WALL?

Backstory: The senators' minister (Mary Beth McCauley, 6/28/06, The Christian Science Monitor)

Barry Black can do high church. He can do jive. He can do Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Oprah. Psychologist, theologian, professor, comedian, the 62nd Chaplain of the United States Senate seems such an ingeniously 21st-century incarnation of a centuries-old role, you wonder if he's been heaven-sent.

Chaplain Black is charged with bringing a bit of the holy to the secular basilica on Capitol Hill. He pastors the 7,000-strong Senate side - the legislators themselves, their staffers, employees, and families. He leads five Bible studies each week, along with a senators' prayer breakfast. He marries, buries, counsels, visits the sick and, of course, prays. He and his three-person staff also field senators' inquiries on religion, morality, and ethics.

Nothing better reveals the boilerplate nature of the 1st Amendment than the fact that the first act of the first session of Congress was to hire chaplains.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2006 11:01 PM