GOP Attacks On Raphael Warnock’s Religious Convictions Are Certainly Hypocritical—But To Say That Is To Merely Scratch The Surface

Reverend Raphael Warnock, Democratic candidate for Georgia’s Senate seat. Photo by the Raphael Warnock Campaign.

On the surface, I have very little in common with Reverend Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate in the upcoming special run-off election for Senate in Georgia. In terms of race, socioeconomic standing, and geography in particular, our upbringings and backgrounds could not be much more different than they are. Still, though, I feel a deep kinship with him. We are both staunch progressives, and, beyond that, our dedication to progressive causes—our desire to work to affirm the dignity of every human being—is rooted in our faith, not contradicted by it. Reverend Warnock and I come from different religious backgrounds as well—he is a Protestant, whereas I am a Catholic—but we are unified by our belief that the Gospels call us to build bridges, not walls. Even though our lived experiences are quite dissimilar, I cannot help but feel personally affected by the attacks on Warnock’s religious beliefs by Senator Kelly Loeffler, the Republican incumbent whom he is running against, and her allies in the GOP.

Yes, that would be the very same GOP that, just a matter of months ago, was publicly condemning “attacks” by Democrats on the religious convictions of then-nominee to the Supreme Court Amy Coney Barrett, who is Catholic, during her Senate confirmation hearing. Loeffler herself tweeted late in September that the “anti-faith attacks against Amy Coney Barrett coming from the left are disgusting.” 

And Marco Rubio, the senior senator from Georgia’s southern neighbor who has actively campaigned for Loeffler, wrote in a statement released soon after Barrett’s nomination that he expected his “Democratic colleagues and the radical left to do all they can to assassinate her character and… make an issue of her faith.” At the time, for many Republican elected officials, any critical discussion of Amy Coney Barrett’s religious beliefs, or the influence that those beliefs might have on her judicial decisions, was off-limits.

Just months ago, Republican elected officials condemned perceived efforts by Democrats to bring Amy Coney Barrett’s religious beliefs into the picture during her Supreme Court nomination hearing. Now, many of these same officials are content with framing Senate candidate Raphael Warnock’s own religious convictions as reasons for Georgian voters to reject him. This goes beyond the level of hypocrisy; it is demonstrative of a flagrant misconception of the relative relevance of religious convictions and value systems in the judiciary compared to in the legislative branch. Photo via Lucy Sanders.

Now, with Barrett on the Supreme Court and President Trump on his way out of the White House, these same Republicans have changed their tune. This hypocrisy underlying this sudden shift is evident, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The tension between the approach Republicans took during the Barrett hearings and the approach they’re taking now presents several exigent questions pertaining to the extent to which religious convictions can or should drive service in government.

To the Republicans who are working hard to defeat Reverend Warnock, calling one’s opponent’s religious beliefs into question is permissible. Over the past few weeks, including at a recent televised debate, Loeffler has used excerpts from Warnock’s past sermons to attempt to prove that he is too much of an “extremist” to serve in the Senate. In November, Loeffler tweeted a clip of Warnock delivering a sermon in 2011 where he says that “nobody can serve God and the military; you can’t serve God and money; you cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.” 

On a theological level, there is really nothing too radical about this. As others have noted, Warnock was clearly building on Matthew 6:24, where Jesus says that “no one can serve two masters,” as “he will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despite the other.” Loeffler, however, decided to frame Warnock’s biblical reference as something reprehensible, calling his words “despicable, disgusting, and wrong.” Loeffler implied that Warnock was using this sermon to attack the military and veterans—even though he was merely paraphrasing words attributed directly to the central figure in Christianity. Rubio could not help but chime in too, tweeting that “these & even crazier things is what the radicals who control the Democratic party’s activist & small dollar donor base believe [sic].” Loeffler and Rubio seem to want us to believe that Warnock is some sort of radical heretic. In reality, in this “controversial” sermon, Warnock was channeling an anti-militarist outlook that has been an integral part of some strands of Christianity since the religion’s earliest days.

