Will Raphael Warnock Hear the Call?

28:37Keep walking. We've been talking about the moral and political arguments surrounding racism and voting rights and democracy. One surprising trend in the Trump era is that, according to election results, racial polarization has declined over the last decade, largely because a small but not insignificant share of black men, especially younger black men, have stopped voting for Democrats. Some are staying home. Some, I'm sure, you know, voting suppression, voter suppression has clearly played a role. But more also actually voting for Donald Trump. He doubled his support among black voters between 2020 and 2024.

29:19And clearly, some of these young men are hearing something from Trump and the right that they are not hearing from us. And I wonder, as a pastor, what do you think they're hearing and what have we failed to say? Yeah. No, it's a great question. And we got to engage and we have to resist the false dichotomy between standing up for women and being a very clear voice against misogyny and sexism, which I talked about at length a couple of Sundays ago in my pulpit, and at the same time seeing the ways in which men and young men in particular, young black men in unique ways, and Latino men are hurting.

30:14and somebody's got to speak to that. It's a whole range of issues. I think so many of our young people feel demoralized. I think about what I was able to do as a kid. I grew up in public housing. I'm one of seven boys in my house and the first college graduate, and I'm grateful that I had a path. You know, it'd be harder for me to do what I did now than it was for me as a kid growing up in the 80s. First college graduate in my family, one of 12 total kids, earned four degrees, coming out of projects, become the pastor of, you know, fairly famous church, become a United States senator. It'd be hard for me to do that now.

31:02And I think people feel that, and young men feel that in a particular way, and they feel demoralized. And I think we have to find a way to be really clear and full-throated in our condemnation of sexism, misogyny, sexual abuse. I talked about all this stuff a couple weeks ago. I do all the time. While at the same time, just talking about the agency that all of us have and create opportunities for men and for our boys. I think, you know, I've got a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl. I just want them to be okay. And I think sometimes we get caught up in our jargon on the left, and people sometimes don't know what the heck you're talking about.

31:53I think speaking plain English, because more often than not, our policies would actually be more helpful, right? But you've got to speak plain English to folks. You know, one of the things that I've been talking about for years has nothing to do with, you know, any political ambition, something that comes from deep experience. I've been talking about mass incarceration. And there's not enough talk about that even on our side. Not nearly enough. And I raise it inside the Democratic caucus from time to time. I'm worried, for example, about these detention centers that are being built. I'm worried about the implications for the immigrant community.

32:35And by the way, I went to Social Circle Georgia. That's another story I could tell you. But, you know, it's a red town where they're building a 10 ,000. They bought a warehouse. They want to put a 10 ,000-bed detention center in a 5 ,000-citizen town. And those folks even, they voted for Trump, but they didn't vote for that, right? But I'm worried about what that means. Think about it. Our government's getting ready to warehouse human beings. Literally put them in a warehouse, 10 ,000 people, by the way, across the street from an elementary school. And they want to do this all over the country.

33:08It's a moral atrocity. But here's what I also know from our recent history. When you build that kind of infrastructure, you're going to use it. And so as immigrant communities today, I'm worried that it will probably be black and brown folks tomorrow. you know, particularly young men. You know, we're the mass incarceration capital of the world. Over the last 40, 50 years and the years since Dr. King died, the land of the free has become the mass incarceration capital of the world. We're 4 % of the world's population. We warehouse 25 % of the world's prisoners. This has played itself out over decades in communities like, you know, in Baltimore and Philadelphia and in Atlanta and South Central LA.

34:02And we're under Republican and Democratic administrations, if we're honest. Men have been warehoused. And now I think we're seeing some of the children of those men who've been warehoused. And the impact of that is a kind of a social long COVID that we're experiencing in our country. and i think somebody's got to find a way uh we have to talk to that and give people spaces where they can talk i do it in my church but i think we've got to find a way to do it you know yeah it felt like we were for a while on a path where even folks on the right were willing to do something about you know rehabilitation prison reform conform and now we are in this situation where we're back to showing that, you know, you got to be sure that you're very tough on crime as if, like, we can't be tough on crime and also not be the capital, mass incarceration capital of the world.

