Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, is a pastor turned politician.

After spending his grownup life preaching about politics from the church pulpit, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, 51, has determined to enter the political enviornment in a extra direct route. For greater than 15 years, he has spoken from one of many world’s most well-known pulpits, Ebenezer Baptist Church, as soon as the house of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Republicans have tried to painting Mr. Warnock as a harmful radical, although he says his function is certainly one of an ethical compass. He has stated a few of his sermons are designed to make individuals uncomfortable, urging Black church buildings to be extra accepting of homosexual individuals and criticizing them for being “shamefully sluggish” to deal with gender inequality. In his e book, he criticized white church buildings for being contributors “in slavery, segregation and different manifestations of white supremacy.”

Mr. Warnock grew up in a housing venture in Savannah, Ga., the place he was the eleventh of 12 siblings. Each his father and mom had been pastors. He gave his personal first sermon on the age of 11 and, after graduating from Morehouse School, went on to Union Theological Seminary in New York, the place he additionally labored as a youth minister on the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the place one other preacher-turned-politician, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., as soon as led.

Mr. Warnock ran as certainly one of 20 candidates within the November election. He was the anointed Democrat, with the assist of the Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee, and obtained probably the most votes of any candidate within the race. However he didn’t attain the 50 p.c threshold required to keep away from a runoff election between him and the Republican incumbent, Senator Kelly Loeffler.