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The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock serves as the Senior Pastor of the Ebenezer
Baptist Church, spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A
native of Savannah, Georgia and the son of two Pentecostal-Holiness
ministers, Rev. Warnock preached his first sermon entitled, “It’s Time I
Be About My Father’s Business” at age eleven. Having been licensed and
ordained at the historic Sixth Avenue Baptist Church of Birmingham,
Alabama, he served for six years as the Youth Pastor and four years as the
Assistant Pastor of the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York
City-also one of the nation’s leading congregations, led by the likes of
Rev. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Samuel Dewitt Proctor and now
the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts. Before coming to Ebenezer, Pastor Warnock
served for 4 ½ years as the Senior Pastor of Baltimore’s Douglas Memorial
Community Church.
Rev. Warnock graduated from Morehouse College cum laude in 1991,
receiving the B.A. degree in psychology. He also holds a Master of
Divinity degree, a Master of Philosophy degree, and a Doctor of
Philosophy degree from Union Theological Seminary, New York City, where he
graduated with honors and distinctions. His research interests and
writing have included a distinguished Master’s Thesis and on-going
research on the activist ministries of two Twentieth Century Martyrs:
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and their challenges to
the church and the world in their time and ours. His Ph.D. dissertation
is entitled, “The Mission of the Black Church: A Discussion Among Black
Theologians and Black Pastors.”
In 1989, Rev. Warnock authored Educating Teens For Positive Peer
Intervention, which today still serves as Georgia’s official
curriculum guide for teen peer programs aimed at reducing the State’s
teenage pregnancy rate. Recognizing his exceptional work in the area of
teenage pregnancy prevention and advocacy on behalf of youth, the
Honorable Joseph Frank Harris, former Governor of Georgia, made him the
youngest person ever to be appointed to the Southern Regional Task Force
on Infant Mortality, a study commission comprised of governor appointees
from seventeen southern states.
While Rev. Warnock’s work and activism have been local, his vision has
always been global. As a student at Morehouse College, he organized and
served as the keynote speaker at a Peace Vigil protesting George Bush’s
initiation of a War against Iraq on January 15th, the birthday of a
peacemaker. Over 2,000 students attended this event, which received
national press coverage. During the 1992 Democratic Convention in New
York City, he coordinated, under the auspices of Clergy and Laity
Concerned (CALC) and the Abyssinian Church, an alternative People’s
Convention, in memory of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi sharecropper
who told the nation in 1968 she was “sick and tired of being sick and
tired.” In 1995, he was part of a 15-member delegation to Haiti,
following the 1991 military coup and the United States’ return of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He and other delegates later met with
members of Congress, U.S. Embassy and State Department officials, lobbying
for better U.S. policy toward this small budding democracy in our own
hemisphere. His leadership and advocacy has been further demonstrated
through his work with The National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.
Rev. Warnock is a graduate of the Leadership Program sponsored by the
Greater Baltimore Committee and a graduate of the Summer Leadership
Institute of Harvard University. The November 1999 issue of Ebony
Magazine listed him as one of Thirty Leaders Of The Future.
A 1993 recipient of Union Theological Seminary’s coveted William H. Hudnut
Preaching Award, Rev. Warnock is sought after as a preacher and scholar.
He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, Alpha Phi Alpha
Fraternity, Inc. and various other civic and social organizations. He has
received the Benjamin Elijah Mays Fellowship For Ministry from the Fund
for Theological Education, the Thomas and Jeanetta Kilgore Theological
Scholarship Award, Associated Black Charity’s “Good Shepherd Award” and a
host of other fellowships, honors and citations, noting his abiding
commitment to Christian ministry, disciplined scholarship and diligent
struggle on behalf of the oppressed.
The
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