- Welcome, everyone, to
this evening's lecture. We really appreciate your presence. And it's very exciting for
me to briefly introduce and say a few words of gratitude before the event of having
Reverend Senator Warnock here to address us today. First of all, the words of gratitude. I would like to thank the
Baptist Theological Union and the Virginia Union Seminary, whose efforts in partnership
have made this event possible. And if possible, those
members of the BTU here, please make yourself sh
own. (audience applauding) And representatives of Virginia Union, please make yourself known as well. (audience applauding) I would also like to thank the Martin Marty Center of
the University of Chicago for providing the administrative support, and especially the Marty Center's Executive Director Loskota, Brie Loskota, for her tireless efforts in
making this event possible. (audience applauding) Thanks are also to the Crown Family School of
Social Work Policy and Practice for providing addition
al
administrative support. So, thanks very much to the Crown School. (audience applauding) And before introducing Marshall
Hatch in just a moment, I'd like to call out for
just a moment of presence, the Reverend Dr. Reginald Williams Jr., who is senior pastor of the First Baptist
Church of University Park. Reverend Dr. Williams is a
graduate of Virginia Union. And would you please stand
up and say a few words, just addressing the audience from Virginia Union's perspective? (audience applauding)
- Good afternoon. What a joy it is to be here today. I rise to represent the Samuel
DeWitt Proctor Conference, where Dr. Iva Carruthers
is the general chairperson, and the Samuel DeWitt
Proctor School of Theology, where our dean is Dr. John Eric Guns. It is a privilege to be here, not only because of Dr.
Senator Raphael Warnock, but the collaboration and connection between University of
Chicago and Virginia Union, as you can see in your bulletin. Virginia Union is a school that began as in a spa
ce of incarceration, out of Mary Lumpkin's jail. And out of that space of
incarceration came an institution of education that would
transform the lives of those formerly enslaved Africans to engage in transformation
across this country. And so, we are grateful to be here and to be in connection
with the div school here at University of Chicago. And we look forward to
not only being here, but to this coming to
Virginia Union as well, as we look forward to
spreading these types of pieces around th
e country and at other HBCUs. I'm also a graduate of
Florida A&M University. And so, being glad to be here, glad to represent our dean, and glad to get all that we
can from Dr. Senator Warnock. God bless you. Glad to be here. (audience applauding) - And finally, I would like to introduce the Reverend
Dr. Marshall Hatch Sr., who will introduce the senator. Reverend Dr. Marshall
Hatch is a longtime trustee of the Baptist Theological Union, an alum of McCormick Theological Seminary, where he receiv
ed his master's and PhD. And he has been the pastor of New Mount Pilgrim
Missionary Baptist since 1993. The Reverend Dr. Hatch was
a Merrill Fellow at Harvard, received degrees from
Georgetown and McCormick, as mentioned, and most recently is one
of the lead directors of the MAAFA Redemption Project, which will soon be featured
in a film "All These Sons." So, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Reverend Dr. Hatch. (audience applauding) - Thank you, Dean Robinson. And of course, we again salu
te all of the trustees of the Baptist Theological Union. So when you hear BTU,
that's what that means. That means, (audience laughing) it's like MB Church, Missionary Baptist, you have to sometime spell it out. But we are delighted to
always welcome the presence of our iconic civil rights leader mentor, the one and only Reverend
Jesse Louis Jackson is in the house. (audience applauding) And thank you for your
presence, Reverend Jackson. To say that the Reverend Senator
Raphael G. Warnock has had
an impactful ministry is
a gross understatement. In light of the profound ways that his ministry has propelled
him into places and spaces that intersect personal faith and public service and public life, his life and ministry has
been wondrous to behold. Since 2005, he has served as senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Atlanta, carrying on the King legacy
with grace and distinction. With preparation as a
student at Morehouse College where he received his BA, and furthering h
is preparation at Union Theological Seminary, where he received his masters of divinity, his masters of philosophy, his PhD, I dare say under the tutelage of the late Dr. James Hal Cone, he is now a public theologian, whose landmark work "Divided
Mind of the Black Church" crystallizes Black church history and the evolution of Black theologies, and projects for the 21st century a church whose prophetic vision as a church born out of slavery calls for universal human rights
