Harare based Flamboyant preacher Edd Branson has congratulated American Baptist pastor and politician Sen. Raphael Warnock who defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden’s current term and capping an underwhelming midterm cycle for the GOP in the last major vote of the year.
Edd Branson took to Twitter to congratulate fellow preacher saying, “Congratulations @ReverendWarnock A win for one preacher is a win for all preachers.”
This comes at a time when preachers and men of God are getting more involved in politics and business leadership across the globe.
Assemblies of God preacher Reverend Lazarus Chakwera won elections in Malawi to become the nation’s President.
Raphael Warnock is a preacher at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Currently congress has 7 ordained preachers who won elections to serve in congress.
In last month’s election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. The senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday’s runoff, with Walker, a football legend at the University of Georgia and in the NFL, unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions despite supporting a national ban on the procedure.
Congratulations @ReverendWarnock
A win for one preacher is a win for all preachers #GodDid #JesusGeneration #GeorgiaRunoff #Democracywins #DemocratsDeliver #EddBranson pic.twitter.com/DuFMvSwaO6
— Edd Branson (@EddBranson01) December 7, 2022
The first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, was a Lutheran minister. Muhlenberg, who served in Congress from 1789-1797, was one of at least nine ministers or pastors to serve in the Continental Congress. The others were Benjamin Contee of Maryland, Abiel Foster of New Hampshire, James Manning of Rhode Island, Joseph Montgomery of Pennsylvania, Jesse Root of Connecticut, Paine Wingate of New Hampshire, John Witherspoon of New Jersey and John Joachim Zubly of Georgia. Contee, Foster, Muhlenberg and Wingate went on to serve in the U.S. Congress.
The first African American to serve in Congress was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In 1870, less than five years after the end of the Civil War, the Rev. Hiram Rhodes Revels was elected by the Mississippi Legislature to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate as a Republican. Democrats in Congress tried to block Revels from taking office, arguing, among other things, that Revels had not been a U.S. citizen until the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868. Revels’ own party rallied around him, however, and he was finally sworn in on Feb. 25, 1870. He served until his term expired in 1871
