Since its signing in 1789, the articles and amendments of the United States Constitution have been the guiding force for American political discourse.
One of the primary principles from the Constitution that still enters the public sphere is the separation of church and state as ensured by Article VI. Despite this assertion, there are still several inconsistencies and gray areas surrounding the role of religion in modern American government. A lesser-known example of this rests with the elected position of United States Senate Chaplain. This position dates back to the first meeting of the Senate on April 25, 1789, and each subsequent Congress has elected a delegate to fill this position.
The Chaplain is elected by a majority vote among Senate members and fulfills his position by offering spiritual counseling to Senators and their families, as well as inaugurating sessions of the Senate with a traditional prayer. The government claims that the position is open to members of any religious faith; however, thus far, every elected Chaplain has been of a Christian denomination. The current Senate Chaplain is Barry C. Black, a Seventh-Day-Adventist.
The official government website for the U.S. Senate provides a directory of pages that explain the positions and duties of various elected members of the Senate.
On the page for the Senate Chaplain, the Chaplain's Office is described as such: "throughout the years, the United States Senate has honored the historic separation of Church and State, but not the separation of God and State ... 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 ... The office of the Chaplain is nonpartisan, nonpolitical and nonsectarian."
The fact that an official government website provides this information is a massive problem. The description of the Senate Chaplain is riddled with unclear language and logical fallacies.
First of all, the excerpt starts by noting that the government endorses a difference between the words 'church' and 'God.' Although these are clearly words with specifically different meanings, when they are used in the context of describing the relationship between faith and politics, they become increasingly similar.
Distinguishing between the two in their relation to government is an extremely subjective task and one that should not be undertaken by a government web site. Secondly, proclaiming the position of Senate Chaplain as nonpolitical and nonsectarian is simply nonsensical.
This is an elected position of government that functions within one of the houses of Congress, thus calling it nonpolitical is an illogical inversion of where and why the position exists. The Chaplain is a spiritual aid for political figures, thus making the position political in nature. Although the Chaplain may counsel these politicians with a very general sense of faith, Barry C. Black is a proclaimed Seventh-Day-Adventist (Christian denomination) making him hardly nonsectarian.
These logical errors in word choice are certainly off-putting. The truly troublesome part of the Chaplain's description, however, is its sweeping remark that all members of the U.S. Senate acknowledge God as their sovereign.
The purpose of the Chaplain's prayer is described as being necessary to affirm this acknowledgement in each of these Senators. This is an irrefutable abuse of a representative government that claims to deliberate on behalf of continuants from all religious faiths, and some with no specific faith at all. The imposition of God in political spheres is pervasive in forms such as printed money or the Pledge of Allegiance.
However, neither of these are factors in the legislative process. In a time when our government is demonstrating potential instability, it is in the best interest of American citizens to be fully aware of the foundations that are established throughout our government, especially in Congress.
In the wake of the government shutdown on Monday, Senate Chaplain Black preached on the Senate floor: "Eternal God, our ever present help in trouble, as our nation stumbles toward a seemingly unavoidable government shutdown, keep our lawmakers from sowing to the wind, thereby risking reaping the whirlwind."
If this position is truly "nonpartisan, nonpolitical and nonsectarian," and if our government claims to respect the separation of church and state, then it is not at all appropriate that in the wake of a shutdown, our Congress turns to prayer.
Robert Weisblatt is a College junior from Belle Mead, N.J.
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