 [Free Beacon] Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock has declined to authorize the release of his divinity school graduate thesis, which is under wraps at the Union Theological Seminary
| ... a non-denominational Christian seminary affiliated with Columbia University. An example of the rigour of theological teaching is the organized confession of climate sins a year ago to a collection of potted plants. A more pointed criticism was that of German anti-Nazi activist Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was so appalled by the determined ignorance of the faculty and students there that he preferred to return to Germany to be martyred by the Nazis. |
library due to copyright restrictions.
Warnock wrote the thesis, titled Churchmen, Church Martyrs: The Activist Ecclesiologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1994 while he was a graduate student at the Union Theological Seminary. The paper is a precursor to Warnock's 2006 Ph.D. dissertation, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The dissertation is also housed at the seminary library and under copyright.
The graduate thesis, which discusses Christianity's responsibility to pursue social justice, could shed light on Warnock's ideological background. The Senate candidate, a preacher at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, has come under fire for his defense of socialism, criticism of Israel, and praise of an anti-American speech by Jeremiah Wright.
Warnock's association with the late theologian James Cone, whom the Senate candidate described as his mentor, has also drawn scrutiny because of Cone's controversial comments about race and religion. Cone, one of the founders of black liberation theology, advocated for the "destruction of everything white" and claimed that "American white theology is a theology of the Antichrist."
The Burke Library in New York, where the thesis is held, said it wasn't able to provide a full copy of Warnock's dissertation "because it is still in copyright." However, the library released a small portion of the paper to the Free Beacon.
Warnock holds the copyright, according to the library. The Warnock campaign did not respond to an inquiry from the Free Beacon about whether he would approve access to the thesis. 
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