[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 22121-22123]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NATIONAL BIBLE WEEK

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, the elections are behind us now and we are 
looking forward to the next Congress which will be seated on January 
4--the 110th Congress. We have in town a number of newly elected 
Senators and their spouses. A number of us--Senator Alexander, Senator 
Voinovich, Senator Pryor, and myself--have been involved, along with 
the Secretary of the Senate, in holding orientation for new Senators 
and their spouses. On Tuesday night we were over at the National 
Archives and we had the opportunity to have a reception there and a 
dinner. The reception turned out to be a tour of the National Archives 
and the opportunity to see firsthand original copies of the 
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, handwritten letters from George 
Washington to all kinds of people, and from Abraham Lincoln to all 
kinds of people. We actually looked at the original Bill of Rights 
where we found that there were actually 12 amendments proposed to the 
Constitution, not 10. Two were not actually adopted. It was interesting 
to see and to go back over 200 years to the history and formation of 
our country, to focus on it and to think about it and reflect on it.
  When the Constitutional Convention was held, just up the Delaware 
River from where I live in Wilmington, DE, and up in Philadelphia, 
whenever the Founding Fathers were getting into a tough time trying to 
come to consensus or agreement on one issue or the other that they were 
grappling with, a lot of times they would take a break and pray about 
it. When the inauguration of President Washington occurred in New York 
City, when they finished the inauguration, they didn't go off and hold 
big parties and balls, but they actually went to a church and prayed 
together and had a worship service. In fact, I am told over in the 
House of Representatives, when our country was young, President 
Jefferson was participating in worship services held there. Even now, 
207 years later, we still begin each day's session here in the Senate, 
as they do in the House, with a prayer. We have Bible study groups that 
meet on Thursday with the Senate Chaplain, Barry Black. We have done 
that for a number of years. Senator Coleman, who has been one of our 
leaders in a Wednesday morning prayer breakfast, and Mark Pryor from 
Arkansas have led that for a number of years.
  So faith, from the beginning of our foundation as a country, has been 
important to us, to guide us as a nation, and to guide us today in our 
own personal lives.
  When the Constitution was written and the Bill of Rights was written, 
the idea was not to establish an organized religion; the idea was to 
make sure people were free to practice whatever faith they wanted, and 
to be respectful of people of different faiths and the fact that people 
can worship as they see fit or choose not to worship at all. One of the 
strengths of our Nation is our faith, but another of the strengths of 
our Nation is the respect we have for people of different faiths. We 
have people in this body who are Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. We 
worship the same God, just a bit differently.
  One of the things we try to do during the course of the week is to 
use our faith. Whether we happen to be Presbyterian, Mormon, or Jewish, 
how do we use that faith to help guide us in the policies we adopt for 
our country and for the people we represent? I feel fortunate to live 
in a country where we are free to worship God as we see fit. I think 
there is a real opportunity here for us in the Senate as we try to put 
our country back together and begin to work together after a rough-and-
tumble election to find ways that we can use our faith to figure out 
our path, and to better ensure the people in this country have health 
care, that folks have decent jobs, that folks get a good education, and 
that we can bind the wounds we have opened over the last several months 
and to move forward as a nation.
  I say how pleased I am to have a chance to work with Senator Coleman 
from Minnesota and how much I appreciate the great leadership he has 
shown in bringing a bunch of us together on Wednesday mornings. I 
usually can't get here on Wednesday morning. I go back and forth on the 
train to Delaware almost every night, so I can't be there for many 
Wednesday mornings for that type of fellowship. But I oftentimes join 
my colleagues, including Senator Lincoln of Arkansas and others, on 
Thursday right down the hall here for a Bible study group that is a 
little bit like an adult Sunday school class with the Senate Chaplain, 
affording us the opportunity to read scripture together, reflect 
together, to pray for one another, and to be nourished spiritually.
  I am delighted to be here with Senator Coleman today, and I thank him 
for his leadership.
  Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Carper for his 
leadership. Next week is actually National Bible Week. I think it has 
been celebrated since 1941. The Senator from Delaware is one of the 
cochairs of that. Part of what I think is the purpose of it and the 
importance of it is to reflect a little bit on the value, the 
importance of the Bible and of faith in our lives. And we do bring 
different faith perspectives and different historical perspectives. I 
have a great sense of almost envy a little bit about being from a State 
that goes back to the very beginning, to the time of the Founders. The 
Minnesota journey has been a little briefer journey, a challenging 
journey when the early settlers were coming out and landing. It was 
pretty cold in the winter and it could be blistering hot in the summer. 
You kind of reflect on your own mortality. To this day, we stand now in 
the 21st century, and one of the things faith does--and we heard it 
from the Chaplain, if you listened to the Chaplain's intonation when 
the prayer began, calling upon God for wisdom, in a sense humility, 
that even in this august Chamber it is important for us and our 
colleagues to have. I think faith gives you that, requires that of you. 
Alvin Toffler, in ``Future Shock,'' talked about the geometric rate of 
change--everything is moving so quickly, and reflected in that is the 
importance of some island of stability. One of the things that faith 
does for those of us in this body is, in a sea of change, it provides 
us with stability. It is an island. Everything else is moving very 
quickly around us, but if you look into the Bible, look into the Hebrew 
Torah, you find those kinds of rooted values--the social compact, the 
necessity to help the poor, the necessity to raise your voices on 
behalf of those who are oppressed, in bondage. All those values are 
rooted in these books that we still, then, reflect on and study today. 
I think it is important for us to do that.
  One of the things, by the way, we have been doing is we have a 
National Prayer Breakfast. Senator Pryor and I got to chair that this 
year. I recntly put into the Congressional Record the entire program, 
the transcript. I urge my colleagues to read it, take a look at it. 
There are fascinating reflections from King Abdallah from Jordan. The 
rock star Bono was the chief speaker. He said he is not a man of the 
cloth, unless your cloth is leather, but then he went on to talk about 
his own faith journey. He went on to say he used to wake up all the 
time and pray that God blessed a certain thing that he did. Now what he 
talks about is looking at and kind of putting his efforts into the 
things that God wants

