Senate Chaplain Barry Black hospitalized after brain injury
U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black was hospitalized after suffering a “subdural hematoma,” a bleeding near the brain that can occur after a head injury. He received care from the Capitol Physician, Dr. Brian Monahan, according to a statement by the Office of the U.S. Senate Chaplain.
Chaplain Black “suffered a medical emergency resulting from a subdural hematoma,” stated the Rev. Lisa Shultz, chief of staff for the Senate chaplain, last week. She added a note of confidence, saying, “We expect a smooth recovery.”
Shultz asked for prayers “for Chaplain Black, his family and our office.”
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Pastor Ted Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist World Church, responded to the news. “Please pray for the full health recovery of Admiral Dr Barry Black, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor...” he wrote on X.
Wilson said he managed to send a message through General Andrew R. Harewood, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, noting that he was able to leave a voice message of prayer for Black.
Wilson added he “was so pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call from Chaplain Black himself on Friday evening from the hospital as he shared how God had miraculously intervened in his life to spare him from a potentially much more difficult health situation.”
Wilson praised Monahan for the timely medical intervention. Monahan, he said, “had a distinct impression to call Chaplain Black to tell him to call an emergency number and get to the hospital.”
Wilson shared, “He is now on the road to recovery. … It appears that Chaplain Black may be able to join his family for the Christmas season in a few days.” He added, “Obviously, God impressed Dr. Monahan to make that phone call to Chaplain Black to save him from a much worse scenario.”
Black, 76, has served as Senate chaplain for 21 years. He is both the first black individual and the first Seventh-day Adventist to hold that position.
Before his appointment as the Senate’s 62nd chaplain, he had a long career in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of rear admiral and serving as chief of Navy chaplains. He took on the Senate role after being nominated by then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
In an interview with The Christian Post, Black reflected on his youth in Baltimore, Maryland, and the spiritual guidance he received from his mother, who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist.
He recounted, “I see the hand of God throughout my life,” sharing about narrowly avoiding a life of violence as a teenager. “Two of them [gang members] actually ended up getting life in prison for murdering someone,” he said. Black credited the Bible verse Proverbs 1:10 with steering him clear of dangerous entanglements. “Were it not for the grace of God, I would have probably been an accessory to murder.”
Black’s background includes growing up in a low-income household with a largely absent father and a mother who cared about Christian education, placing him and his siblings in a private Christian school. “We belonged to a church that emphasized and supported Christian education,” Black recalled in the interview. He spoke of early spiritual inclinations: “I’ve never wanted to do anything but ministry,” he said, attributing that calling to his mother’s prayers while she was pregnant with him.
