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Catholics have their first American-born Pope but in Washington, DC, Congress can't decide who they want to be their next spiritual leader on Capitol Hill.
Among the frontrunners is a Baptist pastor named Brad Wells. In 2015, he moved from a multi-decade mission in Papau New Guinea to DC with his wife and seven kids.
When Brad arrived, he had no church and no notion of how exactly he would make it work. Barack Obama was President and Paul Ryan was the Speaker of the House. Over the subsequent ten years, it's safe to say that politics in DC have seen some change. And Pastor Wells' church has grown from eight people (his family) to hundreds that meet every Sunday at an Old Civil War Hospital on the east side of Capitol Hill.
Conservative Baptist Mike Johnson is now the Speaker of the House and Trump has returned as the 47th President of the United States. Aside from 160 years ago when the country was split by kinetic war, this is arguably the most divided political landscape America has seen.
And that division is not solely reserved for the political domain; it has spilled into the realm of divinity too.
The current Chaplain is named Rev. Margaret Kibben, a minister of the Presbyterian Church and a former Rear Admiral in the United States Navy. Kibben was the first female anointed to the position since its inception in 1789. The position carries a salary of $200k per year and the responsibilities include delivering a prayer before the House enters session, and ministering to the spiritual needs of the 435 members and their staff. She was elected by a Democratic Congress in 2021 under then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Johnson recently demoted her to "acting Chaplain," which means that the search for a new spiritual representative is underway.
This has been framed as a purely partisan issue by the likes of news outlets like Bloomberg, [ [link removed] ] who edited brief quotes from Brad to make it look like he is one of Mike Johnson's henchmen. The article's graphic portrayed an indistinguishable figure standing in the shadow of one of the pillars in Statuary Hall, carrying what looks like the silhouette of a bible and glaring from the darkness with bright red eyes. Embedded in the article was a photo of Pastor Wells carrying a Bible in Statuary Hall, striding forward and wearing a dour look on his face. As someone who has been maligned by the media myself [ [link removed] ], I know how easy it is for photographers and editors to use a single momentary image in order to portray the narrative that fits their agenda. In this case, big surprise... Bloomberg portrayed Pastor Wells as a tall, menacing Bible toter bent on imposing his draconian views on the pillared halls. I've known Brad for three years, and have scarcely seen him not wearing a smile.
Full disclosure, I was saved by Brad and his ministry, baptized in front of the Civil War Hospital a week before my 34th birthday in 2023.
When I first showed up to Pastor Wells' church in 2022, I had peroxide-dyed hair and wore hungover bags under my eyes when I showed up for Sunday prayer.
Despite looking like some kind of David Bowie impersonating bum, Wells and his congregation welcomed me in with open arms. Meanwhile, my friends from DC and New York viewed my turn towards Christianity with skepticism because their agnostic worldview was rigid and dogmatic.
After hearing his sermon I was struck by how unapologetically he delivered his message, "The Bible does not say that women are beholden to men, it says they are beholden to one man: their husband." After the sermon I told the pastor, "Being a Baptist is punk rock!" While the media will have you believe that we live in a majority Christian nation, among the power centers that I grew up in--New York and DC--being a practicing Christian who believes the word of the Bible is counter cultural to say the least.
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(Continued)
Knowing Brad personally and as a pastor, I sat down with him to get his version of the story rather than reducing it to two-word quotes.
Pastor Wells told me that when he arrived in Washington, the first members that he met were Nancy Pelosi with the late Civil Rights leaders Elijah Cummings and John Lewis. "This lady just walked right up to me and grabbed a hold of my arm and looked up at me and said, 'I just love what you're doing.' I recognized her, but to my shame I didn't know her name. I was brand new." That the Pastor did not recognize the most famous Congresswoman in history reveals how much his perspective differs from all of us political animals who live in DC.
While Bloomberg portrayed Brad walking through Congress ominously, the Pastor described it differently, "I always have the Bible in my hand. That is really a token symbol. I am a man of the book my life goal is... I wanna speak the word of God. Between the Republican and Democrat, once you put aside these political motives and goals of the day, we all really have the same problems... I primarily work with personal issues rather than political ones." The Pastor told me that he works with Democrats every week. He also told me that he has met with the acting Chaplain Rev. Margaret Kibben and there is, "no bad blood."
At a time when politics has seeped into nearly every aspect of our culture, Wells relies on that Bible he always carries rather than the flavor of the times. In my search for spiritual grounding after the chaos I endured during the civil unrest of 2020-2021, I personally shopped around multiple churches in DC. I was turned off by the fact that these churches cloaked Biblical story with the social and political dispositions of our present times. I wasn't a Christian yet, and in my spiritual yearning, I didn't want someone to apologize for what's in the Bible. I wanted them to tell me what it said and then let me decide for myself. That's why I ended up at Graceway with Pastor Wells. When I was working through my discipleship I asked him over lunch one day, "Pastor can I be a Christian if I believe Jesus existed, that he performed miracles, but I am still trying to wrap my head around whether or not he rose on the third day?" He replied simply, "absolutely not."
This anecdote demonstrates that Pastor Wells cares more about what the Bible says, and less about what other people think. That is becoming increasingly rare these days, as more organized sects of Christianity try to appease the increasingly secularized and modernized West.
While Catholics answer to the Diocese and the Pope in Rome, American Baptists are completely decentralized. Ironically, Pastor Wells’ strict adherence to the words in the King James Bible also emphasizes the importance of an anti ecclesiastical approach to the world, one that focuses on the individual’s free will rather than the dogma of the church or the culture war that's raging in the digital and political spheres.
We finished our conversation discussing the issue of religious freedom, "The choice is yours. There are some decisions we don't get to make, God made those decisions for us: our parents, our nation. But there are many other decisions we must make. These must flow from religious liberty. If we don't have religious liberty, individual decisions will be man-handled by somebody else. These decisions do not belong in our country—the freedom of the individual citizen must be maintained right from the top. So, what is the Baptist position on religious liberty? We are ultimately accountable to God and everyone must stand and give an answer to his Creator for what they do."
We are yet to see any white smoke emanate from the conclave of 10 Congressman that are searching for a new Chaplain on Capitol Hill. In 2025, it is plainly evident that the political gamesmanship in our alabaster city has creeped its way into our families, our communities, and yes, our churches too. At a time like this, it is important to remember that the Bible is not partial to Red or Blue. It remains unchanged by elections. Jesus focused more on guiding sinners to make their own choice towards God, rather than extolling the virtues of those who already found the Light.
We live in a fallen world and now more than ever it is important that we have religious leaders who stand up for what they believe to be the truth, rather than pandering their message to what they think the post-modern man wants to hear. God forbid our Congressmen and women decide to do the same. As we concluded our conversation, Pastor Wells told me, "The answer is not political, but Biblical, not in division but divinity."
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