Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate for one of two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, praised the racist and antisemitic Nation of Islam in a speech in 2013, calling its voice “important” in the development of “black theology.”
Warnock was delivering an interfaith lecture in July 2013 titled “The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety and Public Witness,” about his book of the same name, at the Chautauqua Institution, a non-profit organization in Chautauqua, New York.
During the question-and-answer session, he was asked by a member of the audience about the black church’s relationship with the Nation of Islam.
He responded (at 53:50 in the audio here):
Well, the Nation of Islam is significant. But its numbers don’t come anywhere near the membership of our churches. Its voice has been important, and its voice has been important even for the development of black theology, because it was the black Muslims who challenged black preachers, and said, “You’re promulgating,” you know, they called “the white man’s religion. That’s a slave religion. You’re telling people to focus on heaven. Meanwhile, they’re catching hell.” And so we needed the witness of the nation of Islam in a real sense to put a fire under us and keep us honest about the meaning of the proclamation coming from our pulpits.