The Soul of the Senate

(With last month's retirement of U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard C. Halverson, many in Washington are adjusting to the departure of a devoted Christian servant. Before Halverson's retirement, Karen Feaver, a former congressional aide, returned to her old stomping grounds to survey the legacy of the chaplain's tenure.)

Dr. Halverson would often walk into our Friday lunch-break Bible study with a bounce in his step, singing an old Cole Porter tune. His ruddy complexion, snow-white hair, twinkling eyes, and vaudevillian manner sometimes seemed humorously at odds with his role as the chaplain of the United States Senate. But congressional staffers like me, eager for a sweet hour of spiritual encouragement in the midst of the commotion of Capitol Hill politics, saw Christ's peace enter the room with the chaplain's welcome.

That was five years ago. These days Chaplain Halverson walks to the Senate floor a bit more slowly, but his eyes still twinkle with the same joyful presence that used to make me look forward to Friday lunches. Those he greets throughout the Senate respond to his "God bless you" during the closing days of this congressional session with a deep sense of gratitude tinged with sadness. After 14 years of service, the man Florida governor Lawton Chiles calls the "soul of the Senate" is retiring.

In a city where it is all too easy for the political mission to eclipse the spiritual, Chaplain Halverson has been a beacon, quietly calling us back to first things. His witness reminded us not to allow our zeal in the political to "shut the door to dialogue" on the eternal. Following prayer each Friday, his benediction sent us out in the knowledge that the greatest opener of hearts is the Spirit of Christ cloaked in our bodies wherever we worked and went. No one lived out that example better than he.

The humble heart he brought to the Senate in 1981 was characteristic of his pastoral ministry, which began with a life-changing decision in 1935. After an early stage career as a ten-year-old member of a vaudeville troop called the Winnipeg Kiddies and a later stint as a teenage vocalist for a barnstorming dance band, young Dick Halverson left his native North Dakota to make his mark in Hollywood. Lonesome and a bit fearful of the lifestyle patterns he was developing, after spending a year in the glitter of "Tinsel Town," he decided on New Year's Eve, 1934, to visit a church in southwest Los Angeles. Two months later, a young preacher—whose stage presence and command of the audience struck Halverson as better suited to acting than the pulpit—asked if he would like to know God's plan for his life. Halverson, who had not been sure there was a God, let alone that he might have a plan for his life, accepted the pastor's invitation to make a commitment to Christ. By 1937 he was in Henrietta Mears's college department at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, one of a great number of young men upon whom she exercised an enormous influence.

Wheaton College and Princeton Seminary followed before several pastorates, ending in a 23-year tenure as senior pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. It was one of his Fourth Presbyterian parishioners, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, who asked him in 1980 if he would be interested in serving as Senate chaplain. The Republicans had just won the Senate majority, and with the retirement of Edward L. R. Elson, the previous chaplain, the Republican leadership had the important task of selecting a shepherd for this most singular flock. After a great deal of prayer, Halverson decided it was God's calling.

A SERVANT'S SERVANT

His first task as Senate chaplain, says Halverson, was to figure out what the job was really all about. The job description merely states that the chaplain must open the Senate with prayer each day the Senate is in session. Beyond the invocation, the chaplain's job had traditionally been thought of as a ministry to the senators alone. But Halverson felt God directing him to be a servant-pastor to everybody on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. His secretary and assistant in ministry, Martie Kinsell, has a sign above her desk that beautifully says it all: "Servant to the servants of the Servant."

When one might expect to see the chaplain only on the Senate floor for the morning prayer, his "presence is everywhere," states Senator Hatfield. He brought with him a lesson he had learned years earlier about the importance of simply being available to people at their convenience and in their time of need. In his book The Living Body, Halverson recalls that as a young minister he asked God to direct him to people in the congregation whom he should make a concerted effort to befriend. He felt God's Spirit lead him to contact a dentist he had seen in the pews. The dentist invited him to lunch but, at the end of their time together, was shocked to find that the pastor had no agenda, wanted no money for the church, but simply wanted to get to know him.

Governor Chiles pinpoints this emphasis on one-on-one relationships as the chaplain's "greatest of all gifts," noting, "he always took the time."

A senator told me of walking with Halverson when they were stopped by a policeman who asked the chaplain to pray for his sick wife. The chaplain prayed on the spot, leaving the officer both surprised and comforted by Halverson's quick response.

Capitol police officer Robert Ellis reflected on the chaplain's special friendship with the Senate police, recalling how Halverson regularly reserved a room in the Capitol, providing coffee and donuts for the officers so that he could listen to their concerns. "He never brushes anyone off," said Ellis. "Of any minister I've ever known, he's touched me the most."