as a thrust of its mini
stry and its contribution globally. Dr. Warnock has been a prophetic voice, bursting onto the scene
of public life in Georgia as an advocate for Medicare expansion, and calling for healthcare
as a universal human right. In 2020, Dr. Warnock emerged
as a political actor, winning partial and then full terms as the first African American
Democratic United States Senator from the deep south. (audience applauding) And with that ground-shaking
political work, he singularly helped
create a Senate major
ity for progressive public policy. Above all, he continues to fulfill
his calling in the pulpit as a passionate and
prodigious gospel preacher. And all of us who preach will say that's the highest calling. But as is in the scripture
verse John three and two, I must say it do it not yet
appear what he shall be. All of this from the humble beginnings as the son of Pentecostal preachers, son of Savannah, Georgia, growing up in public housing. We could not have secured
a more appropriate voice for t
his reinaugural presentation of the Colver Lecture Series on the integration of
faith and public life. And so, now, let us welcome the junior senator from the great state of
Georgia, United States Senator, the Reverend Dr. Raphael Gamaliel Warnock. And the church said, "Amen." (audience applauding) - Hello, everybody. Great to be here. Thank you so very much. In this room is warm in Chicago. Thank you for your spirit, or that very kind and
magnanimous introduction. Wonderful to be here
among so
many friends. I'll get in trouble if I
start naming all the preachers and teachers and professors
I know in this room. But once again, in a real
sense, our icon patriarch, somebody I grew up looking up to, and that all of these years later, I'm able to say I know, the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson. Give him a great big round of applause. (audience applauding) Good to see. His son and my colleague
Jonathan is in the house. Congressman Jackson, let's hear
it for Congressman Jackson. (audience appla
uding) Thank you. Grateful to all the leaders who are here. I would like to welcome and publicly congratulate
someone you know. I'm pastor of Ebenezer Church, Junior United States Senator from Georgia. I have another proud distinction. I'm Brad Braxton's successor at the Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore, Maryland. We both serve that church. I came after him, right after him. He's the new president of the
Chicago Theological Seminary. (audience applauding) Bless you, brother. I have
to acknowledge that lineage. Reggie Williams, Dr.
Proctor would be proud. Thank you so much for
this kind invitation. As I thought about the Colver Lecture and the reinauguration
of this lecture series and all that that legacy represents, this bold abolitionist and leading light for
freedom during tough times, out of which the legacy
of Virginia Union springs, the Baptist Theological Union. I wanna talk in that spirit from this title "Let My People Go. The Scandal of Mass Incarceration
in the L
and of the Free." 55 years ago this month, Martin Luther King Jr. took
his last stand for freedom. In a very real sense, he was summoned to Memphis by the sacrifice of
two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert
Walker, who were literally, literally crushed to death in the back of a trash truck where they sought shelter from a storm. They were there because
sanitation workers were prohibited from riding in the truck with
their white counterparts. And so viewed as disposable refuse, they could
only ride on
the back of the truck or in the compactor area. And in a country where we too often tell
ourselves a simple story, even about the civil rights movement, I want you to observe that this is 1968, four years after the
civil rights law of 1964 with its integration of
public accommodations. Three years after the Voting Rights Act, they were seeking shelter from a storm, but there was no shelter from the reigns and the
storm of white supremacy. And so, the Black bodies of
Echol Cole and R
obert Walker were crushed and killed by the vicious machinery
of Jim Crow segregation. Yet tragically, it was
these crushed Black bodies, the latest blow in a long
pattern of neglect and abuse that finally gave fuel to the
fledgling Memphis movement, triggering the radical spirit in action of the local Black churches, and producing those
historic and iconic signs, "I am a man." Here's how you know when
you are an oppressed people, when you have to have a
movement or make signs or have a campaign
to
declare about yourself that which ought to be obvious. I can think of nothing more sublime, nothing more basic. I can think of no more humble
assertion than to simply say, "I am a man." Or in the case of Sojourner
Truth, "Ain't I a woman?" Or in more recent days,
