Senator Raphael Warnock Wants You To See Voting Rights As A Moral Issue

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🗓️ 11 January 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

As Democrats are making a push for voting rights legislation in Congress, more faith leaders want Americans to approach it as a moral – even spiritual – issue, including pastor and Democrat, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

Warnock explains why he thinks ending the legislative filibuster in the Senate may be a necessary step, a move that President Joe Biden also endorsed while speaking in Warnock's home state on Tuesday.

And Warnock describes his spiritual motivation for this voting rights push. He says democracy is the "political enactment of a spiritual idea."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	During the January 6th insurrection, there was this moment that was caught on video.
0:07.0	Once a group of rioters had overtaken the Senate Chamber, they gathered together and started praying.
0:17.0	Some rioters also held Christian flags and signs as they storm the capital.
0:25.0	And it was images like this that the Reverend Jim Wallace could not shake.
0:30.0	It was very revealing in a very powerful and painful way.
0:35.0	Wallace's chair, the Faith and Justice Center, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
0:39.0	And he told MPR that while much is said about these insurrectionists being motivated by the big lie of a stolen election,
0:47.0	he saw an even bigger lie on display.
0:51.0	And the bigger lie in whose name this was done was racism in the ideology of white Christian nationalism.
0:59.0	We were made in God's image and likeness.
1:03.0	And to commit racism like that is really an assault on the image of God.
1:10.0	It's a theological issue more than a political one. It's a theological sense to God. It's a sacrilege, really.
1:17.0	Now, his attention is focused on new laws that are making it harder for communities of color to vote in multiple Republican-led states.
1:25.0	He says those policies are motivated by the same racist ideology.
1:30.0	To practice voter suppression and deny the vote to even one person because of the color of their skin is again throwing away the image of God.
1:41.0	And because of that, Wallace has a challenge for his fellow evangelicals.
1:45.0	I want to suggest that all our churches should preach voting rights, not just as a political issue, but as a faith issue, a test of our faith, a test of whether we believe or not in the image of God.
2:00.0	And there's one pastor, now also a U.S. senator, who has been preaching this for a very long time.
2:06.0	I have often said that democracy in a real sense is the political enactment of a spiritual idea.
2:14.0	Consider this, as Democrats are making a push for voting rights in Congress, more faith leaders want Americans to approach voting rights as a moral, even spiritual issue.
2:25.0	Coming up, my conversation with Georgia Democratic Senator and pastor, Raphael Warnock.
2:33.0	From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, January 11.
	...

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