On January 6, 2021, Senate Chaplain Dr. Barry Black spent several hours in an undisclosed location with many United States Senators as they took shelter from insurrectionists who had overrun the Capitol building. In the wee hours of January 7, the legislature reconvened to finish its work and Dr. Black closed with a prayer for the country: “Use us to bring healing and unity to our hurting and divided nation and world. Thank you for what you have blessed our lawmakers to accomplish in spite of threats to liberty.”
From that prayer came the book A Prayer for Our Country, an illustrated prayer published by Zonderkidz. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Rev. Dr. Black about the book, his nearly two-decade tenure as Senate Chaplain, and how he walks the line between serving God and empire. It’s a fascinating conversation you do not want to miss.
The Conversation
This excerpt may be lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.

Josh Olds: Prayer is something that is central to your ministry. I think it’s appropriate that your latest book is a children’s book is about prayer. How did the idea for this book—A Prayer for Our Country—come about?
Barry Black: I was in the Capitol on January 6, I watched the entire day unfold. I arrived at the Capitol at 7am on January 6 and I left the Capitol at 5am on January 7. During that time, I had an opportunity to spend nearly four hours with senators—90% of our senators—at an undisclosed location. I had an opportunity to pray with them, and to minister to them. And at the end of the day, Vice President Pence asked me to close the entire Senate session with a prayer. And in that prayer, I talked about what we had experienced that day, the shedding of innocent blood, the loss of life, the quagmire of dysfunction, the threats to a democratic process.
An editor from Zondervan—and no doubt an insomniac—was listening and watching and said to herself, “We need to help our children learn to pray for their country as this Chaplain is praying for our country.” I’ve always had a passion for children, my mother taught me how to pray. So I got a call from Zonderkidz asking me if I would be interested in doing something like that, and I was enthusiastically interested. And that’s how I ended up writing A Prayer for Our Country. One of the primary motivations was something Billy Graham once said, he said, “We are one generation away from agnosticism.” In other words, if we don’t teach our children, a way to connect with the transcendent, with God, we are one generation away from no memory of God’s mighty acts in our history. No George Washington in the snow of Valley Forge, no Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention, saying, “Scripture says, Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Psalm 127.” Oh, Franklin, at that same convention, quoting from the Sermon on the Mound, I believe he said, “I’m an old man. But I believe that if a sparrow cannot fall without God, knowing it, that a republic cannot rise without his aid. And so I believe we should pray about this.” And they invited in clergy after as you could expect it, interminable debate, they invited in a clergy person to begin to pray on a regular basis. So the idea of the conception came after that horrific experience on January 6, and then an opportunity offered me by one of the editors from Zondervan kids.
Josh Olds: You’re writing it for a children’s book context, but as I was reading it, you know, you can you can read it, and see what children will take from it. But you can also read it and see what adults can take from it as well. It’s not a children’s book. It is a book that is my children’s publisher, with this is, you know, it’s not a childish prayer. But it is a prayer.