Keeping the Faith
"This is the day that the Lord has made. We have come to rejoice and be glad in it,” proclaims the Reverend Raphael Warnock during his October 4 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. It’s a normal Sunday, with Warnock’s usual opening line, but it’s not really normal.
Call it the new normal. The sermon is prerecorded; it plays on the church’s website. Any affirmations of “amen” and “yes, Lord” only emerge within individual living rooms, the underpinning of collective voices replaced by silence.
This particular Sunday, the pastor is also celebrating 15 years of preaching at Ebenezer, the historic Black church in Atlanta that was once Martin Luther King Jr.’s congregation. Where ordinarily there would be a joyous celebration, there is instead a six-minute video montage of the past decade and a half.
In one scene, the reverend declares with conviction, “Guns are not allowed in the state Capitol. But they want them in our churches and in our schools. Have you lost your mind?” Minutes later, a photo of Emmett Till fills the frame, followed by one of Trayvon Martin; captioned “Hoodie Sunday,” it fades to footage of the congregation, pastor included, their faces framed by soft cotton hoods. “We’ve been here before,” Warnock cries, “profiled, hunted down,