[[Page 22122]]

done, that He has already blessed, trying to figure out what is the 
right thing to do.
  At a time when the partisan divide is so great--we see it on C-SPAN--
what I think our faith has done, what it does for my colleagues and for 
me in fellowship with my colleagues is, for those brief--those moments, 
I would not say brief moments; actually, they are extended moments--it 
allows us to get past that and recognize what is in the heart of a 
colleague.
  In the end, I hope it is a mitigating factor, something that then 
lessens the divide that we see so often played out on the screen and 
played out on TV. The things that bind us are so much more powerful 
than the things that separate us. We do it, I believe, with a sense of 
humility.
  I was the mayor of Saint Paul, MN, the capital city. We say Saint 
Paul is the city of two cathedral domes. There is the dome of the State 
capitol and then the dome of the magnificent Cathedral of Saint Paul. 
The dome of the cathedral is on the highest plane of the city, and I 
say it is a reflection of who is in charge, and it is not the Governor 
or State legislature, if we reflect on that in a positive way.
  There are mad men who use religion and holy books to do terrible 
things, but those are mad men. That is not what faith is all about. At 
a time of great change and the world moving so quickly, I know for me, 
personally, and my colleagues, we find refuge, we find solace, we find 
a sense of peace in reflecting upon the traditions that brought us to 
this floor, to this moment, and hopefully that allows us to operate in 
a way in which we do those good things--those good things that we see 
ourselves.
  One of my favorite quotes is from Maimonides, who says each of us 
must act as if the world were held in balance and any single act of 
goodness on our part could tip the scale. I believe that every day of 
my life. That is what faith brings to me and brings to us.
  I see my colleague from Arkansas is here. Yesterday, we were visiting 
the new Senators, our new colleagues, and kind of moving them to this 
family. I will, again, say to my new colleagues that I urge them, on 
the floor of the Senate, to participate in the National Prayer 
Breakfast. The President is there, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 
members of the Supreme Court and leaders from 170-something countries. 
This is not just a Senate thing or a U.S. thing, this is a global thing 
of great importance, as we saw in our last prayer breakfast, where you 
have King Abdallah, a direct descendant of Mohammed, Norm Coleman, a 
Jewish boy from Minnesota, and Mark Pryor, a Christian from Arkansas, 
coming together on the platform. I hope that has meaning beyond that 
single day.
  With that, I see my colleague from Arkansas and yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I am so proud to join my colleagues this 
morning, and I especially thank my colleague from Delaware for his 
service as the Senate chairperson of the National Bible Week this year 
and for preserving time this morning for our observance of this annual 
celebration. I also want to say a very special thanks to my colleague, 
Norm Coleman, the Senator from Minnesota, who does a tremendous job. We 
work together on so many different things, but yesterday it was great 
to be able to sit down and visit with the new Members, the new Senators 
coming into this body and talk to them about how to keep their life 
rich; not just to do their jobs as Senators but to take care of 
themselves and to make sure that their journey in life stays strong. We 
all know, in this journey that we all share on this Earth, this 
incredible blessing we have been given to live this journey here on 
Earth, if we keep that journey strong, then we will always be better 
Senators.
  I could not have found a better partner in communicating that than my 
good colleague from Minnesota, and I appreciate him so much for that.
  I am very grateful to be here to speak about the Bible, in 
recognition of this annual National Bible Week and certainly its 
importance in my life, what it has meant to me. In my family, growing 
up in east Arkansas, my dad was a farmer. We are a seventh-generation 
Arkansas farm family. We go back to our roots there along the 
Mississippi River. Actually, the first Lambert, which is my maiden 
name, who came to Arkansas was a Presbyterian minister who was sent as 
a missionary to the Native Americans who lived in that area. It was 
long before Arkansas was a State, and again it is a huge part of my 
heritage where, as a Presbyterian minister and a Christian, Rev. Jordan 
B. Lambert came across the border as a missionary to carry his faith 
into the West.
  In my family, we were all introduced to the Bible at a very early 
age, and we were taught how to turn to its teachings early and often 
for guidance in our daily lives and what we needed to make this 
