c. 2003 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ For an hour at lunchtime on Fridays, Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black transforms an appropriations committee room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building into a Bible study classroom.

“You ought to be in the Word on a regular basis,” Black told the 30 people gathered recently for a study on “overcoming failure” based on eight scriptural passages.

“Neglect of your personal devotional life can lead to failure.”

Black, a bald, 55-year-old civilian-suited man, strode assuredly up and down the aisle with the perfect posture of a former Navy chief of chaplains. As the 62nd chaplain of the U.S. Senate, he admits to having a “vision of spiritual transformation on Capitol Hill.”

But Black, the first African-American, Seventh-day Adventist and military chaplain to hold the job, is quick to let his students know that he is a sinner like them.

He refers to a verse in Proverbs 24 about the difference between righteous and wicked people who fail.

“We will fall down but we get back up again, praise God,” said Black.

Five months into his job, the everyday life of the Senate chaplain ranges from leading five Bible studies a week to running weekly prayer breakfasts to answering letters from viewers of C-SPAN commenting on his prayers that open each daily session of the Senate.

On any given week, he may preach four times _ at Seventh-day Adventist worship services on Saturdays and other congregations on Sunday _ give invocations and benedictions, and just be available in his office and the hallways of the Senate.

Black said he keeps a “stash” of prayers he will lead for the Senate, preparing them about 10 days before with the help of his devotional studies and his conversations on the Hill.

Though they last for less than two minutes, he hopes their effect endures.

Recent prayers, intoned in his deep voice, have asked God to “empower our senators to be faithful in their duties, walking with a spirit of unity” and sought divine instruction for “our senators to walk in your ways and to trust your promises which cannot fail.”

In the multifaith environment in which the former pastor works, he closes the prayers with phrases such as “in your powerful name” and “in your glorious name.”

“It’s an opportunity to frame the day,” he said in an interview. “It’s an opportunity to calibrate the thinking of senators and get them attuned to the spiritual before they start the frenetic pace of their deliberations and activities.”

He frames his own day by listening to the Bible on CD as he drives to and from his office.

“I was talking to a gentleman on the way over on the tram and he was talking about the traffic and I said I love bad traffic,” he told the Bible study class, referring to Washington’s notorious roadways as well as the Senate’s mini-subway system.

“It normally takes me 45 minutes to drive in, but if it takes an hour that’s 15 extra minutes of listening to the Word.”

He urged his students to find ways to shoehorn the Bible into their busy lives.

“The more of the Word you get into your heart, the more fulfilled your life will be,” he said. “So you need to come up with creative ways of getting more than `Seinfeld’ reruns and `Frasier’ reruns into your heart.”

One of his many recent speaking engagements was before the banquet of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, when top executives of companies like Zondervan and Thomas Nelson met in Washington.

Black stood and spoke for 45 minutes with no notes and picked up his Bible just once to read a passage. The rest _ as in the Bible study _ came from memory.

He shared with the publishers that he is pleased with the biblical literacy of people who attend “potpourri” Bible studies, saying they know their Bibles better than those in the studies he leads for senators, their spouses and their chiefs of staff.

“The gate guards and the chefs and the doorkeepers _ you can start the verse, they will tell you the chapter, the book and the location,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing to see. It reminds of what Scripture says when it says the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

In turn, his memorization of the Bible _ which began when his mother paid him a nickel a verse when he was a child _ impresses evangelical publishers and Senate staffers alike.

“In observing him teach, he has clearly memorized large sections, if not full books of Scripture,” said Mark Rodgers, staff director of the Senate Republican Conference and an Episcopalian who occasionally attends Black’s Bible studies for chiefs of staff at lunchtime on Wednesdays.

“It’s just amazing. He is a very versed man in the word of God.”

The father of three and sibling of seven draws on anecdotes from his inner-city childhood in Baltimore and sometimes humorous viewpoints on theology that students say prompt laughter and insight.

“When the devil reminds me of the past, I remind him of his future,” Black quipped.

But he notes with seriousness how he is touched by the senators who stop by his office to discuss prayer or the Bible.

Although the Friday Bible study and his speech to the publishing executives two days later revealed his strong Christian beliefs, Black said his job calls for him to relate to other faiths.

His office is in the midst of a demographic study and is meeting with non-Christians to assess how to meet their needs. And he said he intentionally included a rabbi and an imam in a well-attended commemoration of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“We wanted to make sure that we covered the spectrum of religious traditions and that we helped to develop a sensitivity among Christians to the fact that they are not the only ones here,” he said.

In the same week as the Bible study on defeating failure and the address to the publishers, Black spoke at a Baltimore church, a Miami youth rally and a Howard University worship service in Washington. He also traveled to Annapolis, along with House Chaplain Daniel Coughlin, to share his advocacy of legislative prayer with Maryland legislators.

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He has a pointed defense for the existence of chaplains, noting that they were established in the U.S. House and Senate just three days before the First Amendment was written to prevent government establishment of religion but permit free religious exercise.

“So the intent is obviously not (to) do away with chaplaincies because they would not have written the establishment clause three days after they themselves had established the chaplaincies,” he said in an interview.

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The retired Navy rear admiral said his multifaith work with three- and four-star admirals prepared him well for the “exclusive club” of senators to whom he now ministers. Both are venues where people of a variety of faiths and statures occasionally reveal that they are all too human.

“I think in venues like the prayer breakfasts where people are very transparent, senators will pull aside the curtains and let you get a glimpse inside the windows of their souls,” he said. “I think you … very much realize the common humanity in each of us.”

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