By Lauren Irwin - 08/20/24

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is accusing former President Trump of “weaponizing” symbols of faith and increasing division in the country.

“As a pastor, as a person of faith, I take great offense with the way in which he is weaponizing the symbols of our great country and also the symbols of the faith, towards this kind of hate,” Warnock told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday.

Warnock, speaking the night before at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, said he believes people will “push past” this “awful chapter” of hate and division from Trump.

“I have to say that the Christian church is going to have to come to terms with the fact that there is no full accounting for this phenomenon of Trumpism without reference to the church, and we got to come to terms with that,” he said.

He referenced his and fellow Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s Senate wins in the previously red state.

Warnock also slammed the former president for endorsing a Bible, saying Trump should “try reading it” instead.

Earlier this year, the Trump campaign began selling “God Bless USA” Bibles, saying that religion and Christianity are “the biggest things missing from this country.”

Warnock pushed back on that idea and said he believes it’s important for the Democrats who are religious to be “full throated” in their beliefs and in resisting the idea of Christian nationalism.

“For me, democracy … is the political enactment of a spiritual idea, this notion that each of us has within us a spark of the divine, if we were created in what the theologians call the Imago Dei, the image of God, and if I have a spark of the divine, I ought to have a voice in the direction of the country and my destiny within it,” he said Tuesday.

“I ought to respect the humanity of all of God’s people, those of other faith traditions, those who claim no faith at all. That is this grand American experiment, and we get to write the next chapter,” he continued.