20th century when we were growing up, you a few years ahead of me — but politics was more preference. 

You didn't have to say I was a few years ahead.

A couple years. Only a couple. But it was preference. It was, “Do you cheer for UGA or ‘Bama?” It was, “Hey, honey, you want Chinese or Italian tonight?” It wasn't all consuming, all defining. 

And you didn't think about who the president was every day.

Year-round. It's like sand at the beach now. It gets in every damn thing, right? And it's consuming your Facebook page with your high school buddies or your family at Thanksgiving. It’s just constantly around us. It was not as coarse. It was less tribal, and it's become a new civic religion. 

It's become identity, not preference. And it fills the void for a lot of people, whether because they left the church or because they have family issues — it's become a place to belong. It feels unhealthy when politics becomes religion for a lot of people, and it ups the stakes, and it makes it good and bad. Black and white, you know, and that just feels so unhealthy for us. 

We're in a moment where politics has become religion. And sadly, when you look at the emergence of Christian nationalism, religion has become politics. There's this way in which people put on their jerseys, and they're at war with one another, which leaves a space wide open for demagogues who want to convince us that our neighbor is the problem, right? And while we're busy looking at our neighbor and blaming the other — however we describe the other — we are literally witnessing the largest transfer of wealth that we've seen, certainly in my lifetime, from the bottom to the top. They're distracting us and picking our pockets.

Is there a backlash coming to that? 

Oh, hopefully this Tuesday will be the beginning of that. Look, we're gonna have work to do, no matter the outcome next Tuesday. But that is an important inflection point.

Part of the challenge that your party faces is the sense that they're secular, they're elitist, they're not necessarily in touch with folks who go to, say, the Cheesecake Factory. They're somehow not connected to the everyday person. 

Do you think it's important for Democrats to have folks who can talk fluently about faith, whether it's you or James Talarico in Texas or Adam Hamilton, perhaps the next senator from Kansas? You think it's important to have a nominee in ’28 who can speak from Scripture and talk fluently about faith? Is that important for your party? 

Look, when I decided to get in my race for the Senate, the folks who were there helping me, because I'd never run for anything, they used to put this little thing on my memo and say, “Remain the reverend.” And I would laugh because I'm like, what else am I going to be? I was glad that the consultants thought I should be myself because that's who I was going to be anyway.

Good advice. 

That's what I was gonna do. And I think it has worked out well.

For you? 

Yeah. I've won a few races in Georgia.

Could you win nationally, too, with that? 

Well, right now I'm focused on the midterms and making sure that we can win. I do think that we're in a moment where we've got to find a way in which we can engage each other's humanity.

And I think Democrats have been reticent where matters of faith are concerned — I think in part out of a deep commitment to the separation of church and state. And I believe firmly in the separation of church and the state. And I think it's important for me, particularly as a pastor, to say that we don't live in a theocracy. I don't want to live in anybody's theocracy, but here's how my faith shows up in my public service. It's not the creeds; it's not the orthodoxy. It’s my values. And I think those values are resonant in all of the great faith traditions and people who claim no particular faith: compassion, justice, truth-telling, empathy, looking into the eyes of your neighbor, getting a glimpse of your own humanity. So I think our politics in general could use a lot more of that.

Is the Senate what you thought it would be? 

Well, what do you mean, in what sense? I didn't have any notion that this was going to be easy work. It's tough. I can tell you that I am glad that I decided to do it. I have no regrets about deciding to get into this work.

I'll tell you what draws me to it. I'm a lifelong activist, and I was engaging these issues as a pastor long before I got into politics. And the thing about being in the Senate, and the thing that causes me to put up with politics, is every now and then, you get to do something amazing. Like cap the cost of insulin for seniors to $35. Like deal with private equity that's swooping in and buying all of this housing. So I literally put up with the politics because every now and then, you get to do something amazing. And I really do feel deeply honored that I get to be in the fight.