35:07Yeah, I mean, for all of those prisons. And again, we have more prisons than anybody in the world. I mean, think about that. The United States of America warehouses more of its people, literally more people in prison, and a greater percentage of its people than any other nation on the planet, including those whose human rights records we love to deplore. So think North Korea. Think Iran. Think China. We got more people. And that's the policy that we followed, again, through Republican and Democratic administrations for decades. Our country could have decided in the wake of the post-industrial change that we saw as we move from an industrial nation to the post-industrial era to a service economy, we could have invested in training our young people, getting them ready for that new economy that was emerging.

36:03And instead, we invested in the infrastructure of death and incarceration, and we're seeing the results of that. And what I would like to see us do in this moment is we look at these new emerging technologies, AI, which ain't going anywhere, and a whole range of things. How do we get our kids ready? How do we invest in children so that no matter what zip code you're from, there's a path to the American dream? Your parents' income doesn't determine your outcome. that's that's what i mean when i say we suffer not from a poverty of resources but but of moral imagination we've got to we we need to reimagine who who we can be you said something a couple of minutes ago uh that stuck with me about agency and i think it's so important and you also talked about some of the the jargon and the democratic party's uh language i wonder sometimes like do you ever worry that the democratic party's argument that the system is structurally rigged against people which is has a lot of truth to it right do you worry that sometimes that can tip into being disempowering because it somehow robs people in that story of agency to fix the system well i i don't know that they need us to tell them that they're living it Every day people know that the system is stacked against them.

37:39They know it in their bones. And they don't always have the words that we want to use. They know it. Do they feel like they can change it? They feel it. Yeah, I think that's the thing. Do people feel empowered to change it? And I do think that there are a lot of people who feel powerless, which is why they signed up for Donald Trump. You asked me that question earlier. Let me ask you, answer it more directly. I think that there are people, and I do think it's overstated, Donald Trump didn't have this huge slew of black men voting for them. I think part of that was a game they played during the election in 24.

38:13I think they were trying to create a permission structure, a bandwagon, so people would jump on it. But they weren't overwhelming. One is too many, but there weren't overwhelming numbers of black men voting for Donald Trump. But I do think that people feel the ways in which the powerful and the well-connected have the cards. And in that situation, you do create the context for someone like Donald Trump with his dystopian vision of the country emerging. Here's what the Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters had in common. And they're looking for somebody to tear the thing up because they're just like, look, it's not working.

39:01And they came to different conclusions. But I think people do feel some of that. And I've seen it up close, you know, now that I'm in the Senate. When we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, largest clean energy bill and investment in human history. Also, the thing we did there was prescription drugs. We capped the cost of prescription drugs. My own bill capped the cost of insulin to no more than$35 of out-of-pocket costs for seniors. But in that bill, for the first time, Medicare was empowered to force the pharmaceutical companies to have to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. So just think about that.

39:56We had to pass a law so that Medicare— To undo the other bad law that we passed in 2003, I guess. What kind of capitalism is that for folks? What kind of capitalism is that where the buyer gets, where the seller gets to tell you the price of something and you don't get to discuss it? What kind of capitalism? But that shows you how rigged the system is. And so we addressed it. We passed a bill so Medicare could negotiate. How many drugs? Ten. Ten whole drugs. I know. And then that wouldn't go into place for a few years after we did it. It shows you that the voices of the people are increasingly squeezed out of their democracy.

40:46Big money, well-connected folks have an outsized voice in our politics, which is why even when there's agreement on things on the left and the right, like universal background checks, for example, in the gun safety debate, We can't get it done because the politics too often is owned by somebody other than the people. And the people feel it. And I think they're looking for folks who will champion their concerns. I'll tell you, I can only speak for myself. I love this job. I love being a United States senator. I mean, first of all, it's a deep honor. literally for 11 million people that I represent in the state of Georgia, that I get to represent them.

