SUNDAY SERMON: President Biden makes history with appearance at MLK’s landmark church
President Joe Biden gave a speech at the Reverend Martin Luther King’s church in Atlanta on Sunday.
Invited by the current pastor, Sen. Raphael Warnock, Biden is the first sitting United States president to give a Sunday sermon in celebration of the birthday of the civil rights pioneer.
Reverend Warnock praised President Biden’s fight for equity.
“I am inspired by his lifelong commitment to service,” the Senator said.
Watch the video below.
“I’ve spoken before Parliament, kings, queens, leaders of the world — I’ve been doing this for a long time,” the President told the congregation after being introduced by Rev. Warnock. “But this is intimidating.”
“Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a nonviolent warrior for justice, who followed the word, and the way, of his lord and his savior,” Biden said. “On this day of remembrance, we gather at Dr. King’s cherished Ebenezer.” – NPR
Founded in 1886, Ebenezer Baptist Church was the pastoral home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who joined his father on the pulpit in 1960.
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. took over as pastor of Ebenezer in 1931.
The elder King retired in 1975 after 44 years of service at the historic church.
President Biden’s sermon turned political, driving home to Ebenezer’s parishioners the importance of protecting both voting rights and a fragile democracy.
Two days before attending Ebenezer Baptist Church, the White House released a proclamation praising Dr. King’s commitment to social justice and announced the administration is urging Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
“From the pulpit to the podium to the streets, Dr. King devoted his life to the quest for this Beloved Community in our Nation,” the White House wrote. “His activism and moral authority helped usher in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
“Dr. King preached that ‘darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.’ In his memory, we strive to challenge violence and bigotry with grace and goodness,” President Biden said.
Also in attendance at Sunday’s sermon was Sen. Warnock’s colleague and fellow Democrat, Sen. Jon Ossoff, civil rights legend Andrew Young, the current mayor of Atlanta Andre Dickens, and former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who currently works in the White House.
President Biden made history on Sunday with his commitment to righting economic, civil, and democratic wrongs done to the country’s Black community and uniting the nation on full display.
More than words, the President has turned them into action with an agenda that includes social justice needs, inequities in the quality of medical care, the constitutionally protected right to vote, and seeing the first Black woman seated on the Supreme Court.
Dr. King would be proud.
Watch the full sermon here.
Original reporting by Giulia Heyward at NPR.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