"Black lives matter." Matter. Matter. Those who retort, "No, all lives matter," manifestly miss the point. It is oppression itself that
makes necessary movements to affirm the truth of
what ought to be obvious. And one of the bigges
t obstacles
to genuine human community is a glib unreflective and
uncritical universalism. Justice demands the honest recognition that not all lives are
imperiled in the same way. That's what summoned Dr. King to Memphis. He was there to stand with
those who needed a movement. A little over two months later, he would be slain by an assassin's bullet on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. His last book published a
year later was entitled, "Where Do We Go From
Here: Chaos or Community?" I ask this
afternoon, this
evening, where indeed? Specifically, 55 years
after the Memphis movement and the Poor People's Campaign, where are the places that poor bodies and Black bodies and brown
bodies are being crushed by the machinery of the state
or the society at large, demanding the attention of the church and the larger community? Well, while recognizing the
structural complexity of racism and its inextricable link to and participation with
other constituent parts of hegemonic power, including sexi
sm,
classism, and militarism, I would argue that today, mass incarceration is Jim
Crow's most obvious descendant. And like its ancestor, its dismantling would
honor the Colver legacy, would represent both massive social and infrastructural transformation
and immeasurable power in a society still steeped in the ideology of white supremacy. The ideology of white
supremacy has created the massive infrastructure of
the American carceral state. And I argue that this massive
privatized infrastructure,
the carceral state has in turn constructed its own distinct ideology. The infrastructure has created an ideology that has a life on of its own. And it is this ideology, the distorted fear-based logic of the carceral state and its construal of blackness
as dangerousness and guilt that imperils all of us, but especially Black bodies
during routine traffic stops, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, while running in the rain
through one's own community, 17 year old Trayvon Martin, while playing in a pa
rk,
12 year old Tamir Rice, while eating ice cream or
playing with family members in the sanctuary one's own home, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson. More recently, Tyre Nichols, beaten by a gang of Black police officers. Same sickness. Don't be confused by phenotype. The sickness is the same. I would argue that 16 year old Ralph Yarl, who was shot in the head by an 84 year old who spends
all day watching Fox News, listening to conservative
television radio, I would argue that 16 year old Ralph Ya
rl, in many ways a model of a kid, is like too many Black men, a victim of the carceral state. Rang the wrong doorbell. Snatched by the tentacles that have hollowed out
entire Black communities. I submit that at root, this
is a spiritual problem, which is why we ought to be
dealing with it in seminary. It is not just a political problem, but it is symptomatic of a
sickness in the body politic. And here, again, Dr. King and those who marched
alongside him helps us, because I'm always struck by th
e fact that the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference model was not to end segregation in America. That was their goal. It was not to secure voting rights. Their model was not to
secure civil rights. Their model was to redeem
the soul of America. Yet again, it is the soul
of America that is, again, that is in trouble. The United States of America,
the land of the free, is by far, by far, by far, mass incarceration capital of the world. Think about that. The land of the free, mass incarceratio
n of the world. Shining city on this hill shackles more people than
any land in the world. Nobody even comes close in
the rates of incarceration or even in the sheer numbers
of people incarcerated. It is a scandal and a scar
on the soul of America that we are a nation that comprises 4% of the world's
population and warehouses, nearly 25% of the world's
prison population is a scandal and a scar on the soul of America. That we lock up people awaiting trial and keep them there for
weeks and months
and years, remember Kalief Browder, not because they pose a threat to society, but because they cannot afford to pay a bail bond is a scandal and a scar on the soul of America. That we criminalize poverty and penalize people for being poor, is a scandal and a scar
on the soul of America. That we have a greater percentage
of our Black population in jails and prisons than did South Africa at the height of apartheid is a scandal and a scar on the soul of America. That in all of our large American c
ities, as many as half of the young
Black men are caught up somewhere in the matrix and social control of the criminal justice system, and that Black men have been
