More than a tradition

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 8th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: guest chaplains at the House of Representatives.

Each day it’s in session, the House opens with prayer. The House Chaplain usually says that prayer, but a few times a year, an invited guest does.

WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has the story of one of them.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: On Friday April 12th, members of The House of Representatives started their day much like any other.

ROBERT SUHR: So they walk in, the speaker of the House or his representative for the day comes in…

AUDIO: The Chair lays before the House a communication from the speaker...

ROBERT: They proclaim him pro-tem…

AUDIO: The prayer will be offered by the guest chaplain.

ROBERT: And then he introduces the chaplain, just a brief: our guest chaplain of the day is…

AUDIO: Mr. Robert Suhr, Christ Church Mequon, Wisconsin.

ROBERT: Please pray with me. Holy God, mighty Lord, gracious Father …

But what was a normal day for Congress was anything but ordinary for Robert Suhr and his family. His son, Daniel, watched the prayer from the gallery with his mother. Daniel beamed.

DANIEL SUHR: I would say pride, but I know that’s a sin. [Laughs] So I’ll just say joy.

That voice may be familiar. Daniel Suhr is a contributor to World Opinions.

On this day, Daniel said his father’s prayer put him in a unique position, almost as if the parent-child roles reversed.

DANIEL: It's really a unique position to be able to look at your parent who's been your role model and your example and say, like, wow, I just take joy in seeing your lifetime of service, your lifetime of sacrifice like that. We can sort of recognize it with this unique honor, which is also an opportunity to pray for our country.

Robert Suhr is an ordained minister in the Lutheran church and has been for 42 years. But he retired this year.

DANIEL SUHR: Every son has this dilemma, like, what do you do?

Daniel Suhr considered many different options, but landed on one unique idea.

DANIEL: Dad has always loved our country and been interested in my career, which has been in politics and public policy. And I don’t know that he actually watches much C-SPAN—you’re probably more of a Fox News guy than a C-SPAN guy. But I watch a lot of C-SPAN. And so I knew that there was this tradition of having guest chaplains, that that was a thing.

So, he emailed a former colleague about it.

DANIEL: Ends up it's a relatively easy process. You just contact your member of Congress, they contact the chaplains office. And as long as your member of Congress says you're a good guy, or good gal, then they kind of sponsor you.

Their member of Congress is Glenn Grothman. He’s a Republican from the 6th District in Wisconsin. He’s been a congressman for 10 years. This was his first time sponsoring a guest chaplain.

GLENN GROTHMAN: I'm very honored. Who knows if he came to me now, maybe it's going to take another 12 years so we're glad we got him.

He says that because it’s actually not easy to be the guest chaplain. Every congressman gets a maximum of one nominee per two year period. And there are only 60 guest chaplains during that same time period.

GROTHMAN: So you can see with 435 congressmen, if you're a congressman for 14 years, you're lucky to get one.

The role of House Chaplain is a long-standing tradition of Congress. 200 years this month, to be exact. It’s a role protected in the Constitution, a way of acknowledging the country’s commitment to free expression of religion. 

And that commitment to religious expression is extended to the members of the House and their constituents through the guest chaplain program. It allows members to see their community’s religious beliefs on display at the Capitol.

For Robert Suhr, it was a special opportunity.

ROBERT: I think it was my hope in the prayer I offered in particular today that it would be received by those who would listen, to ground them in their own brokenness and to understand their need for a God who is greater than themselves.

The tradition of opening each session with prayer is a tradition that has drawn controversy over the years, evoking strong opinions from both sides of the aisle. With some taking issue with certain guest chaplains on the basis of their politics, others taking issue with the religious views.

But from Daniel’s position in the gallery, watching his father deliver a prayer for the members of Congress below the words “In God We Trust” etched in marble, Daniel says it’s a reminder that at least in a small way, our nation still recognizes an important founding principle.

DANIEL: I think it is an ongoing, daily affirmation, that “In God We Trust,” as, as a body, as a country is still real. And that if they got rid of that tradition—and it's more than a tradition, right?—if they got rid of that, if they ended the invocation, I think it would be sort of abandoning so much of who we are as a country and what our history looks like. But that was brought home to me in a very visceral way, looking down from the gallery and seeing him in his clericals under “In God We Trust” as he’s delivering the invocation.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin. Additional reporting by Emma Perley.

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