GENE THERAPY
Gene Collier says he already misses the impeachment hearings.
We are barely through a fortnight since they were gaveled to a close, but I already miss the impeachment hearings, a simpler time in America when our worst fears were mere premonitions.
Most of all, I miss Barry Black, whose cool bow tie and soaring moral clarity formally introduced every session, even though the earthly outcomes never matched his enlightenment.
If you didn’t get to hear Mr. Black’s not-so-veiled oral smackdowns of the entire process, I recommend you find his daily prayers on behalf of the Senate for the period Jan. 22-Feb 5. Mr. Black is the Senate Chaplain — a serious albeit curious job in a country built, in part, on church/state separation.
About that. It turns out there was a timing problem.
There have been Senate chaplains since 1789, a good 13 years before Thomas Jefferson first offered a written First Amendment interpretation that included the “wall of separation” metaphor “between Church and State.” Just another wall that would never be fully built, apparently.
Each session of the Senate ever since has traditionally begun with a prayer, including sessions scheduled for impeachment trials. So there was Chaplain Black, the first African American and the first Seventh-day Adventist to fill this incongruent role, speaking directly to God, upstaging with simple, eloquent prayers all the moral grandstanding that everyone who argued the case could generate over two-plus weeks.
“Permit our Senators to feel your presence during this impeachment trial,” one began. “Illuminate their minds with the light of your wisdom, exposing truth and resolving uncertainties. May they understand that you created them with their cognitive abilities and moral discernment to be used for your glory. Grant that they will comprehend what really matters, separating the relevant from the irrelevant.”
That one came early in the process, but without seeing an overabundance of evidence along the lines of “moral discernment,” Chaplain Black’s words to the Almighty began to take on a new layer of urgency, belied as they were by his perfectly modulated baritone.
“God we pray that their moral discernment be used for your glory; remind our Senators that they alone are accountable to you for their conduct,” he prayed, “Lord, help them to remember that they can’t ignore you and get away with it, for we always reap what we sow.” Whoa.
The Senate’s majority leadership restricted what Americans could see on TV during all of this, so the cameras were essentially locked on Chaplain Black. Eyewitnesses in the chamber, however, reported some fidgety alterations in body language among the prayerful.
Mr. Black was not done yet.
“O God, you are our rock of safety. Protect us in an unsafe world. Guard us from those who smile but plan evil in their hearts. Use our senators to bring peace and unity to our world. May they permit godliness to make them bold as lions. Give them a clearer vision of your desires for our nation. Remind them that they borrow their heartbeats from you each day. Provide them with such humility, hope and courage that they will do your will.”
This was the day after Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz presented their defense arguments. Coincidence, I guess.
Alas, musings on the power of prayer and the relevance of faith got little oxygen in the proceedings — at least until it was time for Mitt Romney to explain why he was the only Republican voting to convict the 45th president, the only president in American history to be impeached in his first full term.
“We have arrived at different judgments, but I hope we respect each other’s good faith,” Mr. Romney said of his Senate brethren. “The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. As a Senatorjuror, I swore an oath, before God, to exercise ‘impartial justice.’ I am a profoundly religious person. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong.
“I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced. I am sure to hear abuse from the President and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?” Oath?
Good God, Mitt, oaths are so four years ago.
And Mr. Romney was right, of course. The next morning, the president trashed him thoroughly in the most ironic forum imaginable: the National Prayer Breakfast.
I doubt Chaplain Black was thrilled.