Attacks on Warnock’s brand of Christianity have also targeted his pro-choice beliefs. Doug Collins, a Republican congressman from Georgia who was a runner-up in the blanket primary for the seat, said at a recent campaign event for Loeffler that “there is no such thing as a pro-choice pastor.” Warnock’s claims to be both a Christian and a supporter of reproductive freedom, said Collins, “is a lie from the bed of Hell” that should be “[sent] back to Ebenezer Baptist Church”—an explicit attack on the historically Black church where the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as co-pastor for eight years.

This about-face by prominent Republican officials—attacking Reverend Warnock’s spiritual convictions just months after claiming that comments by Democrats about Amy Coney Barrett’s religious affiliations were beyond the pale—is not some oversight. I will not go as far as to assume that these Republicans do not truly feel that Barrett was a victim of religious discrimination. (In fact, I concede that Senator Dianne Feinstein’s comments during Barrett’s 2017 nomination hearings for a Court of Appeals seat that “the dogma lives loudly within” her, which resurfaced during the recent hearings, were a bit cringeworthy.) But regardless of whether or not their concerns about discrimination in Barrett’s case were authentic, this recent one-eighty on the issue is cynicism of the worst kind, an act of blatant hypocrisy carried out in order to win. These elected officials know exactly what they are doing—they want to frame Warnock as being a “fake” or “inauthentic” Christian. 

This behavior by Republicans is certainly hypocritical. The contradictions between what Republicans said about Barrett and what they are now saying about Warnock do not appear to matter to them; the ends—getting Barrett on the Supreme Court and getting Loeffler re-elected—justify the means. But pointing out that this is hypocritical only addresses one aspect of how these conservatives have carried themselves since September. One might recognize this apparent hypocrisy and then come to the conclusion that commenting on religion on either scenario is out of bounds. That is not the proper conclusion to draw. Beyond being hypocrites, the GOP has it completely backwards. Though discriminating against anyone on the basis of religion is always unacceptable, it is especially important to probe the factors that shape individuals’ value systems when appointing those individuals to serve in the judicial branch for reasons that are not as relevant when deciding whether someone should be elected to serve in a legislature. 

Ending a critical commentary on the Republican approach to the intersection of religion and politics by dwelling on the undeniable hypocrisy leaves much to be desired. After all, pointing out hypocrisy did nothing to prevent Republicans in the Senate from confirming Barrett during a presidential election year, just four years after refusing to hold hearings for Obama nominee Merrick Garland because it was a presidential election year. Republican politicians, and those who support them, might already recognize the contradictions in their attitudes but determine that the stakes are too high to care about them. Their behavior in this election, even if it violates the principles that they espoused just months ago, could have positive effects on their efforts to hold their voting coalition together. For one, these conservatives might believe that their attacks on Warnock’s more progressive policy positions, like reproductive health, will help the Republican Party preserve its perceived monopoly on Christianity in American politics, which some now believe is on the brink of collapse following the last presidential election. For another, these attacks might help them advance their efforts to define anything contrary to ultra-conservative Christianity, even another form of Christianity, as “un-American.” This could explain why Republicans have dwelled so much on Warnock’s (theologically unremarkable) comments on serving two masters. Beyond this, using dog whistles to describe the Black liturgical tradition which Warnock represents, a tactic that is not by any means new, might help stir up anti-Black racist sentiment—sentiment that may drive enough Warnock opponents to the polls needed to keep the seat red.

Calling this behavior hypocrisy and leaving it at that might elicit little more than a “So what?” from the accused hypocrites. Politics is not about keeping a level playing field, they might say; it is about winning power, even if that means embracing cynicism in the most obvious way. What matters to Republican officials and Republican voters is that the GOP controls the Supreme Court and the Senate, not how they came to do those things. In order to challenge the GOP approach to these issues in any meaningful way, those who oppose these attacks on Warnock must go further than arguing that Republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouths. They must make a clear, convincing argument that the entire way in which Republicans like Loeffler envision relationships between religion and the various branches of government is upside down. Breaking through the “So what?” stalemate will require arguing that the conservative approach to both the Barrett case and the Warnock case have been wrongheaded. The problem is not that they refused to give Warnock the same treatment that they provided Barrett. Alternately, the problem is that they have taken too critical an approach when dealing with Warnock and were not critical enough when dealing with Barrett. 

