There’s a preacher in the house — or at least, in the Senate. “A vote is a kind of prayer — to God.” That’s what Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Georgia's first Black senator, said in his first floor speech in the Senate chamber. As many know, Warnock is also senior pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once served. As Warnock made clear, voting rights is not just a political issue. It is also a faith issue — a spiritual test of whether we see in others the image of God, and thus extend the respect and dignity of a fair and free vote.
This sermon was edited from a message delivered Aug. 25, 2019 at Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis.
In a seven-point preface to the decree explaining why action was needed now, Francis said the pandemic "has negatively affected all the sources of income of the Holy See and the State of Vatican City."
If legislation they have introduced passes, future elections in Texas will look something like this: Voters with disabilities will be required to prove they can't make it to the polls before they can get mail-in ballots. County election officials won’t be able to keep polling places open late to give voters like shift workers more time to cast their ballots. Partisan poll watchers will be allowed to record voters who receive help filling out their ballots at a polling place. Drive-thru voting would be outlawed. And local election officials may be forbidden from encouraging Texans to fill out applications to vote by mail, even if they meet the state’s strict eligibility rules.
Last week was extraordinarily difficult for many Asian Americans. The trauma of the violence perpetrated against Asian women in Atlanta was the culmination of a yearlong spike in violence against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. An already fearful and silenced community was re-traumatized as police and media discounted the identity of the victims and centered the narrative on the challenges of the shooter.
In Shakespeare's plays as in real life: When evil makes itself known, pay attention.
After his arrest, the man who confessed to shooting eight people told investigators that he suffered from sexual addiction and saw the massage parlors as “a temptation... that he wanted to eliminate.”
It is well past time for the Equal Rights Amendment — now ratified by 38 states and supported by a supermajority of the populace — to be fully enshrined as the 28th Amendment.
This sermon was edited from a message delivered Aug. 26, 2018 at Metropolitan AME Church.
Last week, jury selection began in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who was arrested for the killing of George Floyd after kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — a horrific killing that sparked a movement of racial reckoning. In part, this trial is about justice for the Floyd family, about whether a jury will find Chauvin guilty in the murder of George Floyd. However, this trial, this moment, is about far more. It is about us and the future we want to build.