U.S. President Joe Biden visited Atlanta on Jan. 15 and spoke to a packed house at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King served as a pastor from 1960 to 1968. Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is the senior pastor at Ebenezer, led the 9 a.m. service.
Warnock introduced other guests in attendance, including Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, former Atlanta Mayor and United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is the current senior adviser to Biden, and King’s oldest sister, Christine King Farris.
After Warnock’s sermon, the Secret Service cleared the church for re-entry. Biden then delivered his sermon at 11 a.m., focusing on how King’s unwavering faith in God gave him the strength to fight for justice during the civil rights movement.
Biden noted that he was the first sittingpresident to give a sermon during a Sunday church service at Ebenezer, saying that he felt “humbled” at the opportunity. Ebenezer was established 137 years ago, and the president earned a laugh from the audience when joking that he looks the same age as the church.
“I’ve spoken before parliaments, kings, queens, leaders of the world,” Biden said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, but this is intimidating.”
Biden shifted focus toward King’s life and impact, describing King as a “nonviolent warrior for justice” who “followed the word and the way of His Lord and His Savior.” He also paid tribute to King’s late wife Coretta Scott King, remarking that “this is her day as well” for her commitment to her husband’s legacy.
Biden then discussed how King’s legacy can be applied to the United States today.
“We’re at what we call ‘an inflection point,’ one of those points in world history where what happens in the last few years and what will happen in the next six or eight years, they’re going to determine what the world looks like the next 30 to 40 years,” Biden said. “The world is changing. There is much at stake. … This is the time of choosing.”
While reflecting on King’s values, Biden explained that people must practice these ideas to build a better society, earning a standing ovation from the crowd.
“Are we a people who will choose democracy over autocracy?” Biden said. “We have to choose a community over chaos. Are we the people who are going to choose love over hate? These are the vital questions of our time and the reason why I’m here as your president. I believe Dr. King’s life and legacy show us the way we should pay attention.”
Biden asserted that democracy is at stake both in the United States and around the world.
“Progress is never easy, but redeeming the soul of the country is absolutely essential,” Biden said. “I doubt whether any of us would have thought, even in Dr. King’s time, that the — literally, the institutional structures of this country — might collapse, like we’re seeing in Brazil, we’re seeing in other parts of the world.”
King’s dream of ending segregation was spiritual, Biden explained. He noted that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King led, aimed to “redeem the soul of America.” This soul, Biden said, “is embodied in the sacred proposition that we’re all created equal in the image of God,” which is “enshrined” in the Declaration of Independence and King’s 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream.”
“Dr. Martin Luther King was born into a nation where segregation was a tragic fact of life,” Biden said. “He had every reason to believe, as others of the generation did, that history had already been written, that the division would be America’s destiny, but he rejected that outcome.”
Biden continued discussing “I Have a Dream,” remarking that King wished for all people in the United States to be treated with dignity and respect.
As the crowd stood up in applause, Biden encouraged U.S. residents to continue to “make that dream a reality, because it’s not there yet.”
The sermon took a more personal turn as Biden explained that King was one of his only political heroes, noting that he chose to commemorate King in the Oval Office.
“As I sit at my desk and look at the fireplace, just to the left is the bust of Dr. King,” Biden said. “It’s there in that spot on purpose because he was my inspiration as a kid. He does know where we should go.”
King also motivated Biden’s decision to run for office.
“I ran for three reasons,” Biden said. “I wanted to restore the soul of America. I wanted to rebuild this country from the bottom up and the middle out and I wanted to unite it.”
Biden closed with an optimistic sentiment for the crowd as the choir began to perform the popular gospel song and civil rights movement anthem “We Shall Overcome.”
“I often think of the question that Dr. King asked us all those years ago,” Biden said. “He said, ‘Where do we go from here?’ … My message to the nation on this day is we go forward, we go together, when we choose democracy over autocracy, a beloved community over chaos, when we choose believers and the dreams, to be doers, to be unafraid, always keeping the faith.”
