The Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. and his father before him served as pastors, is certainly no stranger to celebrating prominent funerals, from King himself to Rayshard Brooks last month.
Thus, the Atlanta institution known as the “Church of the Liberty of America” was a natural home for the funeral of John Lewis, the former Georgia congressman and civil rights defender who died on July 17 at 80 years.
Lewis’s funeral will take place on Thursday as Ebenezer, like religious gathering places across the country, is making special arrangements to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the church limits attendance at the private ceremony to 240 (including Secret Service details for featured guests) to account for social distancing measures, but the funeral will be broadcast live to the general public.
The service is also taking place as the United States is having a much-needed conversation about racial justice, and as the church and nation commemorate the life of a much admired statesman whose work was an embodiment of Ebenezer’s mission.
The Rev. John Vaughn, who took over as executive pastor of the church in February, said Ebenezer is known for hosting “state funerals” for civil rights leaders such as organizer Hosea Williams and Rita Jackson Samuels, an advocate. for the rights of women who worked in the Civil Rights movement, and for celebrating the lives of those who have made a difference in the fight for civil rights. It has also been a place for the local community to gather in the wake of tragedies like the mass shootings at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 in Orlando, Florida, and at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.
The most notable dismissal, of course, was that of King after his 1968 murder. The most recent was in June for Brooks, a black man killed by police in the parking lot of a Wendy’s in Atlanta. Brooks only became famous in death, but Vaughn said his murder helped renew a crucial conversation about the change that must happen in the United States.
Ebenezer’s senior pastor, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, delivered the eulogy for Brooks, calling him “the latest high-profile victim in the fight for justice,” and will do so for Lewis on Thursday.
“When you evaluate his courage, it is anger rooted in his faith,” Warnock said of Lewis in a phone interview this week. “He has always been a child of the church. He struggled with a call to ministry early in life. But instead of preaching sermons, he became one. That is his legacy. And it is linked to a church with a historical history of faith and creation of freedom. ”
During Brooks’s eulogy, Warnock spoke about Ebenezer’s work to end the mass incarceration of American blacks, and recalled an annual summit involving the church to help attendees remove records of serious crime and misdemeanor arrest. that did not result in a conviction.
Warnock, 51, tries to bring that job to Washington by being one of the Democrats running for the United States Senate seat that Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who was appointed to the post last year, is holding.
Warnock has been outspoken about voter suppression and an advocate for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and said he views his political career as part of his “spiritual administration.”
“I am concerned about the future of our country and the soul of our democracy,” he said.
Ebenezer Baptist Church was founded in 1886 by a former slave, the Rev. John A. Parker, with 13 members on Airline Street. King’s maternal grandfather, the Rev. Alfred Daniel Williams, took over Ebenezer after Parker’s death, increasing membership and eventually moving the church to its current site on historic Auburn Avenue. The Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. became a pastor in 1930 and joined his son as a co-pastor in 1960.
Warnock became the fifth senior pastor in Ebenezer’s 134-year history in 2005, joining a line of church leaders involved in civil rights matters, with elder King fighting for voting rights before his son took office. cause.
According to the church’s “moral legacy”, Warnock was arrested in 2014 during a protest outside the governor’s office at the state Capitol in Atlanta after the then-governor. Nathan Deal, a Republican, decided not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Ebenezer, Warnock said, has always been “a church focused on the problems of the public square and on the implications of faith around the problems of human dignity and justice.”
When Warnock takes the pulpit to pay tribute to Lewis on Thursday, he will do so as pastor of one of the most influential churches in the United States, but also as a politician running for the first time.
“When I consider the Ebenezer story, and the legacy of someone like John Lewis, when this opportunity presents itself, who am I to say ‘No?'” Warnock said of his Senate nomination. “I have to do my best to continue the work that John Lewis and so many others let us do.”
