History
Shortly after the Senate first convened in April 1789 in New York City, one of its "first orders of business" was to convene a committee to recommend a Chaplain, selecting the Right Reverend Samuel Provoost, Episcopal Bishop of New York. When the Senate moved to Philadelphia the next year, the Right Reverend William White, that city's Episcopal bishop was selected. In 1800, when the Senate relocated to Washington, D.C., clergymen from various Christian denominations ("mainline Protestant denominations--usually Episcopalians or Presbyterians") continued to be selected, delivering prayers and presiding at funerals and memorial services.
During this early period, Chaplains "typically served" for less than a year while concurrently serving in non-congressional positions. Also, early Senate and House Chaplains, although elected separately by their respected chambers, shared Congressional responsibilities by alternating service in the House and Senate on a weekly basis, also conducting Sunday worship for the Washington, D.C. community in the House Chamber on an alternating basis. Clergymen have served in the official position of Senate Chaplain for all years since the office was created except for the brief period of 1857-1859. In 1914, the Senate began adding the Chaplain's prayer to the Congressional Record.
The Chaplain of the United States Senate became a full time position in the middle of the 20th century.
According to a Senate Historical Office review of the records concerning guest chaplains, it was in 1965 that James Kirkland became the first African-American to open the Senate with prayer. In 1971 Wilmina Rowland became the first woman to do so. Wallace Mohammed was the first Muslim to do so in 1992, and Rajan Zed was the first Hindu to say the opening prayer for the Senate in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Chaplains Of The United States Senate
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)