the likes of Rev. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Samuel Dewitt Proctor and now the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts. Before coming to Ebenezer, Pastor Warnock served for 4 ½ years as the Senior Pastor of Baltimore’s Douglas Memorial Community Church.
Rev. Warnock graduated from Morehouse College cum laude in 1991, receiving the B.A. degree in psychology. He also holds a Master of Divinity degree, a Master of Philosophy degree, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Union Theological Seminary, New York City, where he graduated with honors and distinctions. His research interests and writing have included a distinguished Master’s Thesis and on-going research on the activist ministries of two Twentieth Century Martyrs: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and their challenges to the church and the world in their time and ours. His Ph.D. dissertation is entitled, “The Mission of the Black Church: A Discussion Among Black Theologians and Black Pastors.”
In 1989, Rev. Warnock authored Educating Teens For Positive Peer Intervention, which today still serves as Georgia’s official curriculum guide for teen peer programs aimed at reducing the State’s teenage pregnancy rate. Recognizing his exceptional work in the area of teenage pregnancy prevention and advocacy on behalf of youth, the Honorable Joseph Frank Harris, former Governor of Georgia, made him the youngest person ever to be appointed to the Southern Regional Task Force on Infant Mortality, a study commission comprised of governor appointees from seventeen southern states.
While Rev. Warnock’s work and activism have been local, his vision has always been global. As a student at Morehouse College, he organized and served as the keynote speaker at a Peace Vigil protesting George Bush’s initiation of a War against Iraq on January 15th, the birthday of a peacemaker. Over 2,000 students attended this event, which received national press coverage. During the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York City, he coordinated, under the auspices of Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC) and the Abyssinian Church, an alternative People’s Convention, in memory of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi sharecropper who told the nation in 1968 she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” In 1995, he was part of a 15-member delegation to Haiti, following the 1991 military coup and the United States’ return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He and other delegates later met with members of Congress, U.S. Embassy and State Department officials, lobbying for better U.S. policy toward this small budding democracy in our own hemisphere. His leadership and advocacy has been further demonstrated through his work with The National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. Rev. Warnock is a graduate of the Leadership Program sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Committee and a graduate of the Summer Leadership Institute of Harvard University. The November 1999 issue of Ebony Magazine listed him as one of Thirty Leaders Of The Future.
A 1993 recipient of Union Theological Seminary’s coveted William H. Hudnut Preaching Award, Rev. Warnock is sought after as a preacher and scholar. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and various other civic and social organizations. He has received the Benjamin Elijah Mays Fellowship For Ministry from the Fund for Theological Education, the Thomas and Jeanetta Kilgore Theological Scholarship Award, Associated Black Charity’s “Good Shepherd Award” and a host of other fellowships, honors and citations, noting his abiding commitment to Christian ministry, disciplined scholarship and diligent struggle on behalf of the oppressed.