But didn't you think that it was a more august forum for debate and policymaking and change, and it's actually a lot of fundraising, it's a lot of bickering, it’s a lot of posturing and it’s a lot of BS, if we're being honest?

All of that is true.

How do you do it? 

We spend way too much money. We spend too much time raising money, sadly. And I would like to change that. That's part of what we need to change when we get into power.

You think it's worth it? Could you do more good from the pulpit in Ebenezer, serving Atlanta and Georgia that way, rather than going out there twice a week?

Again, I'm deeply honored to represent the people of Georgia. I'm glad I decided to do it. I don't know what else I could do where I'd be able to get people $35 insulin; begin to get private equity out of swooping in, buying our housing; get relief for farmers that have been waiting for relief literally for decades. So that's why I put up with the politics. Because when you get a win, every now and then, it makes it worthwhile. But the change is entirely too slow. And it doesn't have to be as slow as it is. I mean, we got way too much money in our politics. I'd like to see us repeal Citizens United. I think if Dems manage to get back in power, there's some things that we need to do, including deal with this dark money in our politics. And if we don't do it, then shame on us.

But when I listen to you, when I watch you, I've got to say, I'd be surprised if you were still there in a decade in the Senate. It just doesn't feel like the kind of place where you could do the most good necessarily. Am I wrong? 

Well, you know, one election at a time.

Where is your head on what's next? Obviously, ’27 is near. Which means we're in the 2028 cycle. Tell me what your thought process is on deciding about running for president. 

You gotta try these grits.

I’m about to. As you give me a good answer here.

I can figure out anything now I've had some grits. They will cure anything.

You sound like a Senate filibuster. They are good. 

Was I right?

Fantastic. They have refills on these? I'm gonna ask. 

You can have at it. I don't know about free refills. Ok, what was the question?

Yeah, exactly. Now, where's your head on 2028? Why wouldn't you run to at least get out your message and talk about issues you care about? It's a great platform. 

We are in trouble as a country. I remember going home after the ’24 results came in. And I'm a pretty unflappable guy. It takes a lot for something to get to me, but I remember lying down on my pillow that night, honestly, and closing my eyes and saying, “We're in trouble.” Praying a prayer that night. And I knew it would be bad. It's even worse. So what I'm focused on right now is getting some guardrails on this reckless president.

How do you do that? 

Well, we watched the Republicans literally just allow him to run roughshod over Congress. When you look at these tariffs, for example, Congress could stop this any time we want it, if we would. But they're not willing to do it. And as a result, there's a sales tax on literally everything that we buy, even on these grits.

And the voters are about to express their frustration about that, but I'm asking where your head's at, and sort of where you are in the process, and why wouldn't you take a look? 

My focus is on winning the midterms.

I understand that. 

And I think if we don't, 2028 could very well be theoretical. I mean, look at what this president is doing. He's already attacking California. He's already filed this ridiculous lawsuit in Alaska. And while I feel hopeful about Tuesday, we still don't know what else he's going to try.

There's a lot of folks around the country who have seen on their phones video clips of your fellow senator and friend, Jon Ossoff, lacerating the president and his administration. He has created a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. He's poised to win Tuesday by a pretty substantial margin — at least by Georgia Democratic standards, it'll be substantial. Do you think Sen. Ossoff would make a good president? 

I think Jon Ossoff has been an incredible United States senator, and it's been an honor to work alongside him. I'm proud that we have at least a couple more years working together. If he decides that he wants to put his hat in the ring for that, I think him and whoever else thinks that they got something to contribute should get involved in that. We need a real robust debate. We need a real primary.

You haven't had one in years. 

And I think our best and brightest need to be on that stage talking about the future of our country.

Is he one of those, do you think? 

Honestly, I have not asked him.

No, is he one of your best and the brightest in the party, I'm saying?

Oh, absolutely. He is.

You think he wants to run, though? I get a sense he doesn’t want to. 

He answered that question.

Pretty emphatically. 

I'm not going to add any commentary to his answers. But I can tell you that really, we have been partners in this work, and Georgia has been a beneficiary. I know that every couple of senators in the Senate from each state, they're not necessarily a happy couple.

