President Joe Biden made a historical pilgrimage Sunday to “America's freedom church” to mark Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, saying democracy was at a perilous moment and that the civil rights leader's life and legacy "show us the way and we should pay attention.”
APTOPIX Biden People attend a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden greats Christine King Farris, Martin Luther King Jr.'s sister, in the pink hat seated at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden Georgia President Joe Biden, left, and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., right, leave Ebenezer Baptist Church after a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz)
AP Photo/Alex Slitz
Biden President Joe Biden claps at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden attends a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden attends a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., is at right. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden People arrive to attend a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden attends a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden People attend a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., arrive to attend a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden People arrive to attend a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden attends a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden attends a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden is seated next to Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden attends a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden listens as Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden FILE - A man walks past Ebenezer Baptist Church, early Monday, Jan. 16, 2017, in Atlanta. President Joe Biden is set to mark what would have been the 94th birthday of the late Martin Luther King with a Sunday sermon at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church that aims to celebrate the civil rights leader's legacy while reviving his administration's call for sweeping voting rights reform. (AP Photo/Branden Camp, File)
AP Photo/Branden Camp, File
Biden FILE - The Historic Ebenezer First Baptist Church is reflected in a photo of Martin Luther King Jr., Monday, Jan. 18, 2021, in Atlanta. President Joe Biden is set to mark what would have been the 94th birthday of the late Martin Luther King with a Sunday sermon at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church that aims to celebrate the civil rights leader's legacy while reviving his administration's call for sweeping voting rights reform. (AP Photo/Branden Camp, File)
AP Photo/Branden Camp, File
Biden FILE - President Joe Biden and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., enter Ebenezer Baptist Church, on Jan. 11, 2022, in Atlanta. Biden is set to mark what would have been the 94th birthday of the late Martin Luther King with a Sunday sermon at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church that aims to celebrate the civil rights leader's legacy while reviving his administration's call for sweeping voting rights reform. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File
Biden FILE - People carry signs as they march following the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Jan. 16, 2017, in Atlanta. President Joe Biden is set to mark what would have been the 94th birthday of the late Martin Luther King with a Sunday sermon at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church that aims to celebrate the civil rights leader's legacy while reviving his administration's call for sweeping voting rights reform. (AP Photo/Branden Camp, File)
AP Photo/Branden Camp, File
Biden FILE - The Rev. Raphael Warnock at Ebenezer Baptist Church where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached in Atlanta, Jan. 12, 2018. President Joe Biden is set to mark what would have been the 94th birthday of the late Martin Luther King with a Sunday sermon at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church that aims to celebrate the civil rights leader's legacy while reviving his administration's call for sweeping voting rights reform. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
AP Photo/David Goldman, File
APTOPIX Biden President Joe Biden speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, speaks at the church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, listens at left. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden shakes hands with Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at the church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden talks with Andre Dickens, Mayor of Atlanta, center, and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., as he arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, en route to Ebenezer Baptist Church for service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden is greeted by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., as he arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, en route to Ebenezer Baptist Church for service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden, center, holds hands with Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, second from left, and Keisha Lance Bottoms, senior adviser to Biden for public engagement and former Atlanta Mayor, second from right, after Biden spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Biden President Joe Biden speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023, during a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden made a historical pilgrimage Sunday to “America’s freedom church” to mark Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, saying democracy was at a perilous moment and that the civil rights leader’s life and legacy “show us the way and we should pay attention.”
As the first sitting president to deliver a Sunday morning sermon at King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, Biden cited the telling question that King himself once asked of the nation.
“He said, ‘Where do we go from here?’” Biden said from the pulpit. ”Well, my message to this 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.”
In a divided country only two years removed from a violent insurrection, Biden told congregants, elected officials and dignitaries that “the battle for the soul of this nation is perennial. It’s a constant struggle … between hope and fear, kindness and cruelty, justice and injustice.”
He spoke out against those who “traffic in racism, extremism, insurrection” and said the struggle to safeguard democracy was playing out in courthouses and ballot boxes, protests and other ways. ”At our best, the American promise wins out. … But I don’t need to tell you that we’re not always at our best. We’re fallible. We fail and fall.’’
In introducing Biden, the church’s senior pastor, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock noted that the president was “a devout Catholic” for whom “this Baptist service might be a little bit rambunctious and animated. But I saw him over there clapping his hands.”
King, “the greatest American prophet of the 20th century,” as Warnock put it, served as co-pastor from 1960 until he was assassinated in 1968.
Warnock, like many battleground state Democrats who won reelection in 2022, kept his distance during the campaign from Biden as the president’s approval rating lagged and the inflation rate climbed.
But with the election behind him and a full six-year term ahead, Warnock fully embraced Biden at the service. Near the close, he asked Biden to come to the front of the church and asked Ebenezer’s congregants to pray for the president as he listed several of Biden’s legislative achievements.
“That, my friends, is God’s work,” said Warnock, adding that Biden “had a little something to do with it.”
As Biden begins to turn his attention toward an expected 2024 reelection effort, Georgia is going to get plenty of his attention.
In 2020, Biden managed to win Georgia as well as closely contested Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Black votes made up a disproportionate share of the Democratic electorate. Turning out Black voters in those states will be essential to Biden’s 2024 hopes.
Biden’s failure to win passage of a measure that would have bolstered voting right protections, a central campaign pledge, is one of his biggest disappointments of his first two years in office. The task is even steeper now that Republicans control the House.
In his remarks, the president said that for all the progress the United States has made, the country had now reached a critical point in its history. He said democracies can backslide, noting the collapse of the institutional structures of democracy in places such as Brazil.
“Progress is never easy, but it’s always possible and things do get better in our march to a more perfect union,” he said. “But at this inflection point, we know a lot of work that has to continue on economic justice civil rights, voting rights, protecting our democracy. And I’m remembering our job is to redeem the soul of America.”
This moment, he said, “is the time of choosing. … Are we a people who will choose democracy over autocracy? Couldn’t ask that question 15 years ago because everybody thought democracy was settled. … But it’s not.” Americans, he said, ” have to choose a community over chaos. … 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 and we should pay attention.”
King, who was born on Jan. 15, 1929, was killed at age 39. He helped drive passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Members of King’s family attended the service, including his 95-year-old sister, Christine King Farris.
“I’ve spoken before parliaments, kings, queens, leaders of the world … but this is intimidating,” Biden said in opening his sermon.
The president plans to be in Washington on Monday to speak at the National Action Network’s annual breakfast on the King holiday.
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Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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This story has been updated to reflect that Christine King Ferris is Martin Luther King Jr.’s sister