ybvdadminuserWASHINGTON (RNS) — House Speaker Mike Johnson has launched an effort to select a new House chaplain, working with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on a framework to select a new person to fill the post just days after the current chaplain offered a Jan. 6 prayer asking God to help lawmakers defend against “enemies within.”
Punchbowl News first reported the potential change last week, citing unnamed sources and noting the current chaplain, the Rev. Margaret Kibben, is now listed as “acting chaplain.” Johnson’s office confirmed to Religion News Service on Sunday (Jan. 12) that the speaker is moving to find a new chaplain and that he is working with the minority leader to develop a process. The office did not provide a reason for why Johnson is seeking a new House chaplain.
Nor did Johnson’s office respond to requests to confirm another piece of Punchbowl’s reporting — namely, that Johnson, a conservative Southern Baptist, is allegedly considering Becky Tirabassi, a nondenominational Christian and co-pastor of Viewpoint Church in Newport Beach, Calif., as the new chaplain. Tirabassi pastors the church with her husband, Roger Tirabassi.
Tirabassi, who served as a guest House chaplain in 2017, did not immediately respond to efforts to confirm the report, but she would be a shift for a position that has most recently been filled by clergy with a background in formal chaplaincy, which typically requires training in how to work with people of multiple faiths.
According to her Instagram page, Tirabassi visits the U.S. Capitol regularly and posts devotionals from “The Lead House,” a location in Washington she established in 2019 for members of Congress to “pray for revival in our nation.” While Tirabassi often avoids explicit political topics in her podcasts, she has repeatedly called for a “revival” in the U.S., which she described in a September podcast as a nation “in decline and in trouble.” She has also asked her followers to pray that lawmakers “turn to God” and produced a livestream on Election Day last November.
“For those who live in a place where God has been thrown out of schools and courts, we need to bring God back,” Tirabassi, the author of numerous books and a study Bible, said. “So our voting matters, on who will bend their knee and bow their heart to God — that would be my litmus test.”
In addition, during an Instagram Live broadcast on Jan. 6, 2021, Tirabassi said she participated — via FaceTime, as she was in California — in a prayer walk around the U.S. Capitol that morning. Tirabassi did not immediately respond to a request to clarify whether the prayer walk was an independent effort or one of multiple “Jericho Marches” staged around the Capitol at the time, which were led by supporters of Donald Trump who prayed that God would overturn the 2020 election results.
If Johnson, who was re-elected to the speakership earlier this month, moves forward with the effort, it would oust Kibben, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister and retired rear admiral who previously served as the chief of chaplains in the U.S. Navy. Kibben was appointed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, in 2020 and became the first female House chaplain in U.S. history.
Asked about her potential replacement, Kibben told RNS, “The situation is not mine to comment on, except to say, I serve at God’s pleasure.”
Kibben’s transition into the job was unusually turbulent. Mere days after assuming the post, hundreds of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, ransacking the building and sending all of Congress fleeing to secure locations. In an interview with RNS at the time, Kibben said the situation reminded her of combat, and she offered emergency counsel to lawmakers throughout the day. Among other things, Kibben prayed before the House chamber as members frantically placed emergency gas masks over their faces, with the chaplain asking God to place a “hedge of protection” around lawmakers.
Since then, Kibben has garnered headlines for being outspoken in her prayers delivered before the House assembly, such as when she asked God to “forgive” lawmakers for failing to unite around pandemic relief legislation in 2021.
More recently, however, she raised eyebrows for a prayer she offered on the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The event only featured Democrats and did not include Johnson, who was among the 147 members of Congress who objected to the 2020 election results the day of the Capitol attack. Standing near a window in the U.S. Capitol where rioters first forced their way in years earlier and flanked by Democrats Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Kibben called on God to remind believers to “serve you carefully and faithfully, to deal with all that come across the threshold — enemies within, enemies from without our own country.”
After the prayer Schumer said he hoped he and his fellow Democrats would “serve as an example to our Republican colleagues,” adding, “We are not election deniers. We lost the election, we regret it, but we believe in the strength of our democracy, and that when you lose an election, you roll up your sleeves and try to win the next one.”
Removing a House chaplain is sometimes easier said than done. In 2018, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan asked then-House chaplain the Rev. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest, to resign. Conroy initially agreed, but then retracted his resignation after lawmakers informed him he was voted into his position instead of appointed, and expressed in a letter to Ryan outrage with what he said were reasons given to him for his replacement — namely, that a Ryan aide had allegedly suggested “maybe it’s time that we had a Chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic.”
Conroy ultimately kept his position until 2021, when he stepped down after 10 years of service.
