House Speaker FIASCO Proves Powerlessness Of Prayer
As the US House of Representatives enters its fourth day of failed attempts to elect a Speaker of the House, one of the few functions of this part of Congress has been the performance of its daily prayer ritual. The US federal government pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for the salary and expenses of an official US federal government priest who has the job of delivering a government prayer in the US House of Representatives.
This government priest, known as the Chaplain of the US House of Representatives, has always been Christian. Non-Christians are effectively banned from the position, and members of the US House have repeatedly moved to prevent even guest chaplains who are not either followers of Christianity or Judaism.
Even as the House Republicans have engaged in bitter infighting and failed even to swear in new members of Congress, the current US House Chaplain, Margaret Grun Kibben, has repeatedly stood on the floor of the US House and performed her Christian prayer ritual over and over again.
The repeated failure of the US House to elect its own leadership, even as the US proves that the prayers of the House Chaplain are completely ineffective. The work of the House Chaplain achieves neither divine intervention nor human social coherence for the US Congress.
The content of Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben’s governmental prayers have explicitly attempted to invoke the power of the Christian god to unite members of Congress so that the US House of Representatives can begin its work.
In her first prayer on January 4, Chaplain Kibben called upon her religion’s god to give the 118th session of the US House the power to begin its work:
“Eternal god, you spoke and the Earth brought forth life. With a word, your spirit breathed into humanity the essence and purpose of our very being. Speak to us now, oh lord, and breathe into the body of the 118th Congress your word of truth and justice, compassion, and wisdom. Give each member the guidance to be faithful stewards of this divine tasking, and to wield this privilege carefully… Lay on the shoulders of these men and women the mantle of both respon- sibility and accountability… Bring this 118th Congress to life.”
Then, the US House of Representatives failed to come to life. The prayer didn’t work.
The next day, the US House Chaplain rose again, and spoke her prayer into the microphone for all the assembled members of the House of Representatives to hear. She spoke to the god of Christianity, saying:
“Regardless of the circumstance, lord, you are not just present but provisioning, supplying us all that we need to forge into and navigate the unknown ahead… In our momentary distress, may we never lose sight of your divine hand that guides our own nation.”
Then, the divine hand of the Christian god didn’t show up. Several more times, the House of Representatives failed to form a leadership and could not begin its business. The god of Christianity did not provide a divine hand to guide the nation and show a path forward.
Nonetheless, later that day, at 8:00 in the evening, US House Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben stood up and performed another Christian prayer ritual before all the people who had been elected as members of the House of Representatives. She prayed to the god of Christianity to intervene and make the House of Representatives demonstrate its unity. She prayed:
“Remind us that we fulfill this divine mission only when we acknowledge that we are meant to function as one body.”
As with her other prayers, this prayer from the US House Chaplain failed to accomplish anything. Once again, the US House of Representatives failed to make any progress toward choosing its leadership. The prayer ritual was once again a flop.
Nonetheless, at the beginning of the third day of the effort to install a Speaker of the House, US Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben took center stage to perform her Christian prayer rituals once again. Chaplain Kibben did nothing to address the obvious failure of her previous prayers, but went on pretending that there had been no problems at all.
Instead, Kibben invoked the supernatural powers of the Christian god, calling upon her great spirit to magically prevent U.S. Representatives in Congress from speaking at all that day. The idea behind Chaplain Kibben’s prayer seems to have been that the voice of the Christian god is so pathetic and weak that it can only be heard when no one else is speaking. So, Kibben asked the god of her religion to force the elected members of the US Congress to be quiet. She called out:
“Silence all voices but your own, oh lord! Quiet the cacophony of counsel and still the storms of dissent, that each of us would be able to hear you speak your word to us this day!”
Did Margaret Grun Kibben’s prayer work? No.
In contradiction to the magical spell the US House Chaplain attempted to weave through her prayer ritual, members of the US House of Representatives spent the whole day talking. The god of Christianity didn’t show up even once, and was not heard to speak at all.
Over and over again, the prayers of the US House Chaplain have plainly failed. Margaret Grun Kibben’s work has achieved nothing except to prominently demonstrate the powerlessness of prayer. They haven’t provoked any supernatural intervention. Neither have the government prayers inspired social cohesion among US Representatives.
So, what’s the point of having a government-paid Christian priest in the US House of Representative whose job is to hold government-established official prayer rituals every day, when those prayers don’t have any actual effect?
The prayers of the US House Chaplain do have one significant impact. They provide daily ideological support to radical Christian Nationalism. Consider the language used by Margaret Grun Kibben during the prayers she has given as the House of Representatives has attempted and failed to elect a Speaker of the House:
“Eternal God… even as you grant us the favor to serve you in this place, remind us that amidst all the debate, you will always have the final word… Discern our thoughts and the intentions of our hearts and may they be acceptable to you… Nothing is hidden from your sight and each will always answer to you… In our momentary distress, may we never lose sight of your divine hand that guides our own nation. Call us to live this day in faith, if not by sight, and seek always to make it our goal to please you as we serve the nation you have entrusted to us… You have appointed each person here… Silence all voices but your own, oh lord. Quiet the cacophony of counsel and still the storms of dissent, that each of us would be able to hear you speak your word to us this day… In humility, may we empty ourselves in our service to you and to this nation… Raise up among us a leader who has the faith to live into your will, the hope to inspire and engender the trust of this body, and the love to serve you… We pray this in your sovereign name.”
In every prayer, US House Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben expresses the belief that US Representatives in Congress have not truly been elected by the people of the United States and should not serve the people, but have been appointed by the Christian god and should serve the god of Christianity. Over and over again, she calls upon the god of Christianity to interfere with the actions of Congress, to silence free speech, and to impose the power of Christianity.
This is an extremist vision that’s hostile to the Constitution of the United States of America, and opposed to government of the people, by the people, for the people. It imagines that the United States is a theocracy with government of the Christian god, by the Christian god, for the Christian god.
The job of US House Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben is to repeat this divisive message day after day. As prayers, her prayers are nonsense. They carry no magical power, they speak to a god that appears not to exist, and they fail to inspire members of Congress to cooperate for the common good.
The prayers of Margaret Grun Kibben do give inspiration to a bloc of extremist right wing Christian Nationalists in Congress, however, encouraging them to take radical actions without regard for the good of the American people, believing that only they are in the right, because only they serve the agenda of the invisible object of their faith, the Christian god.
It just so happens that these extremist right wing Christian Nationalists are the very people who are refusing to work with their colleagues to elect a Speaker of the House.
The point of the US House Chaplain isn’t to stand for a meek and generic Ceremonial Deism, but to promote a radical form of Christianity, encouraging chaos in American government as a means to theocratic power.