41:32Even the ones who didn't vote for me, I get to fight for those. Most of those people in social circle Georgia, where they're detention centers, they're Trump voters. But I get to stand up to the administration that they elected to fight for them. I love this job. You know, it's who I am. I love to serve. But while I'd like to get reelected so I can continue to serve, I don't love this job enough to sell my soul. You know, like I have an identity outside of being a senator. I'm a pastor. I'm the father of two amazing little children who are nine and seven, and they're constantly telling me what to do.

42:15You know, I'm a lot of things. And I was an activist before I did this. I got arrested in the building where my office is before I had an office. I got arrested there as an activist. Also a building, I believe, named after a Georgia senator. Named after the segregationist. It was like an arch segregationist now that you sit in his seat. Yeah, yeah. So I guess what I'm saying to you is I love this job, but I don't need it that bad. Yeah. And I do think we need more. We could use more leaders who love doing the work, but they don't need it. Yeah, we do need that.

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44:24You said something a few weeks ago to my pal Jen Psaki that stuck with me, which is that when J.D. Vance told the Pope to be careful, stay in his lane. I know, it drove me insane. I didn't just roll my eyes, did it? You know, I was doing worse than that. That's not the look for the pastor than the senator who rolled his eyes. Well, you made a comment. You said that's how fascists talk. and you also brought up Reich Christians who were the German pastors who capitulated to Hitler by deciding the appropriate place of the church was in personal piety, not in systemic injustice. I'd love to know what made you draw that connection.

45:00When you say someone like Vance is talking like fascists, when you mention Bonhoeffer and the Reich Christians as a comparison, where does that argument come from in you? What is the tradition that you're drawing on there? Well, I've been thinking about faith and politics for a long time you know i'm a trained systematic theologian um i um you know i've studied that period i wrote a thesis on king and dietrich bonhoeffer bonhoeffer was was part of the very little christian resistance that hitler got most of the church in germany capitulated to hitler They became Reich Christians. And so, you know, no two periods are the same.

45:47And I'm not conflating it in that sense, but there are lessons to be learned. I have to say that in my view, J.D. Vance is one of the most craven politicians on the American landscape. Here is someone who literally said that Donald Trump is America's Hitler. And then he actually ran a campaign to become his running mate. He ran a campaign focused on one to be his running mate. So if Trump is America's Hitler and then he campaigned to be his running mate, what does that make J.D. Vance? I think we saw a glimpse of that cravenness in recent weeks when J.D. Vance, who is a recently converted Catholic, had the unmitigated audacity to lecture the Pope on how to be the Pope.

46:44The Pope is doing what we need more religious leaders to do. And that is to bring a kind of moral question to who we are. And he was literally advocating for peace. Imagine that. And I just— Which is what all the popes do. Yeah. So I just—I—well, you know, I just couldn't help but be struck by J.D. Vance, the newly converted Catholic, who wrote a whole book about his conversion, which is interesting. than turning around and saying that, you know, when the Pope is talking about theology, he ought to be careful talking about theology. He ought to stay in his lane. What are you talking about? It's fascinating to me, even from a theological perspective, and you hit on it, and obviously this was your thesis, but this sort of divide between personal piety and systemic injustice.

47:48And you could tell from what J.D. Vance was saying, and I think this is the case with a lot of the more recently converted Catholics who are on the right, evangelical Christians, the focus is very much on personal morality, sexual morality, and very little on the larger moral questions, as you say in your book, the moral topography of the world. And I do find that to be a, I find it to be clarifying and also perhaps something that, you know, that the left can kind of rally around. And I wonder if you think sometimes you worry that Democrats have sort of ceded the territory in terms of using more spiritual religious language, regardless of what your faith actually is, in a time where you have people like Vance and Trump, you know, attacking the Pope.