Though self-described originalists might disagree, judging is a practice with a significant subjective dimension to it, as judges inevitably draw at least somewhat on some of their personal convictions when determining how the law is to be interpreted and applied. One’s decisions while serving on a federal court—especially the Supreme Court—can have huge ramifications on both law and policy. Knowing where nominees draw their values from can allow those responsible for confirming or rejecting said nominees to predict how they may rule on particular types of cases. 

Religious beliefs are not irrelevant in the decisions that a legislator makes; they might, for example, shape how one votes on certain issues, or compel them to craft certain kinds of legislation. But value systems are particularly important in the sphere of the judiciary. On one level, this is because courts have increasingly gotten the final say on matters of policy, thanks to the power of judicial review. The decisions shaped by a judge’s or justice’s value systems have a much greater impact, in many cases, than any actions carried out by an individual legislator. 

Furthermore, the judiciary is expected to be somewhat more isolated from relentless ideological warfare than the legislative branch. Leaning too hard into a firm ideology, be it political or religious or something else entirely, is something of a red flag in this branch of government. Knowing the extent to which one’s personal beliefs inform their decision-making process is essential when gauging their fitness to serve on the bench. Given that Barrett told graduates of Notre Dame Law School in a 2006 commencement speech that they should view their legal careers “as but a means to an end… and that end is building the Kingdom of God,” concerns that Barrett might struggle to draw a line between her personal beliefs and her professional duties seem to have been warranted.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the act of lawmaking, commitment to ideology is the norm. Legislators, or candidates for legislative office, speaking openly about how their spiritual beliefs inform their views on policy is a phenomenon that is broadly accepted—and perhaps even expected—in today’s political climate, and few would argue that such proclamations pose any sort of threat to the fabric of our government (so long as no attempts are made to challenge the overall secular nature of our political institutions). 

None of this is to say that any critical discussion about what Warnock has said in his sermons should be verboten. Nor is any of this to say that arguing that Barrett is unfit to sit on the bench because she is a conservative Catholic is acceptable. But, of Barrett and Warnock, one person’s religious beliefs deserve to be subject to a greater degree of scrutiny than the other, even just on the basis of the position for which that individual was vying—and though some Republicans might agree with that statement, it seems as though they have it entirely backwards.

These issues are not ones that will disappear after the Warnock/Loeffler race wraps up. Democratic candidates and elected officials are speaking candidly about the influence of their religious beliefs on their political outlooks much more frequently than they were even a matter of years ago. Dynamics like these will almost certainly be present in future races. Moreover, it is within the realm of possibility that President-elect Biden will nominate someone to the Supreme Court during his tenure, and, given recent trends, any nominee’s value systems will almost definitely be subject to intense scrutiny. Matters located at the junction of religion and politics can be highly sensitive, but refusing to confront these issues out of a desire to avoid feelings of discomfort would be disastrous. Speaking openly about the motivations behind the GOP approach to the topic at hand, recognizing the limitations of merely identifying hypocrisy surrounding the topic, and formulating a consistent approach to the topic that address distinctions between the legislative and judicial branches would clear a path for much more fruitful discussion and debate about the role that religious convictions might play in government. We can only hope that Republicans would be willing to step out of the comfort zone provided to them by the status quo and work through these matters in good faith.

Jake Tibbetts is a staff writer at CPR and a senior in Columbia College studying sociology and political science. Much of his coursework has been related to contemporary political and sociological theory, the sociology of race in the U.S., and U.S. elections. Born and bred in Massachusetts, he enjoys hiking and biking when he’s not starting political arguments.