LAS VEGAS — On stage at a gathering of faith leaders here this week, Sen. Raphael Warnock told the crowd how he sees the midterms: “This is not just a political happening, but a spiritual undertaking.”
The senator and pastor campaigned across the city on Wednesday to boost his party in this year’s election, making an argument hinged on faith that might shape his party for the next one.
Nevada has rapidly become a gathering spot for the growing congregation of Democrats considering a presidential run. In just the last few days, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) traveled to what will be one of Democrats’ first nominating states in 2028, making a point of campaigning for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate as well as linking up with local unions.
Warnock left his own options open in an interview with The Washington Sun on Wednesday. Asked how his role as a pastor is informing any decisions about 2028, he said the country is at “an inflection point.”
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“But this is so much larger than the cycle,” he said. “This is really about the character of the country, and it’s a big and important conversation. And I look forward to participating in that conversation.”
Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, wants to be a “countervailing witness of what faith looks like in public” and said his party needs to do more to center faith.
“I think Democrats make a huge mistake when we cede all this ground, when we cede all the terrain around faith and values to Republicans,” Warnock said. “Why would we do that? Especially given the fact that on matters of morality, in my view, they’ve got so much of it wrong.”
At the same time, his party is struggling with many faith groups. The country also faces questions of purpose as artificial intelligence poses an uncertain future and loneliness continues to rise.
“We are drowning in a sea of loneliness and hyperconnectivity. That’s the irony of the moment,” Warnock told The Sun. While the decline of mainline Christianity preceded AI, a yearning for connection is not declining, he said.
“That creates a real opportunity for faith leaders and principled leaders in the political space to bring people together to address huge problems that confront us to deal with both the perils and the promises of AI, because it’s not going anywhere,” he said.
Other politicians are also leaning into their faith this election year, like James Talarico, a seminary student running for Senate in Texas, and Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor running for Senate in Kansas. Both states, once long-shots for Democrats, are now in play.
Warnock also emphasized his faith in a crowded get-out-the-vote rally in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District — where Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford is running for reelection — by launching into a speech fusing religion and politics.
It came alongside a vivid denunciation of the current Republican Party. He shared a memory from his childhood in which his grandmother chopped the head off a snake in the garden. He said he was frightened because the snake started moving sporadically.
“I didn’t understand that his animated movements, his exaggerated movements, were happening not because he was living, but because he was dying,” Warnock told the crowd.
“He preachin’,” Horsford interjected.
“As you witness them doing crazy, desperate things, as you witness them trying to pass the SAVE Act, as you witness the cruelty and brutality of ICE, as you witness what Donald Trump is trying to do, as you witness folks close rank and try to buy this election, it is because they know that that old order, that old racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic order, is on its way out,” Warnock said to applause.
Warnock has regularly derided Republicans who invoke faith as they make policy decisions that he considers out of line with the Scriptures. Calling that out is a “service to the country,” he told The Sun.
Last week, Warnock criticized Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for using the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah — “Here I am Lord, send me” — to commend and recruit military officers. He has also criticized Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for praying before passing the reconciliation bill last summer.
“They pray before they kick 15 million people off of their health care. They pray before they kick children off SNAP. They pray before they double people’s health care premiums,” Warnock said at the faith leaders event.
Democrats are lagging Republicans in support from some of the biggest religious groups in the U.S. A majority of Protestants and Catholics align with the Republican Party, Pew Research has found, while Democrats overperform with people who claim no religion.
“A lot of the people I know that claim to be Christian seem to be getting less of Christianity and more of — I don’t know what it is — it’s politics, really,” said retired artist Linda Overbey at the rally in Horsford’s office. She came to the rally because she is a Warnock fan. “He represents the good to me.”
Warnock is aware of how some voters have come to view religion as a way to exert power, and is careful not to prescribe anything approaching a theocracy.
“I love this grand experiment of a multifaceted, multiracial, multi-religious republic, where people of various faith traditions and those who claim no faith tradition at all are in covenant with one another,” he said in an interview at the Service Employees International Union Nevada Local 1107 headquarters after a roundtable with union members.
He commended Nevada for representing that grand experiment as he looked around the get-out-the-vote rally in the 4th District.
“This looks like the kingdom of God,” he said. “This is God’s dream for the world.”
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