Faith and Law

On June 27, 2003, Rear Admiral Barry C. Black (Ret.) was elected the 62nd Chaplain of the United States Senate. He began working in the Senate on July 7, 2003. Prior to coming to Capitol Hill, Chaplain Black served in the U.S. Navy for over twenty-seven years, ending his distinguished career as the Chief of Navy Chaplains. The Senate elected its first chaplain in 1789.

Commissioned as a Navy Chaplain in 1976, Chaplain Black’s first duty station was the Fleet Religious Support Activity in Norfolk, Virginia. Subsequent assignments include Naval Support Activity, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland; First Marine Aircraft Wing, Okinawa, Japan; Naval Training Center, San Diego, California; USS BELLEAU WOOD (LHA 3) Long Beach, California; Naval Chaplains School Advanced Course, Newport, Rhode Island; Marine Aircraft Group THIRTY-ONE, Beaufort, South Carolina; Assistant Staff Chaplain, Chief of Naval Education and Training, Pensacola, Florida; and Fleet Chaplain, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Virginia.

As Rear Admiral, his personal decorations included the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal (two medals), Meritorious Service Medals (two awards), Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals (two awards), and numerous unit awards, campaign, and service medals.

Chaplain Black is a native of Baltimore, Maryland and an alumnus of Oakwood College, Andrews University, North Carolina Central University, Eastern Baptist Seminary, Salve Regina University, and United States International University. In addition to earning Master of Arts degrees in Divinity, Counseling, and Management, he has received a Doctorate degree in Ministry and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychology.

Chaplain Black has been selected for many outstanding achievements. Of particular note, he was chosen from 127 nominees for the 1995 NAACP Renowned Service Award for his contribution to equal opportunity and civil rights. He also received the 2002 Benjamin Elijah Mays Distinguished Leadership Award from The Morehouse School of Religion. In 2004, the Old Dominion University chapter of the NAACP conferred on him the Image Award, "Reaffirming the Dream -- Realizing the Vision" for military excellence.

Chaplain Barry C. Black is married to the former Brenda Pearsall of St. Petersburg, Florida. They have three sons: Barry II, Brendan, and Bradford.

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Paul Marshall is a research professor in the Department of Political Science as well as the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR).

Marshall was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, particularly religious freedom, including Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (2013, with Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea), Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (2011, with Nina Shea), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2007), Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt’s Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics (1998), Heaven Is Not My Home (1998), A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996) and the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997).

Marshall’s current research is focused primarily on understanding how Muslims and Christians are able to live and work together peacefully in Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Marshall is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances and has been featured on ABC Nightly News; CNN; PBS; FOX; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African and Japanese Broadcasting Corporations; and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest and many other newspapers and magazines.

Marshall also is a Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute, a Christian public policy think tank in Jakarta, Indonesia, and was previously a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Sharif Hidayatullah Islamic University (UIN), also in Jakarta.

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Vision, leadership, patience, strategic thinking - each is key to maximizing long-term success in our work and in our daily lives. But what is the best way to think about these often nebulous concepts, and how are they best practiced? Further, how do we persevere in the face of inevitable obstacles? Alan Sears, founder of Alliance Defending Freedom, presented the life of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II and the 34th President of the United States, and how Eisenhower's faithfulness and perseverance is a model for us all to follow if we want to be used by God to make a difference in the world.

"[Ike's] story has many important lessons that we can apply to our lives today as we seek to shape our futures to please God and to be all that we can be. And few things provide context better than understanding our collective past, learning from those that persevered and kept the faith often through circumstances that made no sense at all to enable us to live in freedom." - Alan Sears

As the first president, CEO, and general counsel of ADF, Alan Sears led all strategic initiatives from 1993-2017, strengthening alliances, forging new relationships, and developing the resources needed to ensure the ministry's capacity to respond to opportunities. Realizing the need for conservative lawyers, Sears created the world-class Blackstone Legal Fellowship leadership-training program which has since graduated more than 1,960 outstanding law students. At the same time, ADF has trained more than 2,000 lawyers to defend religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage and the family. Under Sears' leadership, ADF attorneys won more than three out of four cases and ADF has played various important roles in 52 victories at the United States Supreme Court.

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Never have U.S. atrocity determinations, which are uncommon to begin with, happened against a country as wealthy and powerful as China, lead by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). This bold justice initiative is galvanizing those around the world to rally against the atrocities taking place in Xinjiang Province.

Background reading on this topic:

• Organ Procurement and Extrajudicial Execution in China: A Review of Evidence. (By Matthew Robertson, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 3/10/2020)
• 2020 Judgment – Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China (China Tribunal, 3/1/2020)
• Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang (By Adrian Zenz, The Jamestown Foundation 3/17/2021)
• Who are the Uighurs and why is the US accusing China of genocide? (BBC, 2/9/21)
• Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape" (BBC, 2/2/21)
• A cultural genocide before our eyes (World Magazine, 2/2/20)
• Biden's Choice in China (First Things, 2/9/21)
• Keeping China accountable for Xinjiang (World Magazine, 1/29/21)
• There is now more evidence than ever that China is imprisoning Uighurs (The Guardian, 9/24/20)
• State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China (Foreign Policy, 2/19/21)

Ambassador Morse Tan served as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, the top position in the federal government regarding mass atrocity crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. As such, he led the efforts for the crimes against humanity legal determination and the genocide policy determination against the Chinese Communist Party, called "the single most important U.S. human rights measure of the past four years" (in First Things). Previously, he served as the youngest full professor of law at his institution, having published extensively, including the critically acclaimed book: "North Korea, International Law and the Dual Crises" (Routledge).

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