Barry C. Black, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate, had very pointed words for congregants of New Horizon Christian Church in Cool Valley when he spoke there on Saturday, February 11 as part of the church’s 19th anniversary celebration.
“You are lambs in the midst of wolves,” Black said. “Notice I said ‘wolves.’ You’re not dealing with just one wolf.”
In case there was any doubt that Black was talking about the Trump administration, host pastor Rev. B.T. Rice made that plain.
“When you see President Trump, let him know that he does not have to appoint Chaplain Black,” Rice said. “He has a lifetime appointment.”
In fact, the office is not an appointment, but rather an election by majority vote of the members of the U.S. Senate. Black, a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who grew up “in Freddie Gray’s neighborhood” in Baltimore, was elected Senate chaplain on June 27, 2003. At the time, Republicans had a slight majority in the Senate, with 51 senators to the Democrats’ 48; U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont was an independent who caucused with the Democrats. George W. Bush was U.S. president.
Black is no stranger to seeing Republicans try to remake (or undo) the federal government, as the Trump administration seems determined to do in its cabinet appointments and an early wave of disruptive executive orders.
Black was a voice of reason and protest during the 16-day federal government shutdown of 2013. “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable,” he prayed on the third day of the shutdown. On day 11, he prayed of the senators, “Give them a hatred of all hypocrisy, deceit and shame as they seek to replace them with gentleness, patience and truth.”
In his sermon at New Horizon, Black found biblical precedent for God using even a brutal, powerful slave driver to bring about good on earth.
“If God could take crazy pharaoh, who said, ‘Kill every first-born male son,’ this man who had given a genocidal decree,” Black said, then drew just short of making a direct comparison to the new U.S. president. “That’s all the further I’m going. I know B.T. said I’ve got a lifetime appointment, but I’m not going there. Fill in the blanks.”
Black’s primary message was directed to the people at the pews, not the president. He reminded them, whatever the political reality that they face, to seek strength and joy in faith.
“Do you know how you misrepresent God,” Black said, “when you don’t manifest joy?”
Nichole Bell attended the service to hear Black preach, though she worships at Way of Life Outreach Ministry in St. Louis, where Bishop Anita W. Kelley is pastor. She said she finds him to be “divinely inspired” and hears a similar message in her home church, where the Trump administration also is dealt with from the pulpit.
Bell said of Trump, “Our pastor prays that God puts a bit in his mouth and turns him around.”
