Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich lambasted "radical" Georgia Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock in a television interview Tuesday.
Warnock, a Democrat running in the Jan. 5 Senate runoff election, is the "most radical major party candidate for the Senate, I think ever in American history," according to Gingrich on Fox News.
"He's said you can’t be in the military and serve God," Gingrich said. "He’s described the police as thugs and gang members and says they're an active danger to children. And that's without getting into his theology and the people he admires who believe deeply in an anti-white theology.
"I think the more people that realize that Warnock is this radical the more trouble he’s in."
A Warnock 2011 sermon entitled "When Truth Meets Power," in which he said a person cannot serve "God and the military,” resurfaced late last month.
"America, nobody can serve God and the military," Warnock said. "You can’t serve God and money. You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. America, choose ye this day who you will serve. Choose ye this day."
Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., opposing Warnock in the runoff, also has criticized the reverend.
"[Warnock] — this is despicable, disgusting, and wrong,” Loeffler wrote. “You owe our active military & veterans — who sacrifice so much for our country — an immediate apology."
Warnock has defended his reference to "God and the military," by saying, "This sermon is based on a biblical verse that reads 'No man can serve two masters . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon,’ a biblical term for wealth."
Since 2005, Warnock has preached from Ebenezer Baptist Church — the same parish from which Martin Luther King Jr. gave sermons.
As someone critical of the military, Warnock condemned the war in Iraq and attended a 2009 protest in front of the White House where civil rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu also protested military violence in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Darfur and Gaza.
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