banished from our families, devastating generations of our families, it's a scandal and a scar
on the soul of America. These men and increasingly women then come out carrying the mark and the stigma of convicted
felon or ex-felon, and are therefore confronted with all of the legalized barriers against which Martin Luther King Jr. and
Jesse Jackson and others
fought in the old Jim Crow. Housing discrimination, legal. Employment discrimination,
because you have the mark felon, may have taken a plea, may have spent no considerable
time in jail, legal. Barred from voting, some
professional licenses, in some states like mine, even
the license to be a barber. Public benefits, student loans. And most of the Black men in America's jails and
prisons today are charged with non-violent drug related offenses. They are casualties in
Amer
ica's war on drugs. At least it was a war
when the drug was crack and the bodies were Black and brown in places like Detroit, Baltimore, the south side of
Chicago, South Central LA, and certain communities in Atlanta. We had a war on drugs. But now that we are talking about opioids, it even sounds nicer. And meth. And the faces of the human
tragedy are white and suburban. Suddenly, we have a
public health emergency. Two very different responses
to the same problem. Public health emergencies are
addressed through doctors, public health officials, social workers, therapists and clinics. Wars are prosecuted
against enemy combatants who are either killed or
become prisoners of war. The data shows that Black people and white
people use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates. We're all entitled to our own
opinion, not our own facts. Black people and white
people use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates. Yeah, Black people are 12%
of the general population, over 50% of the prison po
pulation. And that's why Michelle
Alexander has persuasively argued that the mass incarceration of tens of thousands of Black bodies for non-violent drug related offenses and the long consequences that
result are constituent parts of the new Jim Crow, legally barred from the doors
of entry to citizenship, symbolized in the right to vote and denied access to
ladders of opportunity and social upward mobility. She observes that those
who have served their time in America's prisons, or who plead gui
lty in exchange for little
or no actual prison time, are not part of a class, but a permanent caste system. I agree. And in theological terms, in theological terms, I submit that they are condemned to what I call eternal social damnation. Even in the face of heroic efforts to carve for oneself a path of redemption, ours is an exceedingly punitive system that routinely produces political pariahs and economic lepers, condemned in a very real
sense to check a box on applications for employment, and
other applications, reminiscent of the ancient
biblical stigma unclean. There is no clear example of
America's unfinished business with the project of racial justice than the 21st century caste system, engendered by its prison
industrial complex. Moreover, I submit that there is no more significant scandal belying the moral credibility
of the American churches than their conspicuous silence as this human catastrophe has unfolded now for more than four decades. (audience applauding) To be sure,
scores of American churches
have prison ministries, and some even have reclamation ministries for returning citizens. But there's a vast difference between offering pastoral
care and spiritual guidance to the incarcerated and
formally incarcerated, and challenging, in an organized way, the public policies, laws,
and policing practices that lead to the
disproportionate incarceration of people of color in the first place. (audience applauding) That is the work of justice. And so, I came just to su
ggest that we need a national multifaith, multiracial movement to end the scourge of mass incarceration, the insatiable beast whose massive tentacles place
Black children in choke holds and brown babies in cages
on both sides of the border. But here's the problem. How do you build an
effective social movement, particularly among church folk, when the primary subjects of its advocacy are those stigmatized by the pejorative label illegals, in the case of our Latinx
sisters and brothers, subjected
to draconian tactics
of immigration enforcement, whether they're citizens or not? How do you win public sympathy and support for convicted felons? It is one thing to
stand up for Rosa Parks, who Martin Luther King Jr. called one of the most respected
people in the Negro community. It is quite another to fight
for the basic human dignity of persons whose entire
humanity has been supplanted by a legal and moral stigma. And in many instances, they may well bear real
culpability for their condition.