I've noticed that, too, over the years. 

Jon Ossoff and I are a happy couple, if you will.

You get along okay. 

We met each other when we were running together in 2020, ‘21. We got to know each other. We know each other's families, his children.

He has young kids, right?

He has young kids, I have young kids — even though I'm an old dad, I have young kids. And my kids know him as Uncle Jon, his kids know me as Uncle Raphael. And Georgia has benefited from that. And so right now, he's asked me to help him get reelected. I think we're gonna get a victory on Tuesday.

Would that be awkward if both of you run, or at least look at running? Make those Delta flights back a little bit more uncomfortable? 

I don't know what he plans to do. And right now, I’m focused on ’26.

The complication for either of you is, as some folks know — and we have a lot of hardcore political junkies watching this — is the governor's race here. Because if a Democrat does not win the governorship here, a Republican governor would fill a vacancy in the Senate, whether that's you or him. 

Does it have any impact on your consideration, and would you be interested in being president or vice president if you don't have a Democratic governor anymore? 

Let's get through the midterm. I mean that. We don't know what kind of outcome we're gonna see. And I just wanna make sure we get this right. Because, again, the consequences are large. The margins are small. And we've got a president who is already meddling in the election. So let's get through that. I think ’28 is important, but we'll have plenty of time to sort through all of that.

Let's talk about Tuesday here, the governor's race. Sen. Ossoff's poised to win, but the governor's race is really competitive here: the former mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, running against Rick Jackson, a sort of self-financing business guy. 

It does feel like Mayor Bottoms could win, and I'm sort of curious as to why you think she would have a better chance versus Stacey Abrams, who ran a couple of times for governor, obviously fell short. What are the differences in their candidacies in this environment in which Bottoms could win and Abrams couldn't? 

It's every cycle that's different.

It's more the cycle than it is the candidate.

Well, it's all of the above, it’s all of these things, but every cycle is different. And if you had the same candidate, the way you'd run and what it would take to win in one cycle is not what you need to win in another cycle.

First of all, Stacey Abrams has been an incredible agent of change in this state and in our country. I was there working alongside her, pushing Georgia to where it is right now. We saw this when others refused to see it. And so you can't look at any of these races outside of the context of the work we've been doing for more than a decade to get us here. There's that. And then people are hurting. They're dealing with these high grocery prices. They literally cannot afford to eat. I was at a food bank a couple of days ago where the lines are getting longer and longer and longer. And I think this is clearly a change election, and people are asking themselves who's more likely to bring us change.

The political environment is better for your party now than even 2018. 

It was tough in 2018. It was tough.

The president's numbers were better in 2018 than they are today. 

I was thinking about this flying down here this morning: You could have at least four, maybe five, but probably four new Black governors elected in America, and [Maryland Gov.] Wes Moore is reelected. So it's possible next year you could have five Black governors in this country. I don't have to tell you there is not a track record in this country of electing Black governors. And I wonder why that is, and I wonder what this breakthrough that I think we're going to see next week tells us about the country's willingness to see Black folks in positions of executive power. 

Well, when you're sitting here in Atlanta, this is the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. John Lewis, who was my parishioner — I had the honor of presiding over his funeral. I think often about their courage, you know?

The night before I presided over John Lewis' funeral, I was thinking to myself, what was he thinking when he was crossing that Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside Hosea Williams? Was he thinking that one day, at the end of his life, three American presidents on both sides of the aisle would show up to honor him? Of course not. Was he thinking he'd be the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom? That's not why he did it. Couldn't have imagined that. He was just trying to stay alive that day so he could fight the next day. But he kept walking — with brute force, by the way, under the color of law on the other side of the bridge, he kept walking. And as I often say, he walked across a bridge, built a bridge at the same time — I and so many others are walking across that bridge.

But he was in the House. His career was in the House. You got to the Senate, and now we're about to see folks become governor, which in some ways is a more difficult challenge. 

