Senate chaplain tells C-SPAN he preaches against ‘sin of cynicism’

As the upper chamber’s spiritual guide, the Senate chaplain opens
each session with a prayer for the health and well-being of all 100
members of his congregation.

But behind the scenes, the 62nd Senate chaplain, Barry C. Black, strikes a more personal tone, giving his political opinion to senators as he attempts to keep them from the “sin of cynicism.”

{mosads}“Under the radar, behind closed doors, I can tell them exactly what I feel about any issue that is being debated in the chamber,” said Black in an interview with C-SPAN set to air on Oct. 25. “And then they can do with that issue whatever they desire to do.” 

[More information on the C-SPAN interview can be accessed here.]

Six years ago, Black became the first Seventh-day Adventist and African-American to serve as Senate chaplain. He hosts five Bible study sessions each week with lawmakers, their spouses and their chiefs of staff, along with weekly prayer breakfasts and the occasional marriage counseling with senators.

While he has political opinions, he said he doesn’t care how a senator votes. He just wants to understand the reasons behind their decisions.

“I don’t care which way he or she votes, even though I have a very definite opinion about an issue,” he said. “But I want to know, Why did you vote that way, senator?

“And as long as there are ethical reasons and evidence for that vote, I’m fine with that, because most of the issues that are debated in the chamber are sufficiently nuanced that, you know, it can often end up being, ‘You say po-TAYT-o and I say po-TAHT-o.’ ”

Black counts 62 Protestants, 25 Catholics and 13 Jewish members of the upper chamber, and on any given week he spends quality time with as many as 35 of them.

He’s come to see them as “spiritual giants,” partly because the Senate has forced them to experience, and hopefully overcome, failure.

Not succeeding in the Senate is sometimes a good thing, he said, because it compels the lawmakers to ask God for help.

“Here is a senator who is accustomed to getting it done, and then all of a sudden because of the filibuster and because of the nature of the deliberative process in the Senate, sometimes you can’t even get a bill to be voted on, an up-or-down vote,” Black said. “That can become very, very frustrating.”

Being a senator can bring a person to prayer, he said: “You’ll do a lot more praying, a lot more meditating because of the challenge of getting through the sometimes gridlock that you encounter in the legislative process.”

He warns his Senate congregation to avoid becoming too cynical.

“There are times when the legislative process is laborious and predictable, and I think particularly when issues are debated and it appears that the parties go into polarized lockstep where there’s almost an attitude [of], ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts,’ that can many times engender a spirit of cynicism,” Black said.

He tells the story of a senator — whom he refrained from naming — complaining to him that a floor debate was “just hot air.”

“Well, that’s kind of a cynical way of looking at it,” Black recalls telling the senator. “And then he predicted what the vote would be two days later and he hit it right on the number … And I was astonished [and] I said, ‘The debates haven’t finished yet — how can you know what the numbers are?’ He did. I think many times that kind of process can engender a sense of cynicism.”

{mosads}Black grew up in Baltimore with prostitutes and drug pushers on his doorstep, which he recounts in his book, From the Hood to the Hill: A Story of Overcoming. He said he never dreamed he’d be chaplain of the Senate, though he has always felt that the ministry was his life’s calling.

“As far back as I can remember, that is all that I wanted to do,” he said. “There has not been another rival in my vocational affection.”

Black lives a controlled and pious life. He is a vegetarian, refrains from alcohol and, barring a late-night driving trip on the highway, doesn’t touch caffeine. He estimates that he’s read or listened to the Bible as many as 25 times.

Each day before anything else, Black said, he rises out of bed, kneels by his bedside and prays. Then on his drive to Capitol Hill from his home in Northern Virginia he’ll listen to the Bible on CD until he hears a verse that compels him “to talk to God about it.” The morning drive, he said, invigorates him to launch into the day.

“By the time I get to the Capitol, I am raring to go. I am juiced,” he said. “Before I talk to what some have called the most exclusive club in the world, I talk to their creator, and that gets me going.”