Indeed, this is part of the
conundrum posed by racial bias in the criminal justice system. In a world where ordinary Black people
must still navigate every day the racial politics of respectability, bearing the burden of being in the words
of that old folk saying, "A credit to the race." That's what they said
during my dad's times, "Be a credit to the race." I sometimes wonder if people
think Donald Trump is a credit. (audience laughing) Well. But there's a sense even
in the Black community tha
t these folk have not
kept their side of the deal. If many outside of the African
American community view these young Black men who
track through the courtrooms of every major American
city every single day with fear and contempt, many within their own families
and churches harbor feelings of disappointment, anger, and ambivalence. They are the ultimate outsiders, stigmatized for life as
both Black and criminal, two words that have long
been interchangeable in the Western moral imagination. 400
years after the arrival of more than 20 enslaved
Africans in Jamestown, Virginia, the Black body remains a central text in the narrative of a
complicated story called America. For all who would understand
who we Americans are and how we have arrived, the Black body is a central reading. There is no American wealth without reference to Black people, yet the Black body is viewed
centrally as a problem. Sitting at the center of what
Gunnar Myrdal characterized in 1944 as an American dilemma. 400 ye
ars later, formerly enslaved Black bodies
and branded Black bodies and lynched Black bodies
and raped Black bodies and segregated Black bodies
are now stopped, frisked, groped, searched,
handcuffed, incarcerated, paroled, probated, released, but never emancipated Black bodies. Like many, I have witnessed the human
cost of this story and stigma as a pastor, and I have witnessed it
personally in my own family. I was struck that 60 days or so after
I announced my candidacy for the United States Sen
ate, as we found ourselves 30
days after my announcement in the throes of a pandemic, COVID-19, that weeks after that, we would be confronted again with the reemergence of
another pandemic, COVID 1619, lynching of George Floyd, out of which a multiracial coalition
of conscience poured out into American streets, for once, we could not turn away. Sometime thereafter,
there was another tragedy. A young man named
Rayshard Brooks was killed by Atlanta police. He'd fallen asleep in the
parking lot of
Wendy's. They'd had a conversation,
he and the officers, for nearly an hour
where he decided to run. He was in Georgia's parole
and probation system, which is longer than
almost any in the country. Some say, "Well, why did he run? Maybe he would be alive." Well, here's the dilemma
for Black parents. Rayshard Brooks ran and he's dead. George Floyd did not run and he's dead. So what do we tell our children? I eulogized Rayshard Brooks, and then I got up in the wee
hours of the next morning before
sunrise to drive
down to South Georgia to pick up my brother. He was standing outside of the prison with a sack carrying
all of his belongings. Here I was running for
the United States Senate. I used to sleep on the top bunk. He slept on the bottom bunk. There he was standing
there on the sidewalk with all of his belongings,
standing outside, could get in my car for
the first time in 22 years. He was convicted in a drug sting, first time offender, a situation in which no one was killed, no one w
as physically hurt, wait for it, no drugs
ever even hit the street. Crime scenario created by the state. For that, he was sentenced to life in federal prison without
the possibility of parole. And the only reason he
was coming out that day, 22 years later, was because of COVID-19. Three years later, he's outside,
but still under control. But no group is more stigmatized than those persons on death row. By the time I met Troy Davis and became involved with his case, both as pastor to him and his
family, and as a public advocate
for the sparing of his life, he had been on death
row for nearly 20 years, convicted in 1991 for the 1989 slaying of Savannah, Georgia police
officer Mark Allen MacPhail. 2008 and we held the first
of several rallies for him at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Davis's case had already gained national and
international attention, and brought together unlikely allies in the struggle to save his life. There was so much doubt
surrounding this case that on separate occasions,
Davis's execution was stayed
within minutes of his death. One fall afternoon, I sat in a pastoral visit at his cell as he reflected on his life, its meaning, and his hope that somehow
his story might be a bridge to a better future and a larger good. We talked. We prayed. We sat silently. We said goodbye. Two days later, I stood in a prison yard where his family and hundreds of others, one fall night, September 21st, 2011, as Troy Davis was stretched
out and strapped to a gurney, bearing an eeri
e
resemblance to a crucifix, and executed in my name, as a citizen of the state of Georgia, by lethal injection. In the years that I have
continued to fight for Davis and others like him for the soul and for the soul of a nation scarred by the scandal of mass incarceration and the lives of young Black
men like Trayvon Martin, who was tragically endangered and murdered by the stigma of blackness as criminality, I have often reminded myself that I preach each week in
memory of a death row inmate,