It's been a long time coming.

Is the country just more open to that now? Is that what it is? The hangups are gone?

You and I both know that our country has a complicated history. So there are ways in which we're going forward, there are ways in which we're moving backwards. And we have to be honest about both of those things. And right now we have people at the highest levels of our government who are trying to pull us back. And so I hope that the American people will stand up in this election and in the one after that and the one after that, and say, “No, we're gonna move forward together.”

When you were a young pastor and you first got to know John Lewis, were you intimidated at all by him? And did you ever think to yourself, “Holy shit, this is John Lewis?” 

Did the pastor ever say what?

“Holy Spirit, this is John Lewis!” 

Let's have a moment of silence.

“He was on the Pettus Bridge. He crossed, the state troopers met him, and there he is, right down there in that pew to the left.” Did you ever have that moment where you were almost in awe? At least when you were younger. 

I first met John Lewis while I was a student at Morehouse College, actually.

You're a Morehouse man. 

Yeah, they say you can always tell a Morehouse man, can't tell him much.

It took a while for that to get to the camera. If you were from Howard, it would have been the first five minutes. 

So I first met him as a college student. I and other students had planned a prayer vigil as we were going into the first war in Iraq. And we had invited a lot of leaders from around the city, elected officials. “Would you come and join the students for this prayer vigil?” John Lewis is the only one who showed up. And honestly, I don't remember what he said on the stage that night I was presiding. But his presence alone was a sermon. And to think that years later, I would actually become his pastor. And then to preach his wife's eulogy, and then preside over his funeral, was a real honor.

You were pinching yourself a little bit. 

And he and others inspired me in this moment because the times are dark, and when I would give in to despair, I would say to myself, “Who am I to give up?” I mean, their victories were not inevitable. They were improbable. They kept moving. And that's what we got to do in this moment.

I got two final things for you. One is, 2024: Republicans did historically well, relatively speaking, with Black folks, especially with Black men. My question is, was that just a reflection of 2024 — the unique nature of an election in which it was kind of a mess for your party, frankly, and you had a candidate on the right in Donald Trump who found some appeal with not a lot, but more, Black men than is typical of those Republicans? Or is there a deeper challenge for your party with Black men that you've got to address going forward? 

I think that there is the tendency to look at this in terms of one election cycle. And that's the business you're in.

But the truth is, Black men have been suffering, and they've been suffering for a long time. The United States of America, the land of the free, is the mass incarceration capital of the world. Like, no other country even comes close. We got more people in prison than China, than North Korea. We've got a greater percentage of our people in prison than any other country. And Black men have felt the brunt of that.

I'm the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Dr. King led us in a movement that created civil rights, fair housing, all of these things. But in the decades after his death, in the midst of a post-industrial America where we could have been getting people ready for the new economy, our country made a terrible set of public policy choices to invest in the carceral state. There were bad actors and awful decisions on both sides of the aisle by Republicans and Democrats. And as a result of that, you've literally seen, for a couple of generations, Black men siphoned out of their community. And I think when you see these young men in ’24, either voting for the awful Donald Trump or not showing up at all, they're responding to some real pain and some broken promises and a disconnect between what they want, which is what everybody else wants, and what we've been able to deliver. And I think if we're serious, we need to deal with those large issues.

We have the threat of doubling-down on that mistake when you look at the emergence of AI. The disruption that we witness around jobs and blue-collar jobs — where you had high-paying wages with medium skills or low skills — that's going to be exacerbated by AI. So what we need in this moment, in which people are so obsessed with the culture wars and demagogues are trying to divide us, we need to be having some real conversations about how we move the country forward, create an economy where everybody has a chance.

Would that same cohort of Black men who were for Trump in ’24, would they be more open to voting for Kamala Harris in ’28 than they were in ’24? 

I don't know if she's gonna run in ’28, and I think that Black men will be open to anybody who is serious about creating the conditions for them to thrive.

Should the party move on, do you think, have a new face in ’28 above the ticket? 

I think we should have a robust primary.