Warnock, Raphael G. (Raphael Gamaliel), 1969-

Raphael Gamaliel Warnock (born July 23, 1969) is an American pastor and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Georgia since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he assumed office on January 20, 2021.

A native of Savannah, Georgia and a graduate of Sol C. Johnson High School there, Warnock attended Morehouse College, from which he graduated cum laude in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He then earned Master of Divinity, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary, a school affiliated with Columbia University. In the 1990s, Warnock served as the youth pastor and then assistant pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. In the early 2000s, Warnock was senior pastor at Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2005, Warnock became senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr.'s former congregation; he is the fifth and the youngest person to serve as Ebenezer's senior pastor since its founding. From June 2017 to January 2020, Warnock chaired the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan organization focused on voter registration.

In January 2020, Warnock decided to run in the 2020 special election for the United States Senate seat held by Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed after Johnny Isakson's resignation. Warnock placed first in the general election that November, falling short of the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Warnock defeated incumbent Kelly Loeffler in that runoff election on January 5, 2021. The same day, fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff won the runoff for Georgia's other Senate seat against Republican David Perdue.

Warnock and Ossoff are the first Democrats elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia since Zell Miller in 2000. Warnock is the first African American to represent Georgia in the Senate and the first African-American Democrat elected to a Senate seat by a former state of the Confederacy.