Raphael Warnock says the US is a freedom train. People need to get on it.

(RNS) — When he was 12 years old, the Rev. Raphael Warnock said, he was frisked and patted down at a grocery store between Sunday services, accused of shoplifting alongside his friends. After nothing was found in his pockets, he and his friends were dismissed without an apology. “That was one of my earliest encounters with what it means to be perceived as the other,” Warnock said.

Decades later, that child, who grew up in a public housing project, is a sitting U.S. senator and senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the pulpit long associated with Martin Luther King Jr. One of a few ordained pastors serving in Congress, the Georgia Democrat frequently cites his faith as a moral framework for his legislative work. Warnock, who holds a doctorate in systematic theology, has been outspoken about what he considers misinterpretations of Scripture to justify immoral politics and has criticized lawmakers, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, over his use of Matthew 25 .

Given his roles as both preacher and policymaker, Warnock was a natural subject for the RNS video series created to mark America’s 250th: “What does it mean to belong in America?” In the fifth and final episode,…