Senate chaplain says lawmakers must ‘move beyond thoughts and prayers’ after Tenn. shooting
WASHINGTON – In his opening prayer Tuesday, the Senate chaplain delivered a rare and pointed plea for lawmakers to take action a day after a shooter killed six people at a private Christian school in Nashville, only the latest in a relentless barrage of gun violence in the United States.
On the Senate floor, the chamber’s longtime chaplain, retired Rear Adm. Barry C. Black, alluded to the fact that three of the victims in Monday’s shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville were 9-year-old students.
“Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers,” Black declared. “Remind our lawmakers of the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ ”
Black added: “Lord, deliver our senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous. Use them to battle the demonic forces that seek to engulf us. We pray, in your powerful name, amen.”
The prayer was an unusually piercing call for action from the chaplain, who is a “nonpartisan, nonpolitical and nonsectarian” elected officer of the Senate. In addition to opening daily sessions with a prayer and holding a weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, the chaplain provides “spiritual counseling and guidance to members and staff” and assists them with theological questions, according to the Senate website.
Black has served as Senate chaplain since 2003, delivering prayers at two decades’ worth of floor sessions and at notable Capitol events, such as a service for the late senator Robert J. Dole, R-Kan., and before the sessions for the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. During the latter, Black asked God to “remind our senators that they alone are accountable to you for their conduct … that they can’t ignore you and get away with it, for we always reap what we sow.”
Black did not immediately respond to an interview request Tuesday.
When asked for his thoughts on the Nashville shooting, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., – who himself was critically injured in a 2017 shooting – said he was praying for the victims and their families and dismissed talk of gun legislation.
“I really get angry when I see people trying to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts,” Scalise told reporters Tuesday. “It just seems like on the other side, all [Democrats] want to do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens before they even know the facts … and that’s not the answer, by the way.”
Shortly afterward, in a subsequent news conference, House Democrats renewed their calls for “meaningful gun safety legislation.”
“We must give families the peace of mind to send their kids to school, not fearing for their lives,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told reporters. “But we need reasonable Republicans to come to the table to make this happen. It’s an outrage that we can’t find a handful of Republicans [who] are willing to put people over extremism on the far right.”
Video: In his opening prayer March 28, Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black called for lawmakers to take action a day after a shooter killed six people in Nashville.
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