Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons comments on the special fears he believes the GOP harbors concerning Rev. Warnock’s (D-GA) Senate campaign in Georgia:
But there’s a reason for GOP alarm. “Republicans see Rev. Warnock as a direct threat to their ability to hijack a gospel that prioritizes caring for and loving our neighbor no matter how or if they pray,” Sarah Riggs Amico, who ran for Georgia lieutenant governor alongside Stacey Abrams in 2018, told me. “Republicans are right to be scared: Voters of faith know authentic presentations of the gospel build up God’s creation rather than tear others down as Kelly Loeffler and the Trump GOP have done.”
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, who has led the revival of Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign and has become the leading face of social justice-focused Christianity in America, told me that Warnock’s campaign is an example of moral fusion organizing, which addresses poverty and systemic racism simultaneously with moral language. This type of organizing, he believes “helps people see how the lies of divide and conquer tactics are used to pit poor and working people against one another so that the extremely wealthy — people like Rev. Warnock’s opponent — can stay in power and serve their own interests.” [CNN]
In other words, Warnock’s authenticity, his refusal to manipulate Scripture to generate distrust and even hate, a practice we saw in the last election in many places of the country, are thought to be recognizable by the electorate – much to the dismay of the conservatives involved in those efforts.
Which, bizarrely, reminds me of 19th century free-thinker Robert Green Ingersoll, who, I read in the biography The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, by Susan Jacoby, was raised in a devoutly Christian family, but upon reaching his majority, became a free thinker and lawyer. His upbringing may have alienated him from his faith, but it also brought him mastery of the materials of Christian theology, and he became famous for his speeches in which he’d expose the contradictions of the Bible, as well as the plumb silliness it contained.
And he’d do this throughout the Bible-belt. Was he chased out of the towns and cities by outraged citizens?
No!
His speeches were sell-outs, and he was practically adored. He shone a light from a new angle on one of the central texts of their lives, and, I’m guessing, they appreciated the new angles – or, perhaps, his willingness to point out the flaws of a text that they, themselves, were too shy to do themselves, but were more than happy to discuss afterwards.
He may not have been a favorite of those clerics benefiting from the hierarchy, but for those earnest in the faith, who really wish to understand, Ingersoll provided knowledgeable material to chew on – even if he had himself given up on the faith.
And, in a way, Warnock is bringing his traditional, yet new, light to the text. Certainly, he won’t reach everyone, but given the apparently small gap between Republican and Democratic voters in Georgia and elsewhere, and the unhappiness I occasionally hear from the ranks of the Republicans’ religious flank, another, more authentic interpretation of the Bible, rather than the empty entertainments of this clown or that oaf, may be more than welcome.
And sway the votes.