And one does not have to spend long in the Senate dining room to discover how much the chaplain's care has meant there. During my visit there, one after another, servers and cooks spoke of his greeting them each morning with an "I love you" or "God bless you, sister." He sometimes gathered the workers in a circle for morning prayer, asking God to bless their day. Leila Dais, who has served in the dining room for 30 years, told how Halverson once opened the Senate with a special prayer for her after her father passed away. Dorothy Taylor, another waitress, said it "seemed like he always knew when we needed prayer."

Chaplain Halverson also makes it a point to stay in communication with the White House. As he has done with previous Presidents, from time to time, Halverson sends notes to President Clinton containing Scriptures that God has laid on his heart for the man. "I always get a personal response from President Clinton when I do that," he says.

The chaplain has carefully stayed the pastoral course God set for him, rising above the political din to meet the primary need for God's love on all sides. Though he holds deep Christian convictions about the great moral issues of our day that surface in the political arena, a group of Democratic and Republican senators who meet weekly with the chaplain for lunch and prayer say he has responded to their political and moral questions without showing partiality, always answering with Scriptures that he thinks will help shed God's wisdom on the subject. He has often listened to their floor speeches, complimenting them on the thoughtfulness of their presentations, never offering criticism, only encouragement in Christ.

And many senators express deep gratitude that he bore their burdens in times of both individual and corporate need. They remember Halverson's willingness to answer Senator Byrd's request for him to conduct his grandson's funeral in West Virginia shortly after the chaplain came to the Senate and how he gathered one former senator's staff together for prayer after one of their coworkers was killed. And I personally remember the chaplain asking our Friday group to uphold then-Tennessee Senator Al Gore's son in prayer when he was seriously injured by a car in 1989.

The senators have also appreciated Chaplain Halverson's constant care for their staffs, who face daily Senate pressures in addition to the natural anxiety of election years. Chaplain Halverson was looking forward to his last opportunity to make the rounds after the November election to encourage those working in the offices of senators who lost their races for re-election.

A LEGACY OF COMPASSION

The Senate's opening invocation remains a major responsibility, and many attest to the great spiritual sensitivity with which the chaplain carries out this function. Indiana Sen. Daniel Coats says the chaplain's morning invocations have usually reflected the undercurrents he detects beneath the surface of the Senate's tension-filled debates. "He always had a sense of the kind of admonition or encouragement or soothing balm that the Senate needed. The next day's prayer was always the right word to put some healing into the Senate's contentious process."

Above all, senators have felt Chaplain Halverson's deep love for them personally. According to Hatfield, Halverson is the "greatest defender of the Senate," who does not hesitate to take Christians to task for unfairly criticizing those he knows and cares for as friends. He sees the senators' frustrations as they seek to address the great problems of our day, encouraging them with the reminder that, according to the Book of Romans, even God's perfect law could not produce a perfect society. Observes Halverson: "I am there as the senators share their frustrations, share their love for Christ, and share their weaknesses and their vulnerability. I see them in an entirely different way. I see them as human beings, as sinful and as needy as anyone else—but, generally speaking, trying to make a difference in the nation."

In spite of the sensitive nature of the job, the senators have placed no restrictions on the office of the chaplain. Halverson recalls that early in his tenure a few Jewish senators gently reminded him that they felt excluded when he prayed "in the name of Jesus." Not wanting to offend them—but also not wanting to compromise his calling—the chaplain has sometimes closed his prayers in the name of Jesus and, at other times, in an analogous title like "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." And he has often said to his Jewish friends in the Senate, "You know everything about my faith is Jewish, and my best friend [Jesus] is Jewish."

In a day when increasing scrutiny is being given to taxpayer support of any religious activity, the announcement of Chaplain Halverson's retirement has raised serious questions about the constitutionality of the position of Senate chaplain. Nevertheless, no doubt because of Halverson's heartfelt management of the role, a clear consensus emerged in the Senate that his position should be filled when he steps down, although a replacement has yet to be named.

When asked what qualities or disciplines were necessary for the job, Halverson told me: "I have to be sure every morning before I leave home that I've had some time with the Lord, time in his Word. I want to be very sure that God knows that, as far as I'm concerned, I have nothing to offer except what he does in and through me. That's a tremendously important part of this job."

Herein lies the true legacy of Halverson's chaplaincy to the Senate and, indeed, to the nation: the witness of the power of Christ through a man who took seriously the call to serve—without regard to station or party. A man who followed his Savior's example and showed us how by becoming our servant.

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Karen M. Feaver spent over four years on Capitol Hill serving as a legislative assistant on domestic and human rights issues.