Sen. and Rev. Raphael Warnock on Isaiah in our times

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast.
It's Friday, Juneteenth.
We are honored on this Juneteenth, 2026 to have Senator and Reverend Raphael Warnock with us. Talk about holding two jobs. He is the Senior Pastor at what is often called Martin Luther King's Church, the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, as well as Senator from the ultimate swing state of Georgia. If his Georgia colleague John Ossoff wins or loses his election this fall, that could determine control of the United States Senate. We'll talk about the holiday, the midterms, and some other news of the day, and Senator Warnock's new book, The Crooked Places Made Straight, Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America. Originally from Savannah, some of you may know Senator Warnock also has a New York background. He lived in the city for a decade in the 90s and early 2000s, earning his master's and doctorate degrees at the Union Theological Seminary, and becoming an assistant pastor at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Reverend Warnock, good to have you back on this show. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Raphael Warnock** (1:15)
Great to be here with you.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:18)
Would you start with the title of the book, Crooked Places Made Straight? I know it's from the Book of Isaiah. Would you like to give our listeners the fuller quote and say why it's so meaningful to you in the context of today's United States?

**Raphael Warnock** (1:32)
Yeah, there is a wonderful passage in the Book of Isaiah, and it's one that Jews and Christians know. But even if you're not a part of those traditions, if you've ever heard George Frederick Handel's Messiah, the passage says, Every valley shall be exalted. The mountains and hills shall be made low. The crooked places made straight, and the rough places smooth. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. It is a vision put forward by the prophet to a people who are living through a very difficult season, a time of exile, a time when the things that people take for granted or that create a sense of security and certainty, your institutions, even the temple, all of those things were in flux.
And folks wondered when in the world will we be able to get back? They're in exile. And the idea here is from the prophet is that we don't just need to go back to the land, we need to reimagine the land. And I think in this dark moment in our country, here's a time to reimagine who we are as an American people. And so this is a sermon to the country as we approach our 250th anniversary. I confront head on the problems that confront us and that challenge us. But ultimately, I believe in the American project.
And I urge us to recommit to one another, to our faith in the American covenant and our promise as a people together.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:13)
I'll note that your book opens with a Juneteenth story about your sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC on Juneteenth, 2023, when you preached about that passage from Isaiah. I see you'll be back there tonight. Maybe it's obvious or maybe you really kind of just said it. But can you talk a little bit a little bit about what makes that Isaiah verse especially relevant to this holiday?
Yeah.

**Raphael Warnock** (3:37)
Well, Juneteenth is a reminder that the American story is one in which the diversity of the American people step by step get to come to the table. And as each of us comes to the table, we add and we expand this idea of what it means to be a free people. Juneteenth is a metaphor for that, if you will.
The slaves and enslaved people have been set free when Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1st, 1863 But it took two, two and a half years for the enslaved population of Galveston, Texas to get the word. It took them a while. Freedom took a while to come. And that, in a real sense, has been the American story. We have these high ideals expressed in our Charter documents. Jefferson saying, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Words that Dr. King called cosmic words in their impact. He said that these were words of cosmic proportions. And yet, he was engaged in a fierce struggle to push the country to live up to those ideals. Women have had to come to the tables through the act of women's suffrage in the 1920s. Members of the LGBTQ community have had to fight for their dignity, Americans with disabilities. We've had to be reminded in a dark period like this that we are a nation of immigrants. And so, I lift up Isaiah because he speaks with a great deal of hope, but he also challenges those who are in power, who are so obsessed with their own needs and their own desires, that they are neglecting the people. He could have been speaking about 21st century politicians in America when the prophet said in the very first chapter, your princes, read politicians. He says, your princes are rebels. They are companions of thieves. Everybody is seeking after a gift. No one is defending the widows and the orphans. The widows and the orphans were those who would need a little help, those who would be a part of the social safety net, those who live on the margins. He says that your politicians are so focused on bribes and on self-aggrandizement that they're not taking care of the vulnerable. Our system is a wash in money. We have a system that is enmeshed in legalized bribery.