Keeping the Faith

Raphael Warnock is braving the swamp to redeem Georgia. And America.

- Por Becca Andrews

“THIS IS THE DAY that the Lord has made. We have come to rejoice and be glad in it,” proclaims the Reverend Raphael Warnock during his October 4 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. It’s a normal Sunday, with Warnock’s usual opening line, but it’s not really normal.

Call it the new normal. The sermon is prerecorded; it plays on the church’s website. Any affirmations of “amen” and “yes, Lord” only emerge within individual living rooms, the underpinning of collective voices replaced by silence.

This particular Sunday, the pastor is also celebrating 15 years of preaching at Ebenezer, the historic Black church in Atlanta that was once Martin Luther King Jr.’s congregation. Where ordinarily there would be a joyous celebration, there is instead a six-minute video montage of the past decade and a half.