48:44And then Democrats kind of have to just, except for you and a couple others, have to just kind of sit back and watch because they're not familiar with that language. I worry about it deeply. It is something that I'm thinking about a lot because we have the historical lesson, right? And I don't want to keep going here because no two historical peers are alike, but it was J.D. Vance who said that Trump is America's Hitler. So he said that. The historical lessons are there. The church in Germany retreated into this very narrow, ghettoized view, privatized view of the faith, where faith is just limited to issues of, you know, maybe interpersonal relations and personal piety.

49:33but we're going to let the state carry on in our name and do all kinds. So we already know the lessons of that. We don't have to go to Germany. That's the lessons of the American Christian slavocracy also, which was built on the premise that we're enslaving human beings, but we're saving their souls. So it's all right. Matter of fact, we're doing them a favor. And so it's dangerous for people of faith, For people of moral courage who claim no faith tradition at all, to see these larger questions about the society and about how it's arranged and who gets crushed and who doesn't, it's dangerous for us to leave that to potentates, to leave that to politicians.

50:19And it's dangerous for those of us who are concerned about these issues to let the right dominate the space about faith and values, particularly since, in my view, they've got so much of it so very wrong. You know, Donald Trump recently depicted himself as Jesus Christ. I guess putting his names on the building wasn't enough. He's now King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I have to call it out because it's blasphemy, and it's a deep, deep distortion. I'm a Matthew 25 Christian. Jesus came to feed the hungry. Donald Trump is taking food out of the mouths of hungry children through these draconian snap cuts.

51:14Jesus spent much of his life healing the sick. Donald Trump is taking their health care away. And so we have to condemn his actions and we have to condemn his speech. I thought it was interesting that there were faith leaders, even some in his camp, who came out and rightly criticized him depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Congratulations to them for that. But it's not enough just to condemn the picture and say nothing about his policies. Because his policies are far more blasphemous than the picture. Or even in that same weekend, some of them condemned the picture, but those same people did not condemn the, we're going to eradicate a civilization and the threats of the war crimes, which is just as blasphemous.

52:09Oh, he literally said a whole civilization will die tonight. And, you know, we've all heard Donald Trump's bluster over the years, but, you know, we can't dismiss that, you know, So, you know, because it's dangerous talk. It undermines the credibility of our nation on the globe. It undermines America's voice. It's moral credibility. It's doing a whole lot of damage. I mean, can't we stand together, no matter whether you're on the left or the right, and say, we don't want an American president who talks like that. And acts like that as well. One fellow Democrat who hasn't ceded that territory is James Tallarico, the 36-year-old Presbyterian seminarian from Texas who's running for Senate.

53:06He's named you publicly as a role model, said he wants to follow your playbook to flip a red state. You said back in March that you hope we'll have yet another pastor in the United States Senate. Why does it matter to have another pastor in that chamber? What is having more pastors in the Senate, what does that bring to the country? Well, it's something I think about all the time because I think it ought to make a difference. I don't think it automatically will. You know, like I ask myself all the time, what difference does it make that you're standing here as a pastor and as a pastor of Ebenezer Church?

53:44And that's an asset test that I bring to myself as I look at whether I'm going to vote this way or that way, where I'm going to fall on this policy or that. I can tell you that when I was running for the Senate in Georgia, there were those who cautioned me and said, I don't know about you wearing your identity as a pastor so clearly and unapologetically. You're going to alienate certain voters. And I don't know who else to be other than myself. and I'll you know I'll tell you that the folks who they put around me because I was running for office, I'd never run for office before my comps team used to put this thing on my memos when I'd get ready to do interviews and that kind of thing, it said remain the reverend and every time when I would see that I would laugh, I'm like well what else am I going to be I'm glad you didn't tell me to be somebody else because I don't know who else to be Easy instruction.

