Thread by @AndrewLSeidel

I'm getting a lot of questions about the prayer before the #ImpeachmentTrial at the Senate. This #THREAD has your answers.

The prayer is given by Senate Chaplain Barry Black. Yes, the Senate has a chaplain. Yes, your tax dollars pay his salary. And the numbers are shocking:

I wrote about this back in 2016. patheos.com/blogs/freethou…

From 2000-2015, Congress spent more than $10 million on prayers, the vast majority of which are to the Christian god (more than 96% of prayers in the House were Christian).

The Senate Rules give the chaplain ONE job: to pray.
govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SM…

Do chaplains do other things? Sure. But they're paid to pray. The claim that they accommodate the religious freedom of Members of Congress may have made sense when DC was an unpopulated swamp...

...but not in an age where houses of worship are on every street corner in DC and when members can zoom with religious counselors of their choice back home or anywhere else. Religious consolation is easy to find.

They chaplains are paid to pray.

And they are paid an awful lot.

The House Chaplain makes $172,500 (2018)
The Senate Chaplain makes $160,787 (2018)

Again, their only job is to say the opening prayer.
senate.gov/CRSpubs/9c14ec…

Now, my numbers are 4 years old, but we were paying $800K each year for prayers back in 2016 because the chaplains each has staffers. Five staffers plus two chaplains for 7 total. I believe that's changed somewhat.

And even with those fat salaries, the official chaplains let “guest chaplains” deliver many of the prayers—about 40% in the House. The House chaplains gave 1,341 invocations from 2000-2015, or about 84 invocations each year. Guest chaplains gave another 857 over that same span.

Can you imagine making $170,000 a year to work for about 3 minutes a day for 84 days?

I can't. But we are all paying for it. That's our tax dollars at work.

And one more thing before we get to the legal questions: nobody in Congress really listens to the prayer.

A few years back, I asked U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan how many members actually sit through the prayers. He said, "no one's in the room...it's pretty much in an empty room." Watch for yourself.

So we pay $800K each year for, at most, a couple of hundred prayers that nobody really pays attention to.

Sure, the chaplains do other things, but Members of Congress can get those services for free at any house of worship.

Yeah, you should be pissed.

So, here's the big question. How is this constitutional? How is this allowed?

Well, it's unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court said it was OK. Why? Because we've been doing it for a long time.

Yes, seriously.

I wrote about this in The Founding Myth.
amazon.com/Founding-Myth-…

TLDR: Chaplains are an old tradition.

The argument from tradition is awful. If a practice can't stand on its merits, it should fall.

"We've always done it this way" is not a legal argument, it's an admission that you have none. Slavery. Segregation. The subjugation of women. Where would we be if tradition held sway?

The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." And yet, Congress has established and funded two national preachers.

In that 1983 case, Justices Brennan and Thurgood Marshall said his stupidly unconstitutional:

"In sum, I have no doubt that, if any group of law students were asked to apply the principles of [the First Amendment legal test] to the question of legislative prayer, they would nearly unanimously find the practice to be unconstitutional."

This. Is. Easy.

One last thing...

What terrible calamities would befall Congress without the chaplains? If the court were to declare the positions unconstitutional, as is clearly required by the First Amendment, what would happen?

Nothing. We'd all be just fine.

Nobody attends the prayers anyway, but even if they did, even if prayer was crucial to some Member's daily routine, they could still pray. Nothing would stop them. But we don't need paid chaplains for a Senator to bow her head in prayer.

Let's abolish the chaplaincies.

~FIN

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