Raphael Warnock celebrates the church that was ‘born fighting for freedom’

Sen. Raphael Warnock is used to following in the footsteps of the incomparable Martin Luther King Jr. But when the Georgia senator and the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church walked into the pulpit at Tabernacle Baptist Church on Sunday, his presence linked two historic religious institutions bound by civil rights and community service.

“Tabernacle Church is a part of the Black church tradition. And when we say the Black church tradition, we have never meant anything racially exclusive about that,” Senator Warnock said at the third of four services to commemorate Tabernacle’s 140th anniversary. “The Black church tradition is shorthand for talking about the antislavery church. The anti-segregation church. The antibigotry church. We are the church that was literally born fighting for freedom.”

Tabernacle and Ebenezer are sister congregations, both having emerged from the challenges of the post-Reconstruction South and an America that betrayed the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation. Tabernacle was founded in 1885 by the Rev. C.T. Walker, a pastor regarded at the time as the “most famous Negro preacher in the world.” That claim to fame was noted by church guests such as George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, John D. Rockefeller, and former President William Howard Taft.

Ebenezer, about 150 miles away in Atlanta, was founded a year later, in 1886. The pastor who petitioned Ebenezer spiritually and economically was the Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, who began his tenure in 1894 and not only promoted Black businesses, but also challenged parishioners to become homeowners. He was a predecessor to the King family, which began with Martin Luther Sr., who was affectionately called “Daddy King.”

Senator Warnock’s message Sunday was entitled “Faith From a Rearview Mirror” – fitting because of the commentaries shared in that same pulpit that inspired past generations. In his first formal appearance at Tabernacle in 1962, Dr. King Jr. not only called for a “second Emancipation Proclamation,” but also flatly rebuked segregation. He said those who fight it are “working to make the American dream a reality and these persons may well be the saviors of democracy.”

Senator Warnock shared a similar message. “We’ve seen bigots before. We’ve seen folk who were impressed with themselves before. We’ve seen pharaohs before,” he told the congregation. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna build a multiracial coalition of conscience that bears witness to God’s freedom in the world.”

That sense of being and collaboration is reflected in the interwoven leadership between the two churches. In 1874, Dr. Walker, Tabernacle’s first pastor, enrolled in the Augusta Institute, which would later become Morehouse College. Morehouse was where Dr. King studied prior to his time at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University. But Morehouse also molded a father and son, the Rev. Otis Moss Jr. and the Rev. Otis Moss III, who would later become pastors at Ebenezer and Tabernacle, respectively.