convicted on trumped up charges at the behest of religious authorities, and executed by the state without the benefit of due process. The cross, the Roman
empire's method of execution reserved for subversives, is
a symbol of stigma and shame. Yet the early followers of Jesus embraced the scandal of the cross, calling it the power of God. To tell that story is to tell the story of stigmatized human beings. To embrace the cross is to bear witness to the truth and power of God, subverting human ass
umptions
about truth and power, pointing beyond the tragic
limits of a given moment toward the promise of the resurrection. It is to see what an imprisoned exile of a persecuted community saw, as he captured in scripture
the vision and hope of a new heaven and a new earth. And so, this is why Ebenezer
Baptist Church has been trying to find a way to faithfully
and effectively bear witness to God's justice. A few years ago, we organized a national
multiracial multifaith conference focused on the c
ollective work of dismantling mass incarceration by catalyzing the resources of people of faith and moral courage in a movement that operates
at the local, state, and national level. We are now at work, and we
have four major objectives. One to train and equip
pastors, rabbis, and imams, and other faith leaders and their teams, with practical tools for
addressing their ministries to mass incarceration as
a social justice issue. Two, to identify and coalesce around a strategic legislative agenda,
I can now help with that, at the local, state, and national levels. Three, to organize an interfaith network of partners focused on
abolishing mass incarceration. And four, to lay the groundwork for the development of
a new media strategy for reframing the public understanding of the prison industrial complex, and its implications for
public safety, quality, and quality of life. We who are people of faith, we who preach every Sunday in memory of that death row inmate, are uniquely situated to
u
tilize our institutional power and the grand symbols of our tradition to address stigma the way Jesus did. Much of our work has been
centered around expungements. In 2016, we came together
with other county officials to organize and host our very
first expungement clinic, a one-stop shop in the
church's banquet hall that cleared the arrest records of hundreds of citizens
who had been arrested but never convicted. Yet, like millions of Americans
who have arrest records, they were either barred or
limited in their employment options, rejected in their applications
for housing, apartments, and other features of a
prosperous and dignified life. We continue these expungement events, and they have been emancipation moments for people looking for a second chance. I remember the very first one, and I remember the joy I felt as I walked into our sanctuary
one Saturday morning, and realized that
everyone gathered that day in church had a record. But then I thought to
myself that in a real sense,
that's true every Sunday. (audience applauding) Everybody in church has a record. None of us wants to be forever
judged by our worst moment. And each of us has some record that cries out for grace and redemption. And sometime after the first event, I was sitting in the
chair at the barbershop, believe it or not, true story, I was sitting in the chair (audience laughing) at the barbershop, and my barber was finishing
shaping up my goatee. And I was rushing to get out of the chair to my next appo
intment when
another patron walked up to me. He said, "Rev, that was
a great event y'all had." I said, "What event?" He said, "The expungement event." I politely said, "Thank you," and I was trying to get
to my next appointment. He said, "Rev, wait. You don't understand. You cleared my record." Stood there and looked at him. He was middle-aged man, well-dressed, well-spoken, respectable. I had to examine my own assumptions. You cleared my record. Something about a bad check
20 years ago, never c
onvicted. He said, "You cleared my record, and as a result, I've got a better job, my income has gone up,
and my life is better." I congratulated him. I shook his hand. And I was headed for
the door when he said, "Rev, wait. (audience laughing) A young couple in my family had a baby that they did not have
the means to raise." Family member. The baby was headed to foster care. But because I came to church, somebody cleared my record. I was able to do what I would
not have been able to do. I was a
ble to adopt my own family member. The trajectory of two generations changed by one stroke of grace. I'm glad, but I'm also sad and I'm mad, because he had never been
convicted of anything. He had an arrest record. He was free. Yet for 20 years, he had been bound by the massive tentacles of
our prison industrial complex. While helping people like him, it is that fundamental problem that we seek to address in a nation where nearly 30% of adults
has a record in America. So now, we are working with
others to address this. People of faith and moral
courage should lead the charge. It is the fear-based logic
of the carceral state that is killing people, Black and white citizens. We're all armed to the
hilt, afraid of one another. We've seen in recent days, it's dangerous. Ring the wrong doorbell. Go in the wrong driveway. That is why people of faith
must lead this charge. And we must say to a
failed fear-based system, "Let my people go." That is what God told
Moses to tell pharaoh, "Let my p
eople go, that
