Last Wednesday, Barry C. Black, the Christian Chaplain of the US Senate, stood up at the podium and delivered the following prayer to members of the US Senate:

On Thursday, Chaplain Black went even further, standing at the microphone on the floor of the US Senate and lecturing the senators through his daily prayer, saying:

Let’s break down the Christian Nationalist content in these two prayers from Barry C. Black to the US Senate.

First, Chaplain Black repeated the Christian Nationalist doctrine that the founding of the United States of America was a manifestation of Christianity, a magical process involving invisible spirits that made the founding of the country possible. Next, Barry C. Black demands that all Americans be united under the Christian god, that all Americans be converted into obedient Christians who are ready to do the will of the Christian god… or at least the will of the Christian priests and preachers who claim to know the will of their god.

Barry C. Black’s prayers may be delivered in soft tones, but they amount to a declaration of extreme Christian Nationalism. Chaplain Black declared to members of the US Senate that they should no longer try to represent the will of the American people. Instead, Chaplain Black’s prayer demands that US Senators obey the will of the Christian god, that they transform the Senate from a democratic institution into a tool of Christian Nationalist theocracy.

Remember what Christian Nationalism is. Christian Nationalism is the belief that the United States is, or should be, a Christian nation, with a government that serves the interests of Christianity, and not anyone else. That’s exactly what Barry C. Black’s prayer is calling for. Barry C. Black stood up in front of the US Senate and told our nation’s leaders that they must “stay within the circle” of the religious beliefs of Christians.

Chaplain Barry C. Black’s prayer was fundamentally opposed to the very idea of democracy. Chaplain Black blasted US senators for “refusing to submit” to Christianity, but refusing to submit to any authoritarian power is what democracy is all about.

Democracy is about giving power to the people. Barry C. Black’s Christian Nationalist prayer is about taking power away from the people.

Think about what the consequences for our country if United States senators complied with the demands of Barry C. Black’s prayer.  If members of the US Senate made their legislative decisions according to the demands of Christianity, rather than the will of the people, we would in effect have a federal government controlled by Christian priests and preachers. Our Congress would become an extension of the power of right-wing Christian megachurches, and would pass draconian laws requiring all Americans to follow the harsh, unforgiving morality of Christianity, forcing Americans to participate in Christian rituals, to participate Christian worship.

Chaplain Barry C. Black’s prayer in the US Senate is in effect a demand that the United States abandon the Constitution and go back to the early colonial days when Puritan preachers controlled government in the British colonies. Barry C. Black’s prayer calls for us to go back to the days of frenzied Christian violence, as exemplified in the horrors of Salem, Massachusetts.

What Barry C. Black demands is nothing short of US senators surrendering their power to him and his fellow Christian preachers. To Chaplain Black, it may seem like a natural thing to demand that his god be given control, but this concept is antithetical to the operation of democracy.

After all, if the Christian god really is in control of all the political decisions in the United States, why bother with democracy? If the Christian god really controls Congress, why bother having any Congress at all? Congress would become nothing more than a rubber stamp to the demands of Christian churches, if Chaplain Black had his way.

Someone who believes in democracy celebrates when American government enables the American people to “do things our own way”, but Barry C. Black tells US Senators that such freedom is deplorable, a wicked sin that they should beg his Christian god to forgive.

The fact that Barry C. Black is already granted the power to deliver such screeds against democracy is troubling enough. Barry C. Black is given the authority to open up the business of the United States Senate every day with a Christian religious ritual. Every day Black stands there and lectures the elected officials in the Senate that they must submit to the god of Christianity. Chaplain Black insults our democracy over and over again, and his voice is not countered by leaders of other religions. Atheists are not allowed a rebuttal.

Barry C. Black is given the power to influence the US Senate for no other reason than that he is a Christian, and Christians are granted special powers by the United States government that are not available to non-Christian Americans. Every day, Barry C. Black personifies Christian privilege. Every day, Barry C. Black stands for Christian Nationalism.

For Christians, it may seem natural to suppose that the elected government of the United States should stop its deliberations and submit to the control of the Christian god. The rest of us, however, struggle to understand how anyone could think that this is a good idea.

The Priest of Zaphor

Imagine that an alien from outer space shows up and flies down out of the sky over Washington DC. The alien, we discover, is named Zaphor, and comes from the planet Rantoo. Zaphor lives for thousands of years and is much more powerful than any human being, with technology so advanced that it seems magical to us.

Imagine what people would say if the priest of the alien Zaphor gave a speech to Congress every day insisting that it was Zaphor who created the United States, Zaphor who wrote the Constitution, and Zaphor who inspires all American law. No one would put up with it. People would be livid. They would demand that Congress fire the priest of Zaphor from his job as the official Zaphorian priest to Congress.

Yet, replace the name Zaphor with the title of “god”, and that’s exactly what’s happening, day after day, in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.  

With the Christian god, it’s even worse than in the case of the priest of the alien Zaphor from the planet Rantoo. At least with the alien Zaphor, people would actually have evidence that Zaphor really exists. They would see the alien spacecraft, see the alien Zaphor descend from it with their own eyes, and be able to document the event in photographs and videos through their smartphone cameras.

With the Christian god, there is no such evidence at all. No one has ever provided a reliable eyewitness account of an encounter with any god. No one has ever taken a photograph or video of any god, Christian or otherwise. There is more evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster than there is for the existence of the Christian god.

