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WI Reporting Intern and WI Managing Editor
With Black History Month in full swing, the Washington National Cathedral in Northwest, D.C. honored historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and welcomed the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s Democratic U.S. senator, as a guest preacher on Feb. 16.
With North Carolina Central University performing uplifting songs throughout the service, and a message from Warnock, a graduate of Morehouse College in Georgia, the cathedral not only highlighted HBCUs, but emphasized the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from a faith perspective.
“Here we are on this grand Sunday morning— red, yellow, Black, and brown and white— speaking with one voice in this moral moment saying, ‘God chose no partiality,’” Warnock declared during HBCU Welcome Sunday. “The God of the heavens and the earth is a God of diversity and equity.”
In his sermon, Warnock criticized President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders.
“Among these executive orders has been a wholesale, unabashed assault on anything and everything that looks like diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Georgia, where the celebrated activist the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also served as pastor. “For those who have made diversity, equity, and inclusion toxic political terms, I want to ask, if you don’t want diversity, what’s the opposite of diversity? If you don’t want inclusion, what do you want the world to look like?”
Though Warnock said he wasn’t married to the term DEI, as he “just wants justice,” he noted that “DEI” in Latin means God. Further, considering Trump’s actions, the senator and faith leader explained God’s executive orders to uplift DEI.
“In God’s vision for the world there is diversity,” Warnock declared. “In God’s vision for the world there is equity.”
Why HBCU Sunday?
The Washington National Cathedral was packed for HBCU Welcome Sunday, filled with a mixture of cathedral parishioners, visiting HBCU students and alumni, and members of the Divine Nine—historically Black fraternities and sororities— to acknowledge African Americans’ resilience despite centuries of slavery and oppression.
“So why do we need Black History Month? Why these HBCUs— these historically Black colleges and universities— because they didn’t let us into other spaces. Somehow we translated our paint into power, our marginalization into music,” Warnock said during his sermon.
Howard University alumnus, the Rev. Canon Leonard Hamlin, who serves as canon missioner and minister of equity and Inclusion at the cathedral, created HBCU Sunday as a way to extend the church’s outreach to diverse communities and to welcome cross-congregational worship.
“There’s a wonderful witness who said, ‘while we all didn’t come over here on the same ship, we’re in the same boat now.’” said Hamlin. “I think that circumstances are helping many to see how much we need each other. I think of certain individuals who claim faith, but now more than ever, we recognize that we’re all going to rise and fall with each other.”
Evoking the words of King, who delivered his last Sunday sermon in the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, Hamlin said he hopes to fulfill the civil rights leader’s vision of the Beloved Community.
“I hope when individuals leave the cathedral, they, first of all, feel a spirit of what heaven may look like. The tapestry, that we’re all together, we’re all going to be there, and on one accord,” he said. “We’re working on it even right now. I hope when individuals leave, they are more encouraged to do the work that needs to be done now, that we’re building and we’re building community.”
Many attendees, both in-person and virtually, were empowered by the service and Warnock’s message, including Janet Hailes, a Howard University alumna and D.C. resident.
“We are one and when we work together, amazing things can be done, that’s what matters, is that we are a diverse community. We all come from different backgrounds, social, economic, all of that,” said Hailes. “We all can contribute to the betterment of this world and not let things that are being said tera us down and tear us apart and continue to divide us.”
Source: Published without changes from Washington Informer Newspaper
