WASHINGTON (RNS) — Raphael Warnock, U.S. senator and Baptist pastor, was wrapping up his time on Capitol Hill before heading back to his native Georgia in time for what is perhaps the busiest week of the year for Christian clergy. The Democratic senator spoke at a hearing Thursday (March 30) of the Senate Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry and Natural Resources about the plight of forest landowners and how much they can deduct from their taxes if their timber harvests are destroyed by a natural disaster.
“The answer is zero,” Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator said at the hearing.
From testifying to members of Congress about farming, to preaching Holy Week sermons from the pulpit of Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, such is the back and forth life of the pastor-politician who won reelection to the Senate in 2022.
The heir of that pulpit from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated nearly 55 years ago on April 4, Warnock spoke to Religion News Service of how that day will always be a solemn one for him.
“I was born a year after his death and yet his commitment to service recruited me to Morehouse College,” said Warnock, little knowing at the time that he’d come to serve the same Atlanta church that King did. …
From Senate subcommittee to Easter sermon: Raphael Warnock on life as a pastor-politician
