Kan jy jou voorstel watter rol 'n kapelaan kan speel in die sentrum van wêreldmag in Amerika?
En hy doen dit, lyk my, vreesloos.
Hier is die berig uit vanoggend se NYT.
WASHINGTON
— The disapproval comes from angry constituents, baffled party elders and
colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. But nowhere have senators found
criticism more personal or immediate than right inside their own chamber every
morning when the chaplain delivers the opening prayer.
The
Senate’s chaplain, Barry C. Black, in his office on Capitol Hill.
“Save
us from the madness,” the chaplain, a Seventh-day Adventist, former Navy rear
admiral and collector of brightly colored bow ties named Barry C. Black, said one day late last week as he
warmed up into what became an epic ministerial scolding.
“We
acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness
and our pride,” he went on, his baritone voice filling the room. “Deliver us
from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”
So it
has gone every day for the last week when Mr. Black, who has been the Senate’s
official man of the cloth for 10 years, has taken one of the more rote rituals
on Capitol Hill — the morning invocation — and turned it into a daily
conscience check for the 100 men and women of the United States Senate.
Inside
the tempestuous Senate chamber, where debate has degenerated into daily
name-calling — the Tea
Party as a band of nihilists and extortionists, and Democrats as
socialists who want to force their will on the American people — Mr.
Black’s words manage to cut through as powerful and persuasive.
During
his prayer on Friday, the day after officers from the United States Capitol
Police shot and killed a woman who had used her car as a battering ram, Mr.
Black noted that the officers were not being paid because of the government
shutdown.
Then
he turned his attention back to the senators. “Remove from them that stubborn
pride which imagines itself to be above and beyond criticism,” he said.
“Forgive them the blunders they have committed.”
Senator
Harry Reid, the pugnacious majority leader who has called his Republican
adversaries anarchists, rumps and hostage takers, took note. As Mr. Black
spoke, Mr. Reid, whose head was bowed low in prayer, broke his concentration
and looked straight up at the chaplain.
“Following
the suggestion in the prayer of Admiral Black,” the majority leader said after
the invocation, seeming genuinely contrite, “I think we’ve all here in the
Senate kind of lost the aura of Robert Byrd,” one of the historical giants of
the Senate, who prized gentility and compromise.
In
many ways, Mr. Black, 65, is like any other employee of the federal government
who is fed up with lawmakers’ inability to resolve the political crisis that
has kept the government closed for almost a week. He is not being paid. His
Bible study classes, which he holds for senators and their staff members four
times a week, have been canceled until further notice.
His
is a nonpartisan position, one of just a few in the Senate, and he prefers to
leave his political leanings vague. He was chosen in 2003 by Senator Bill
Frist, a Tennessee Republican who was the majority leader at the time, from a
group of finalists selected by a bipartisan committee. Before that he
ministered in the Navy for nearly 30 years.
“I
use a biblical perspective to decide my beliefs about various issues,” Mr.
Black said in an interview in his office suite on the third floor of the
Capitol. “Let’s just say I’m liberal on some and conservative on others. But
it’s obvious the Bible condemns some things in a very forceful and overt way,
and I would go along with that condemnation.”
Last
year, he participated in the Hoodies on the Hill rally to draw attention to the
shooting death of Trayvon Martin. In 2007, after objections from groups that
did not like the idea of a Senate chaplain appearing alongside political
figures, he canceled a speech he was scheduled to give at an evangelical event
featuring, among others, Tony Perkins of the conservative Focus on the Family
and the columnist and author Ann Coulter.
Mr.
Black, who is the first black Senate chaplain as well as its first Seventh-day
Adventist, grew up in public housing in Baltimore, an experience he draws on in
his sermons and writings, including a 2006 autobiography, “From the Hood to the
Hill.”
In
his role as chaplain, a position that has existed since 1789, he acts as a
sounding board, spiritual adviser and ethical counselor to members of the
Senate. When he prays each day, he said, he recites the names of all 100
senators and their spouses, reading them from a laminated index card.
It is
not uncommon for him to have 125 people at his Bible study gatherings or 20 to
30 senators at his weekly prayer breakfast. He officiates weddings for Senate
staff members. He performs hospital visitations. And he has been at the side of
senators when they have died, most recently Daniel K. Inouye of
Hawaii in December.
He
tries to use his proximity to the senators — and the fact that for at least one
minute every morning, his is the only voice they hear — to break through on
issues that he feels are especially urgent. Lately, he said, they seem to be
paying attention.
“I
remember once talking about self-inflicted wounds — that captured the
imagination of some of our lawmakers,” he said. “Remember, my prayer is the
first thing they hear every day. I have the opportunity, really, to frame the
day in a special way.”
His
words lately may be pointed, but his tone is always steady and calm.
“May
they remember that all that is necessary for unintended catastrophic
consequences is for good people to do nothing,” he said the day of the shutdown
deadline.
“Unless
you empower our lawmakers,” he prayed another day, “they can comprehend their
duty but not perform it.”
The
House, which has its own chaplain, liked what it heard from Mr. Black so much
that it invited him to give the invocation on Friday.
“I
see us playing a very dangerous game,” Mr. Black said as he sat in his office
the other day. “It’s like the showdown at the O.K. Corral. Who’s going to blink
first? So I can’t help but have some of this spill over into my prayer. Because
you’re hoping that something will get through and that cooler heads will
prevail.”
