WASHINGTON (RNS) — Home Speaker Mike Johnson has launched an effort to pick out a brand new Home chaplain, working with Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries on a framework to pick out a brand new individual to fill the put up simply days after the present chaplain supplied a Jan. 6 prayer asking God to assist lawmakers defend towards “enemies inside.”
Punchbowl Information first reported the potential change final week, citing unnamed sources and noting the present chaplain, the Rev. Margaret Kibben, is now listed as “performing chaplain.” Johnson’s workplace confirmed to Faith Information Service on Sunday (Jan. 12) that the speaker is shifting to discover a new chaplain and that he’s working with the minority chief to develop a course of. The workplace didn’t present a motive for why Johnson is in search of a brand new Home chaplain.
Nor did Johnson’s workplace reply to requests to substantiate one other piece of Punchbowl’s reporting — particularly, that Johnson, a conservative Southern Baptist, is allegedly contemplating Becky Tirabassi, a nondenominational Christian and co-pastor of Viewpoint Church in Newport Seashore, Calif., as the brand new chaplain. Tirabassi pastors the church along with her husband, Roger Tirabassi.
Tirabassi, who served as a visitor Home chaplain in 2017, didn’t instantly reply to efforts to substantiate the report, however she can be a shift for a place that has most not too long ago been stuffed by clergy with a background in formal chaplaincy, which generally requires coaching in how you can work with individuals of a number of faiths.
Pastor Becky Tirabassi in a Jan. 12, 2025, Instagram put up. (Video display screen seize)
In keeping with her Instagram web page, Tirabassi visits the U.S. Capitol repeatedly and posts devotionals from “The Lead Home,” a location in Washington she established in 2019 for members of Congress to “pray for revival in our nation.” Whereas Tirabassi usually avoids specific political matters in her podcasts, she has repeatedly known as for a “revival” within the U.S., which she described in a September podcast as a nation “in decline and in bother.” She has additionally requested her followers to hope that lawmakers “flip to God” and produced a livestream on Election Day final November.
“For many who stay in a spot the place God has been thrown out of colleges and courts, we have to deliver God again,” Tirabassi, the creator of quite a few books and a research Bible, mentioned. “So our voting issues, on who will bend their knee and bow their coronary heart to God — that might be my litmus check.”
As well as, throughout an Instagram Stay broadcast on Jan. 6, 2021, Tirabassi mentioned she participated — through FaceTime, as she was in California — in a prayer stroll across the U.S. Capitol that morning. Tirabassi didn’t instantly reply to a request to make clear whether or not the prayer stroll was an unbiased effort or certainly one of a number of “Jericho Marches” staged across the Capitol on the time, which have been led by supporters of Donald Trump who prayed that God would overturn the 2020 election outcomes.
If Johnson, who was re-elected to the speakership earlier this month, strikes ahead with the trouble, it will oust Kibben, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister and retired rear admiral who beforehand served because the chief of chaplains within the U.S. Navy. Kibben was appointed by former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, in 2020 and have become the primary feminine Home chaplain in U.S. historical past.
Requested about her potential substitute, Kibben advised RNS, “The state of affairs is just not mine to touch upon, besides to say, I serve at God’s pleasure.”
Kibben’s transition into the job was unusually turbulent. Mere days after assuming the put up, tons of of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, ransacking the constructing and sending all of Congress fleeing to safe areas. In an interview with RNS on the time, Kibben mentioned the state of affairs reminded her of fight, and he or she supplied emergency counsel to lawmakers all through the day. Amongst different issues, Kibben prayed earlier than the Home chamber as members frantically positioned emergency gasoline masks over their faces, with the chaplain asking God to put a “hedge of safety” round lawmakers.
Since then, Kibben has garnered headlines for being outspoken in her prayers delivered earlier than the Home meeting, resembling when she requested God to “forgive” lawmakers for failing to unite round pandemic aid laws in 2021.
Home Chaplain retired Rear Adm. Margaret Kibben presents a prayer within the Home chamber in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (Video display screen seize)
Extra not too long ago, nonetheless, she raised eyebrows for a prayer she supplied on the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The occasion solely featured Democrats and didn’t embrace Johnson, who was among the many 147 members of Congress who objected to the 2020 election outcomes the day of the Capitol assault. Standing close to a window within the U.S. Capitol the place rioters first compelled their method in years earlier and flanked by Democrats Jeffries and Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer, Kibben known as on God to remind believers to “serve you fastidiously and faithfully, to take care of all that come throughout the edge — enemies inside, enemies from with out our personal nation.”
After the prayer Schumer mentioned he hoped he and his fellow Democrats would “serve for example to our Republican colleagues,” including, “We aren’t election deniers. We misplaced the election, we remorse it, however we consider within the energy of our democracy, and that whenever you lose an election, you roll up your sleeves and attempt to win the subsequent one.”
Eradicating a Home chaplain is typically simpler mentioned than carried out. In 2018, then-Home Speaker Paul Ryan requested then-Home chaplain the Rev. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest, to resign. Conroy initially agreed, however then retracted his resignation after lawmakers knowledgeable him he was voted into his place as an alternative of appointed, and expressed in a letter to Ryan outrage with what he mentioned have been causes given to him for his substitute — particularly, {that a} Ryan aide had allegedly instructed “possibly it’s time that we had a Chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.”
Conroy in the end stored his place till 2021, when he stepped down after 10 years of service.