54:44Other than myself. But I talked about my faith, but I hope in a way that doesn't feel oppressive to people who don't share my particular faith tradition. What I'm always trying to do is open the tent, widen the tent so that everybody is a part of it. And what I discovered was that the people of Georgia found that refreshing, both Democrats and independents. And I think Republicans gave me a hearing because they heard a certain kind of voice. I do think we need people of moral courage in this moment. And so some of those people will be clergy. Some will not be clergy. Some will be Christians. Some will be Muslims.

55:40Some will be Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs. Some will claim no particular faith tradition at all, but they will have a vision of our common humanity. And it's an important question because let me be really clear. Here's what I'm really clear about. I don't want to live in anybody's theocracy. So I bring my values and not my creeds to my work as a senator. And I think those values are resonant in all the great faith traditions and those who claim no faith tradition at all. I'm talking about love. I'm talking about compassion, empathy, truth-telling, empathy. In the words of Isaiah, who said, a little child shall lead them, looking into the eyes of other people's children and having enough moral capacity to see in the eyes of other people's children, even your adversaries, a glimpse of your own.

56:36That's the kind of politics I'm talking about.

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58:56Dr. King was the apostle of nonviolence in this country. And it was as theological as much as it was a political strategy. He believed nonviolence was the only force in the universe that could break the cycle of violence. We are living right now through a moment of rising political violence on the right and on the left. Paul Pelosi, the Minnesota legislators, UnitedHealthcare CEO, Charlie Kirk, the multiple Trump assassination attempts, including one at the Correspondent Center a few weeks ago. What do you think King, the apostle of nonviolence in this country, would say to America right now? He used to say that an ethic of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

59:45And, you know, I think that's an important lesson in this moment, which is why, you know, in the days after a day or so after Charlie Kirk was killed, I decided to go to the floor of the United States Senate and condemn that killing. Now, I've condemned other forms of violence, certainly against Paul Pelosi and others, but I thought it was particularly important for me to do that after Kirk's killing so that I could say as a moral voice that political violence is not acceptable. You cannot have a democracy and political violence. Political violence is the opposite of democracy. We have loud, robust, and sometimes rambunctious arguments in the American public square.

1:00:46And we have those arguments, if we're thinking about it right, not as a precursor to violence, but we have those arguments instead of violence. And so I said that day when I went to the floor of the Senate that I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on almost everything. I mean, he had the nerve to ask whether or not Dr. King was a force of good in the world. I didn't agree with that man about anything. But guess what? He had a right to think what he thought in America. And he had a right to change his mind, or not. And I genuinely mourn the idea that these small children were now robbed of their father and a wife of her husband.

1:01:34But we have to be consistent. what is deeply disappointing again unfortunately not surprising is that we have someone in the White House who is stirring the pot even after those assassination attempts he could have used those moments to bring us together I mean he could have used those terribly dramatic moments he could have used those moments to bring us together He could have reminded us of who we are when we stand together. And instead, he just leaned into more arguments about all of this is coming from the left. And this is not a difference between right and left. It's the difference between right and wrong.

1:02:22And we have to be consistent about that. and um this work shouldn't be so hazardous that good people have to ask themselves when they think about their own families whether or not they should get in this work or not that that's a that that at the end of the day is a huge loss for the american people king's strategy of non-violence sort of depended on a country that that could be shamed that like an audience whose conscience could be reached and changed by the site of suffering. And, you know, I have heard this too. I have argued with folks on the left about this as well, which is like, you know, yes, nonviolence is great.

1:03:07And that was great in the civil rights movement. But there was also violence back then. And there was obviously violence perpetrated on black Americans back then. And when the repression and the oppression is so great, sometimes people don't have a choice and it's justified. And I wonder if you think we still live in that country where the conscience of the country can be changed by the sight of suffering and the strategy of nonviolence is still not just the morally right strategy, but the politically effective strategy. I think that the genius of King was that he appealed to our conscience. And he also appealed to our charter documents.