Taxpayers Funding Christian Nationalist Chaplains

In spite of the lack of any data to support their activities, in both houses of the United States Congress, there is a government-appointed, government employed Christian Chaplain. These are not volunteer positions, either. Americans are forced to pay to have these Christian Chaplains of Congress, to give them money in exchange for their sanctimonious prayers of Christian Nationalism.

Each congressional Chaplain is paid a government salary (of $160,787 for the US Senate Chaplain and $172,500 for the US House Chaplain). Congressional chaplains are also given an official government office and provided with paid assistants: A Chief-of-Staff, a Director of Communications, and an Executive Assistant. The office of the US Senate Chaplain was given a budget of $562,000 this year. The office of the US House Chaplain was given $288,480 of public money to pay for the salaries of its support staff, and yet more money to cover expenses.

In exchange for their lavish government salaries, the Christian Chaplains of Congress arrogantly toss out insults against American democracy. They stand up in front of the House or Senate and give speeches demanding that members of Congress stop thinking for themselves, stop serving the people of the United States, and submit instead to the will of the invisible god of Christianity.

Remember that this Christian god never appears himself. So, how are members of Congress supposed to know what the will of the Christian god is? Rather conveniently, the Chaplains of the US House and Senate are there to tell them what the Christian god wants. Whenever the Chaplains talk about how members of Congress need to obey the will of the Christian god, what they’re really saying is that members of Congress should obey the will of the Christian Chaplains of Congress, or other Christian leaders who claim to have special knowledge of the specific political agenda of the magical ruler of the universe.

The congressional Chaplains meet with members of Congress behind closed doors to tell them what their god demands. In private meetings and in public statements, the congressional Chaplains encourage members of Congress to organize caucuses on the basis of religion, cultivating religious networks as sources of political power.

The Chaplains of Congress are actually paid to erode the separation of church and state, to weaken the First Amendment, to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States. The Chaplains exist to distract members of Congress from their real job, which is representing the people of their states and districts. The Chaplains, through their sermons and in whispered conversations behind closed doors, work to convince members of Congress that they should represent the Christian god, rather than their human constituents.

Let’s suppose for a moment that this god of Christianity really does exist. What then? What would it even mean for a member of Congress to represent the will of the Christian god?

To answer this question, we might begin by asking ourselves for a moment what the agenda of this strange, invisible supernatural being really is. Has anyone ever figured out where this god came from, for example? Who sent this god? What other loyalties does it have? How do we know that we can trust this supernatural being?

You’d think, with all the money that American taxpayers are forced to spend on the offices of the Chaplains of the United States Congress, that we could at least expect some transparency and accountability from them about what they do with this god of theirs. Yet, implausibly, the Chaplains claim that this all-powerful god is limited to speaking to human beings through the words of a dusty old book that was cobbled together out of a variety of texts from a variety of authors thousands of years ago.

As much as they talk about the will of their god, the Chaplains of Congress can’t even seem to convince this magical being to come to Washington DC to communicate directly with any political leaders. That’s kind of weird, given the amount of time the Chaplains spend talking about how much this god wants to be listened to and obeyed. If the Chaplain of the US House of Representatives and the Chaplain of the US Senate can’t even get their own god to show up for one press conference to confirm that the Chaplains really are his mouthpieces, why should be trust them? What qualifications do these federal government chaplains have that gives them the right to issue orders from the supernatural realm to members of Congress?

It is not the job of any member of Congress, or any person on the staff of the US federal government, to represent gods, spirits, prophets, messiahs, or any other characters from ancient religious texts.

Besides, the Christian god is not an American citizen. Neither was Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Moses. They were all born and died centuries and centuries before the United States even existed. They lived in a part of what was then the Roman Empire. They never crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a boat even once. They never traveled more than a hundred miles from their homes. They were largely ignorant about the world.

Neither these long-dead foreign prophets nor their god ever actually said anything on the record about any plans for America. They never even mentioned the names of America, the United States, Washington DC, New Jersey, or anything like that. If these prophets from thousands of years ago had nothing to say about the USA, why should the US government should work for them? By law, the government of the United States is supposed to work for the people who have democratically elected it. Angels, demons, gods, ghosts, zombies of ancient prophets, and other spirits have no legal right to representation in the US government.

Even the Christian god, whose supporters say knows everything that ever happened, never actually has talked about anything other than what happened in a relatively small area in western Asia long, long ago. It sounds as if this god was unable to know anything that his believers didn’t already know themselves. It’s enough to make a thinking person suspect that the god of the Christian bible was nothing more than a creation of the committees of religious leaders who edited the bible together.

The very idea of a Congressional Chaplain praying to the Christian god to take control of the minds of the politicians in the US Congress is nonsensical. Why would such a prayer be necessary? If the Christian god is really all powerful, couldn’t he just take control of the US Congress whenever he wanted? What difference does it make if there’s a Christian Chaplain of Congress making a conspicuous public prayer request for the Christian god to take over America?

The prayers of the Congressional Chaplains aren’t supposed to make logical sense, of course. They’re expressions of raw power. The mere presence of the Chaplains on the floor of both houses of the US Congress, granted the authority to force all members of Congress to pause their work for an official government Christian prayer, is a purposeful, conspicuous display of Christian Nationalist power.