they may worship me." Liberate them from human bondage so that they might blossom and live lives of human flourishing, lives that give glory to God, rather than to human systems. Moses had a speech impediment,
yet God picked him. Moses had a record, yet God picked him. Or maybe God picked him
because he had a record. God has a record of using
people with a record. Moses had a record. He slew an Egyptian. He killed a man. God had more in store for him. Joseph had a record, long bef
ore a Central Park
case and a ruthless prosecutor, long before Donald Trump's op ed, throw them in the jail, there was Potiphar's wife. Joseph was thrown in prison, but he held on to to his dreams. The three Hebrew boys had a record, and they were sentenced to death for an act of civil disobedience. Daniel was charged, convicted,
and thrown in the lion's den. John was imprisoned on
an island called Patmos, the Rikers Island of that day. And there he saw a new
heaven and a new earth. Jesus had a
record. Not surprising, given his start. Of course he had a record. Look at the neighborhood he was born in. (audience laughing) Born in a barrio called Bethlehem, smuggled as an undocumented
immigrant into Egypt, raised in a ghetto called Nazareth. But he came saying, "The
spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor, to open the eyes of the blind, to preach liberty to those in captivity." They brought him up on trumped up charges, and they convicted
him without
the benefit of due process. They marched him up Golgotha's Hill and executed him on a Roman cross, buried him in a borrowed tomb. But he was so powerful that he turned the scandal of the cross into an enduring symbol of
victory over evil and injustice. And his movement was so contagious that he got off the cross and got in our hearts. He is my redeemer and liberator. And in his name and in the name of all
that is good and justice and righteous and true, we who are people of faith
mu
st stand together once again, redeem the soul of America, and say to pharaoh, "Let my people go." (audience applauding) - The Senator went much further in the articulation of the good news than we thought you would. - I'm still a Baptist preacher. (audience laughing) - And I was gonna say, I
watch you most Sundays, so I'm not surprised that
you went all the way there. But it is interesting, out of all of the things that
you could have talked about, and this was a wide latitude that you had, and
interestingly, the
subject matter that you chose, this group, this, you
know, the ex offenders, or either the folk who have
been somehow given this mark and made outsiders, out of all of the things
you could have chosen to talk about, you chose that. And I think you talked a little bit about your personal
experience with your family, which is why it matters
who sits in these seats and what kind of
experiences that they have. And you also, I think,
challenged us as people of faith, because every
weekend in
the Abrahamic traditions, we lift up sacrifice, and at some point, we highlight redemption, another start, a new
chance, a clean record. And so, I think that appropriately, the place that we can
really start a movement to address what harms so
many people in communities, like the one I pastor in, our project is the MAAFA
Redemption Project. What kind of traction are you finding? 'Cause you really, you
outlined a path forward. And one of the things we
would've asked you of would be whe
re do we go from here? I think you already told us
that, you know, you've outlined. What kind of traction are you finding in the faith communities for
this issue in particular? That I think is miraculous that a United States Senator is even highlighting this issue, because I imagine you might
be one out of a hundred, literally, who thinks
this is important enough to be the number one piece you
would talk about on the road. So, what kind of traction, what are we making progress
in recruiting peop
le of faith? - Well, I decided to talk about this, because it's something that
I've been thinking about and working on for a long time. I actually decided, years before I came to
serve in the Senate, that when asked to
preach or speak anywhere, whatever I talked about, I
was gonna raise this issue. It might not even, might
not be the subject, but I made a covenant. I made a covenant with God
that when I spoke publicly outside of my pulpit, 'cause they hear it all the time, that I was gonna talk,
I was gonna at least raise this issue. - [Marshall] Yes. - Because, and I don't know
if I said it clearly or not, clearly enough or not, I think that when you
look at the legacy of 1619 and our ongoing struggle, America, the land that
is and yet never was, to be who we say we are, this is as central a moral issue among domestic issues as any, and it's a lens through which to address a
whole range of other issues that you might be concerned about. So what about poverty? A whole range. This mass
incarceration piece. And I do think the silence, the deafening silence of the
American churches, all of 'em, is reminiscent of, is akin to being silent during abolition, or during segregation. You know, I'm a post civil
rights generation baby. I was born a year after Dr. King's death. And one of the things that amazes me is that almost everybody I know, especially Black people, but almost everybody
I know over 65 marched without the King. (audience laughing) There are not enough streets
in Ameri
ca for the people. And I'm uniquely situated to know this, because, you know, as
