Religion: Denominational Democracy?

Ben Franklin started it in 1787 with his suggestion that sessions of the Constitutional Convention be opened by a minister praying for divine guidance. Ever since, one of the notable chinks in the U.S. wall of separation between church and state has been the election of official chaplains by the Senate and the House of Representatives. Once they preached at the Capitol on Sundays. Today their duties consist of a short prayer beginning each day’s session, plus sick calls, marriages, baptisms, funerals and spiritual counsel for the legislators and their staffs. For this, Methodist Chaplain Frederick Brown Harris of the Senate and Presbyterian Chaplain Bernard Braskamp of the House are paid $8,800 a year.

Should these chaplains be chosen with an eye to denomination in religiously pluralist America? The question is raised by Editor James O. Duncan of the Capital Baptist, who feels that Congress has been guilty of favoritism, with Methodists the prime beneficiaries.

Out of a total of 108 congressional chaplains, reports Duncan, 36 Methodists have served on the Hill, followed by Presbyterians with 28, Episcopalians with 19, and assorted others down to Lutherans and Roman Catholics with one. Baptists, though the biggest single Protestant group, have had only 14 and have not had a chaplain in the House since 1843.

Compounding the problem, says Baptist Duncan, is the fact that congressional chaplains have no fixed term, and some have stayed on interminably. Duncan’s solution: Congress should choose each new chaplain from a denomination different from his predecessor for a fixed, brief term. Neither of the present chaplains sides with Duncan. Chaplain Harris says that “denomination has nothing whatsoever to do with it. This isn’t recognition of the church in any sense of the word. It is a recognition of religion.”