1:03:50You know, he reminded of America what it said about itself, even in that very last sermon before he lost his own life, tragically, to political violence. He said, referring to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, be true to what you say on paper. And so I don't have an easy answer to that. Can the country be shamed? The story of America is that we have these moments when the democracy expands and we have these moments when it contracts. And we are clearly in a contraction moment right now. And with that Supreme Court ruling and others, they're squeezing the democracy. um but you know women who've given birth know that contractions are necessary for birth and my hope is that by continuing to speak the truth moral suasion but also you know the other part of the civil rights movement is there ways in which you force people to the table birmingham wasn't all moral suasion it was it was let's see if these shopkeepers think it's a good idea to continue to marginalize people in the days that lead up to Easter shopping.

1:05:09Right, right. So politics requires leverage. And it is an exercise in power. And we've got to use all of those tools. And I would encourage us to use them in this tough moment when they're literally doing everything to try to crush the voices of ordinary people. We've got to stand up a little taller, straighten our backs, speak a little bit louder. And I think the moment comes when the democracy expands. And we don't know when it's gonna happen, but we have to keep doing the work. One of those tools is discipline. And King certainly knew about that in the civil rights movement. One thing I always think about the civil rights movement that people sort of forget is just how incredibly well-disciplined it was and strategic.

1:06:03And - Also, can I give you a little bit of hope, too? Because I live in Atlanta, so I get to hang around Andy Young and John Lewis before he died and C.T. Vivian. I mean, I walked around with giants. So here's the other thing I want us to think about in this moment. Because they don't tell you if you asked them. There's a way in which they didn't know what the heck they were doing. So I want to encourage us because these answers are not easy, right? And I've got some ideas. You've got ideas. There are things that we know we need to do. but there you know I mean I think that's a mark also good leadership to be honest that there's life is hard and these problems are complex and so so there's a fog too right and they kept walking they didn't know that stuff would work and they didn't always know what to do and there were arguments among themselves you know you know you got you got Jose L.

1:06:57Williams and Stokely Carmichael you know on the one and and young all in the room and and and thesis antithesis and synthesis the kind of healthy arguments that are needed to get to the right answer i guess what mattered is that they were they were all in the room together and had those arguments and weren't fighting online with each other right we need a little bit more grace for each other um pastors like yourself um are people who discern calls. It's not a metaphor. That's obviously part of the vocation. So I'm not going to ask you whether you're running for president. I'm going to ask you something different, which is how would a pastor discern a call to run for president?

1:07:44Not whether you will, but what does discernment actually look like for someone whose life is built around listening for that kind of question? I think that part of discerning what what any of us ought to be doing is getting in the fray. You know, I won't quote a pastor here. Roosevelt had this thing about the man in the arena. And so another thing I love about this work is I get to be in the arena. I could be somewhere home wringing my hands about what's going on. I get to be in the fight, and all of us do. You don't have to run for office. We all get to be in the fight. So I think in the days ahead and the months ahead, part of what we have to do is get in the fight and do the work.

1:08:32And I think through the process of doing, we get the clarity about what we ought to do next. What sermon are you working on right now? Well, Sunday's Mother's Day. Can I tell you, a pastor has one job on Mother's Day. Make sure all the mamas feel good. Whatever else you do, if you fail at that, you have failed. You got to make sure that the mothers and the grandmothers. It's a nice and easy target there. Mama and big mama need to know, and godmothers and people who don't have biological children, but have been like mothers to all of us and mothers of sacred memory to lift them up. And I've said this on Mother's Day, and I really do mean it.

1:09:16And for folk who find, particularly who find religion to be a little bit mysterious. I think a mother's love, and that's not everybody's story, but whoever it was that mothered you, a mother's love is about the closest thing we have to the grace of God. If you want a glimpse of what God is like, see a mother in action, particularly when she's got to fight for her children. That is very true That is very true Senator Warnock, Reverend Warnock Thank you so much for joining Pod Save America And come back again soon Good to be with you

1:10:00Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari With Reed Sherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pellaviv, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Sengel Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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