This is an archive of civic prayers offered by an appointed chaplain or designated guest chaplain for opening a legislative session of a governmental body. Initiating such meetings with a prayer may have started with the “Elizabethan Parliaments” presided over by Queen Elizabeth Ⅰ of England beginning in 1559. By the 18th century, the tradition had spread to Freemasons as a ceremonial custom for opening their Lodge meetings. Famously, Rev. Jacob Duché, Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, opened the First Continental Congress with a prayer, and so the tradition became woven into the fabric of the founding of the United States.

While the practice was early dominated by Christian clergy, Jewish leaders began asserting their requests for equal representation in American civic life around 1830. While existing research is not yet comprehensive, Jewish participation in this tradition appears to first arise in the state legislatures. Often left unrecorded in legislative records, around 1850, these prayers started getting more popular coverage in historic newspapers. In 1860, Morris Raphall, offered the first prayer of a rabbinic guest chaplain in the US House of Representatives, and in 1870, Isaac Mayer Wise offered the first prayer of a rabbinic guest chaplain before the US Senate. The civic custom couples easily with rabbinic Judaism’s long-standing practice of offering public prayers for the welfare of sovereign leaders. —Aharon Varady