the pastor of the church, people, you know, I get that constantly. People sort of, like, they want
me to know they're bonafide, so, their connection to Dr. King. Why is that? It's because we now have
the benefit of hindsight, and you can, and we have
moral clarity about something, believe it or not, that wasn't all that clear
on that side of it, right? And it manifested itself in various ways, church people saying,
"Oh, you know, change will
come, just pray about it." Other folks saying, "Why
is he doing all of that? He's breaking the law." - [Attendee] That's right. - So, we are cleared now, sort of, right? And so, I think, I think, like, a whole range of things. There's some other things too, you know, like our homophobia. You know, we're gonna be embarrassed. We're gonna be embarrassed, years from now, by our silence. We're gonna have to ask ourselves, what are we gonna say when
our grandchildren ask, "
What were you doing while this human
catastrophe was unfolding?" Like, nobody comes close
to our record. Nobody. I want you to think about all the regimes whose human rights records
we love to deplore. Yeah, I'm saying it,
United States Senator. They, nobody comes close. So, the question, so, I think, so I'm trying to call us to movement, and we've launched something called the Ending Mass Incarceration
program at our, at my church. You can find us online. We had this conference back in 2019, an
d I was very happy that
it was a great turnout. It was national. There was racial parity at the conference. I was so glad to see that. It was like equal numbers of white people and people
of color, multi faith. And we came and we put together a toolkit to help churches get involved locally, whether it's through expungement
events or media campaigns, give people tools to respond to these
issues legally, locally, and we continue to do this work. That was in the spring of 2019. This is how the Lord
works. Can I say that at the
University of Chicago? (audience laughing) This is how the Lord works. I had no idea that a year later I'd be
running for the Senate, less than a year later. And they got footage of me
saying, "Let my people go." And they ran ads saying, "He wanna let everybody outta jail." (audience laughing) And I still won, five times. (audience applauding) - Five times. - I did. I mean, five times. But I'm not willing to, so I am, my effort is to bring that to this new lane of m
y work as well. And because when I launched the EMI, I was trying to lobby for policy. Now, I can actually write it. And I want you to join us in that work. - Thank you, Senator. They're yanking our chain over there, and- - Yep. Yep. - But I think we got two minutes. - All right. Yes. - And I have to just say this again. We met once before. You may not remember. You were here for a fundraiser. - Yeah, we were together
a few, I remember. - That's right. And I told-
- Of course I remember. I wrote
you a check.
- I told the senator then. I did that too. - Yeah. - I done done what the Lord told me to do. - But I shared with you that I candidated for Ebenezer at the same time you did. I gotta break it out. (Raphael laughing) 17 years ago, I was a candidate. And my testimony is I
have the rejection letter from the chairman of the committee to prove they got the right man. (Raphael laughing)
(audience applauding) The Reverend Senator
Raphael Gamaliel Warnock. (audience applauding) - Thank y'a
ll very much. Thank you. - Thank you, Senator Warnock,
for your powerful message. This evening was conceived
as the revitalization of the Nathaniel Colver Lecture at the University of
Chicago Divinity School as part of a collaboration
with Virginia Union and other educational institutions that also looked back to Dr. Colver. With a named lecture, one hopes that the lecturer
honors a particular past in such a way that it directs the audience toward a glimpsed and provocative future. Senator Warno
ck has met and
exceeded that hope this evening. Nathaniel Colver was an antebellum prophet who grasped such an awful need for change in the United States that he could not wait
for the map to be drawn or the way to be paved, nor was he willing to simply preach, but rolled up his sleeves, moving from one location to the next, continually creating the change that, in his mind's eye, he could see, and in his heart, feel. Colver accomplished this
through intellectual rigor, oratory skill, passionate
listening, and spirited debate. As we have heard tonight, we are far enough along the path discerned by
Dr. Colver's bold abolitionism and the great civil rights
prophets who inspired him and who came after him, that there are yet again some who would become
hardened and habituated, and even those who would
attempt to turn us all back. But what may be most amazing about the prophetic imagination in the face of opposition
and apathy is not its passion or its righteous indignation, but its creati
ve restlessness, its insistence that we be fully
present, deeply inquiring, and urgently seeking a better future. So, we understand that Senator Warnock
was the perfect person to reinaugurate and revitalize
the Colver lectures. We have been reminded that
education and service are yoked, that social change requires
spiritual struggle, and that public ministry necessarily moves beyond the walls of church,
academy, and government into the world. Senator Warnock, thank you for your esteemed
presence
here with us tonight, and your words. Thank you all for being here. Goodnight. (audience applauding)
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