[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14619-14620]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE GUEST CHAPLAIN

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, Senator Biden and I are delighted to 
welcome to the Senate today the Rev. Dr. Patricia Bryant Harris, who 
pastors at a church not far from where Senator Biden and I live in 
northern Delaware.
  In her prayer this morning, she called on God to grant us wisdom. It 
is not infrequently, when our Senators meet with our own Senate 
Chaplain, Barry Black, that he, too, prays for us for wisdom and 
encourages us to ask God for wisdom as we deliberate the issues that 
are before us. As Senator Biden and the Presiding Officer know, the 
issues before us this week have been difficult and we needed all the 
wisdom we could garner.
  I have been privileged to know Reverend Harris for close to two 
decades. She has had a career that included remarkable accomplishments 
in the private sector and then, somewhere in the 1990s, she decided she 
felt a calling from God to enter the ministry. She has done that as a 
Methodist pastor in our State and a series of assignments--actually an 
assignment that led her down to Salisbury, MD, and the Delmarva 
Peninsula, where she oversaw a great number of churches.
  As we could tell from her prayer, she is a loving, giving, caring, 
patient person. She is one who has reminded me, and I think reminds her 
congregants in her own home church in Marshalltown, that God wants us 
to do two things--if nothing else, to do two things: To love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind and to love thy neighbor as 
thyself.
  Barry Black, our Chaplain, oftentimes reminds us in the Senate--as 
Senators we ask how do we use our faith to help inform what we do as 
Senators, and he always takes us back to that second great commandment, 
and so does Reverend Harris, that we have an obligation to love our 
neighbor as ourselves.
  She also reminds me and reminds those who worship at her church that 
we have an obligation to those who are hungry--when they are hungry we 
have an obligation to feed them; when they are naked we have an 
obligation to clothe them; when they are thirsty we have an obligation 
to give them to drink; when they are sick and in prison we have an 
obligation, regardless of what our faith is, to visit them.
  Those are wonderful lessons, not just for the people in her 
congregations over the years; not just for those who worship in our 
State but wonderful lessons for us in the Senate.
  It is with great pride that Senator Biden and I welcome Reverend 
Harris today to help get us started on the right foot and to do not 
just the Senate's business, not just the business of our country but 
the Lord's business as well.
  With that having been said, I know Senator Biden is here and he wants 
to comment. I am delighted to welcome Senator Harris--Senator Harris? 
There was a Senator Harris, there may be another one someday too--I am 
delighted to join him in welcoming Reverend Harris today.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. The Rev. Dr. Harris is capable of being a Senator. She has 
the capability and competence to do any number of jobs I can think of.
  I compliment my colleague for inviting the Rev. Dr. Harris to open 
the Senate this morning. As you could tell by Senator Carper's 
reference to Reverend Harris, Senator Carper is a man of deep faith, as 
I know the Chair is and as I am. We share different faiths, but we 
share a common set of values, as almost all the confessional faiths do, 
not just the Christian faith which we share. I am a Roman Catholic, my 
friend is a Presbyterian, and Dr. Harris is a Methodist.
  The thing about Dr. Harris--and I will not take a lot of the Senate's 
time--the thing about Dr. Harris that has impressed me from the many 
years--my Lord, I think it may be more than a couple decades. I have 
known her a long time. She was an incredibly well-respected figure in 
my State before she went to the ministry--before. Since then, she has 
carried on that same path of excellence that she did prior to the 
ministry. But if I can take a page from my colleague's book in 
referencing Dr. Harris's opening prayer, she talked about wisdom, which 
she knows we need in abundance. But she also talked about--she used the 
word that, if I had to describe her, would be the word I would use. She 
talked about tolerance. The thing that

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most impresses me about the Rev. Dr. Harris is her literal--not 
figurative, not rhetorical--commitment to the notion of tolerance.
  She has such an expansive view of human nature. She has such a 
welcoming--not only faith but personality.
  I think if I had a wish, if the Lord came down and sat at my desk and 
said: Joe, you get one wish. What is the one attribute you would like 
to pervade this Chamber? Maybe even more than wisdom, it would be 
tolerance.
  Tolerance is not engaging in relativity. Tolerance does not mean we 
don't have strong beliefs and strong opinions and strong positions on 
faith. Tolerance is what not only our Christian religion teaches us but 
Judaism and Islam and Hinduism. It is about tolerance. It seems to me 
that is the single most lacking element in American society today.
  I think if you get to know her--you are not going to get to know her, 
I realize that is a bit of an exaggeration--I hope you get a chance to 
engage Rev. Dr. Harris today. She exudes the notion of tolerance which 
equates with her notion of equality. It gets to what--I will conclude--
my friend Tom said, the two great commandments: love thy God and love 
thy neighbor. This is all about loving thy neighbor. We are the single 
most heterogenous democracy in the history of mankind. It is unable to 
function--I look at the pages wondering: What is this old guy saying? 
This country is unable to function without the lubricant of tolerance. 
And Dr. Harris embodies that.
  I am honored to be here this morning with her. I, again, compliment 
my colleague on not only his comments but inviting Dr. Harris to be 
here and introducing her to all of you and to those who are watching C-
SPAN this morning, watching her.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________