U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black was elected in 2003.
Posted on the official U.S. Senate website is: “Chaplain’s Office – Throughout the years, the United States Senate has honored the historic separation of Church and State, but not the separation of God and State. … The first Senate, meeting in New York City on APRIL 25, 1789, elected the Right Reverend Samuel Provost, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, as its first Chaplain. … During the past two hundred and seven years, all sessions of the Senate have been opened with prayer, strongly affirming the Senate’s faith in God as Sovereign Lord of our Nation.”
This was a continuation of the practice of the Continental Congress during the Revolution, as Ben Franklin remarked in 1787: “In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for Divine protection.”
On April 9, 1789, only nine days after the first Constitutional Congress convened with a quorum, the House of Representatives and the Senate approved having chaplains open every session with prayer, paying them a salary of $500 each.
On April 15, 1789, a Committee of Congress, composed of Richard Henry Lee, Oliver Ellsworth, Caleb Strong, William Maclay, and Richard Bassett recommended: “That two chaplains, of different denominations, be appointed … the Senate to appoint one, and … the House of Representatives … shall … appoint the other … Chaplains shall commence their services in the Houses that appoint them.”
On April 25, 1789, the Congressional Committee of Richard Henry Lee submitted the following resolution, passed in the Senate, and two days later passed in the House, giving instructions with regards the Inauguration of the George Washington as the first president of the United States: Resolved. That after the oath shall have been administered to the President, he, attended by the Vice President, and members of the Senate, and House of Representatives, proceed to St. Paul’s Chapel, to hear divine service, to be performed by the chaplain of Congress already appointed.”
The Annals of Congress give a record of the events on April 30, 1789, following President George Washington’s inauguration: “The President, the Vice-President, the Senate, and House of Representatives, &c., then proceeded to St. Paul’s Chapel, where divine service was performed by the Chaplains of Congress.”
With the Revolutionary War separating America from England, the Anglican Church of England in America began separating into the Episcopal Church in 1784.
Samuel Provoost was the first Episcopal bishop of New York and the third presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He was chaplain of the Continental Congress in 1785, and chosen as the first chaplain of the U.S. Senate in 1789.
Bishop Samuel Provoost conducted George Washington’s inaugural Sservice at New York’s St. Paul’s Chapel. Bishop Samuel Provoost preached the first Episcopal ordination sermon in St. George’s Chapel, New York City, July 15, 1787: “We are occupied in the … most important business that can possibly engage the human mind … that … in the Hands of God, we shall be made the happy instruments of turning many from Darkness to Light, and from the Power of Satan to the Knowledge and Love of the Truth. … Lay no other foundation than that which is already laid … upon the Doctrine of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. … Let us all unite our most strenuous endeavors, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ may run and be glorified, till the earth be filled with the Knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
From 1789-2018, the 62 Senate Chaplains have been Christian:
- Episcopalian 19
- Methodist 17
- Presbyterian 14
- Baptist 6
- Unitarian 2
- Congregational 1
- Lutheran 1
- Catholic 1
- Seventh-day Adventist 1
Occasionally members of other faiths have been invited to offer prayers.
The U.S. Senate Chaplain after World War II was Peter Marshall, who prayed: “Our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else. May our faith be not merely stamped upon our coins, but expressed in our lives.”
Peter Marshall’s son, Peter Marshall, Jr., together with David Manuel, wrote the best-selling book “The Light and the Glory,” which traced the Hand of Providence in the founding of America.
The Senate Chaplain and the House Chaplain together oversee the Capitol Prayer Room, located near the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. At its dedication in 1955, Speaker Sam Rayburn stated that the Capitol Prayer Room was for members: “who want to be alone with their God.”
On Feb. 7, 1984, President Reagan addressed the National Association of Secondary School Principals: “God … should never have been expelled from America’s schools. As we struggle to teach our children … we dare not forget that our civilization was built by men and women who placed their faith in a loving God. If Congress can begin each day with a moment of prayer … so then can our sons and daughters.”
In 1986, Chaplain of the U.S. Senate Richard Halverson stated: “When Billy Graham comes to the Capitol, suddenly, the Senate and Congress are unimportant. To me, it’s a miracle. Wherever Billy is, there is the gospel of Christ.”
The first chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives was Rev. William Linn, a Presbyterian minister from New York. Unanimously elected on May 1, 1789, Rev. Linn was appropriated a salary of $500 from the federal treasury.
House Chaplain William Linn stated May 1, 1789: “Let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God, and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg but my neck. If there be no God, there is no law, no future account; government then is the ordinance of man only, and we cannot be subject for conscience sake.”
In addition to opening every Congressional sessions with prayers, House Chaplains regularly held Christian services in the Capitol House Chambers every Sunday.
From 1789 to 2018, there have been 60 House Chaplains belonging to the denominations:
- Methodist 21
- Presbyterian 16
- Baptist 8
- Episcopal 4
- Lutheran 2
- Congregationalist 2
- Disciples of Christ 2
- Roman Catholic 2
- Unitarian 2
- Universalist 1
In 1860, Rabbi Morris Jacob Raphall was the first Jewish clergyman invited to open a House session with prayer.
House Chaplain Reverend Patrick J. Conroy, S.J., prayed May 4, 2017: “On this National Day of Prayer, please attend to the supplications of Your people. May the deliberations of these days issue forth in legislation that indeed promotes the general welfare, one of the purposes of government articulated in the preamble to our Constitution. And may all that is done within the people’s House this day be for Your greater honor and glory. Amen.”
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In the Supreme Court case of Town of Greece, NY, v. Galloway et al, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the decision, May 5, 2014: “Respondents maintain that prayer must be nonsectarian … and they fault the town for permitting guest chaplains to deliver prayers that ‘use overtly Christian terms’ or ‘invoke specifics of Christian theology.’ … An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer. … The Congress that drafted the First Amendment would have been accustomed to invocations containing explicitly religious themes of the sort respondents find objectionable. One of the Senate’s first chaplains, the Rev. William White, gave prayers in a series that included the Lord’s Prayer, the Collect for Ash Wednesday, prayers for peace and grace, a general thanksgiving, St. Chrysostom’s Prayer, and a prayer seeking ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c …'”
Justice Kennedy continued: “The decidedly Christian nature of these prayers must not be dismissed as the relic of a time when our Nation was less pluralistic than it is today. Congress continues to permit its appointed and visiting chaplains to express themselves in a religious idiom. … To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures … and the courts … to act as … censors of religious speech. … Government may not mandate a civic religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy.”
House Chaplain Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin was chosen March 23, 2000. He wrote: “To serve as Chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives is truly an honor and a privilege. To be both a minister of the Lord and an officer serving the United States government responds to a twofold call to serve others and offer prayer that unites Heaven and Earth. … The formal prayer before each legislative session of Congress … casts a light on the day that awakens faith and calls forth a nation to stand with its leaders and affirm: ‘In God We Trust.'”
In 2017, U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black gave his testimony, stating: “My testimony is simply this – my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand.”
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