journey, our journey, each of us, our individual journey on this Earth, 
a full one, one that not only was fulfilling for us but, more 
importantly, fulfilling to our fellow man.
  I can remember, as a young teenager, coming to Sunday school on 
Sunday mornings. I remember one of my Sunday school teachers who would 
take us every Sunday into our Sunday school room, and we made this huge 
Bible village out of clay and papier-mache. It was wonderful because it 
taught us so much of the times, of the Old Testament and the New 
Testament. It was incredible how we built this.
  I realize now, later in life, that that was a time to reflect, 
reflect on the writings and the times that the Bible brings to us 
because, as we sat there, very curiously and very diligently creating 
out of clay and papier-mache this Bible village, we talked. We talked 
to each other. We talked to the Sunday school teacher, the adult who 
was there to help guide us. As she read Scripture to us and we made 
these things, we talked about our experiences as young teenagers. We 
talked about what we were going through in school, the cruel words that 
others may have presented to us or the new student who had come to 
class and who was not being well received or someone whose family was 
ill or had a tremendous tragedy. We talked about these things as we 
created this village, and then we realized, through those Bible 
teachings and through those stories that we, too, were living that 
word--hopefully--and learning how better to live that word in our 
teenage years and in our adult years.
  Without question, for me, the Bible is the most profound book in 
life, and there is no doubt that its lessons shape the type of person I 
am; the type of person I strive to become each and every day, working 
hard to do my best; the type of parent I want as an example for my 
children as they grow up and they learn these stories; and the type of 
Senator I want to be to help lead this country.
  It is no secret to any of us that the Members of this incredible body 
are very blessed and fortunate in so many different ways. But what does 
that mean, exactly, and particularly to those who are scholars of 
Bible? I am not a Bible scholar, I wish I were, but I do look to the 
Bible for that guidance and as a part of my faith, as the Senator from 
Delaware said, it is a light. It is a lamp unto my feet. But the Bible 
teaches me: To whom much is given, much is required. If you look around 
throughout this body and realize how blessed we truly are, our devotion 
to public service, hopefully, comes from a desire to live by the types 
of teachings that the Bible gives us and that is to help the least 
among us. It doesn't just teach us to clothe those who are naked. It 
doesn't just teach us to feed those who are hungry. Those are the 
important parts. But I never shall forget a lesson I learned in person 
working in a soup kitchen in downtown Washington, cleaning up tables 
after we, our Bible study group, had served a breakfast, which we did 
on a monthly basis. I was cleaning up those tables and moving to what 
was the next thing in life, which was heading off to work, there was a 
man sitting at the last table and, as I began to break it down, I asked 
him:

       Are you still hungry? Is there something more that you 
     would like?
       No, just 10 minutes of your time. Could you just please sit 
     and visit with me for 10 minutes?


[[Page 22123]]


  I realized it was not just the nourishment that he needed. He needed 
his soul to be fed as well.
  If I think about all of the most important teachings in the Bible, I 
think about how important it is for us to nourish one another, 
Democrats to nourish Republicans and Republicans to nourish Democrats; 
how important it is in this body that we feed one another's souls with 
the kind of loving care that we are taught about in the Bible.
  As a Senator, I thoroughly believe that government can be a weapon of 
good, if we adhere to and follow the basic message of the Bible's 
teaching of love. I think that is, without a doubt, the most clear 
message that comes there--love, care, and respect for our fellow man.
  Perhaps my favorite Bible lesson proclaims: Let us not love in word 
but in deed and in truth. In an environment that gets way too 
political, and so often it does, it is so incredibly important for all 
of us to look to that lesson.
  I thank you, Mr. President, and especially thank my colleagues, for 
coming here to recognize what an important role the Bible does play in 
so many of our lives and what a wonderful opportunity it gives us to 
nourish each other's soul on a daily basis.
  I yield to the Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, how much time do we have on our 20 
minutes?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 55 seconds.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?
  Mr. CARPER. Of course.

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