Former Harlem Pastor Warnock Wins Georgia Senate Race

HARLEM, NY — As the nation's eyes turned to Georgia on Tuesday, one of the two names on the ballot in the state's high-stakes Senate race is a former Harlem church pastor.

That pastor, of course, is Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democratic senator who overcame a challenge from Republican Herschel Walker, an ex-football star.

Before he occupied the pulpit of Atlanta's famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, Warnock came of age as a clergyman in Harlem, where he began as an intern minister at Abyssinian Baptist Church in the 1990s.

He had arrived in New York in 1991, at age 22, to attend Union Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights, just south of the border with Harlem, according to a recent New York Times article about his time in the city.

That education, combined with his work at storied Abyssinian, "helped cement his instincts to channel the teachings of his faith into social justice activism," spurring him to march against police brutality and question church teachings against homosexuality, according to the Times.

During a stint as a youth pastor at Abyssinian, the Times reported, Warnock became acquainted with Alvin Bragg, a son of Harlem visiting home from college who went on to become the Manhattan District Attorney.

In 1997, Warnock, who had been promoted to assistant pastor, was quoted in the New York Times after joining a coalition of nonprofits opposing then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's effort to force welfare recipients to work for their benefits.

"We are worried that workfare is being used to displace other workers who receive respectable compensation," Warnock told the newspaper. "We are concerned that poor people are being put into competition with other poor people, and in that respect, we think workfare is a hoax."

Warnock was mentored at Abyssinian by the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III. After Butts, a beloved figure in Harlem, died in October, Warnock took a break from the campaign trail to speak at his Nov. 4 memorial service at Abyssinian. ("I got a few things happening down in Georgia," Warnock joked, to laughs from the congregation.)

"Calvin Butts taught me how to take my ministry to the streets," Warnock said. "Because he understood that the church's work doesn't end at the church door — that's where it starts."