Reverend Kevin Kitrell Ross
Unity of Sacramento
Sacramento, CA
Sponsor: Rep. Ami Bera, (D-CA)
Date of Prayer: 06/22/2017
One Minute Speech Given in Recognition of the Guest Chaplain:
Mr. BERA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the House to our guest chaplain, Reverend Kevin Kitrell Ross, Senior Minister of Unity of Sacramento.
Kevin is regarded as a respected interfaith social justice leader,
committed to building bridges of understanding and cooperation across
race, culture, class, and religious lines.
Whether in his role leading one of the Nation's most diverse and integrated congregations, conducting diversity and implicit bias trainings, or being an outspoken activist for healing the crisis between law enforcement and communities of color, Kevin is dedicated to
strengthening communities through dialogue, direct encounter, and
education.
A South Side of Chicago native, Kevin is a Morehouse College
graduate, a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum, a member of the Interfaith Council of Sacramento, and a three–time delegate to the Parliament of the World's Religions.
Kevin and his wife, Anita, have three children and reside in Elk Grove, California. Anita is the founder of Women for Equality. They are both committed to building a world that works for all.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in welcoming Reverend Kevin Ross and thank him for offering today's opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Opening Prayer Given by the Guest Chaplain:
May we turn within and look higher to the God of our understanding and pray.
Loving Presence, we invoke from the celestial balconies the witness of the pioneers of our progress whose bloodied journeys marshaled unprecedented faith and birthed a new nation of radical inclusion.
Bless these sons and daughters of promise gathered in this, the people's House. Let them reach higher for crowns of conscience to exemplify compassion and bring from their districts to their desks sharp pencils that carve on their hearts the faces of freedom that they represent.
Let this House be an incubator for our best ideals, not a prison for our poorest politics.
Let these heroes and sheroes of the people's House summon the intellectual imagination and intuitive navigation to serve bolder together and break through the ideological gridlock that arrests the potential of our great Republic.
Let these innovators of cooperation and builders of the beloved community reunite these States of America and lead the way for a world that works for all.
This is enough. In the name of a love supreme we pray, and so it is. Amen.
To learn more about Members who have sponsored a Guest Chaplain, please visit the Congressional Biographical Directory