Dealer Seeks Blessed Paper Towels, Toilet Tissues in Rest Rooms
Collectors of sacred furniture are jockeying to obtain furniture in three Senate hearing rooms that was blessed by an evangelist in anticipation of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.
Evangelist Rob Schenck secretly blessed every piece of furniture in the Senate hearing rooms where Roberts will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.
“I can’t begin to tell you how valuable some of these pieces of blessed furniture are likely to become if Judge Roberts is confirmed,” said Grover Throckmorton, a Salem, Massachusetts collector and dealer in blessed furniture. He specializes in pieces that have been blessed within a political context.
Schenck, a Washington activist who heads of the National Clergy Council, a conservative Christian lobbying group, said he blessed the furniture as “an act of prayer, in preparation for this whole process.”
The secret blessing occurred before the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist and President Bush’s subsequent decision to name Roberts as Renquist’s successor.
“As you might expect, the elevation of Roberts to chief justice has increased the value of the furniture even more,” Throckmorton said.
Schenck did not reveal how he gained access to the three hearing rooms.
Abner Fitzgerald, a sacred furniture collector in Little Rock, Arkansas, said that some of his colleagues around the country had begun tapping their sources in Washington, seeking a way to get some of the furniture and hearing room furnishings after conclusion of the Roberts hearings.
“Such matters are very delicate,” he said. “You can’t just go to the General Services Administration or some other government agency and ask to buy something. No, sir. You have to have some good connections in high places. You have to navigate the bureaucracy. It can even be tricky to obtain something simple, like a water pitcher or a spittoon.”
Several dealers said the Holy Grail of blessed furniture from the confirmation hearings would be a chair that Roberts sat in or a glass from which he took a sip of water as sat at the table in the glare of television lights.
Throckmorton also expressed concern that Schenck might not have paid sufficient attention to precisely what pieces of furniture he blessed, what kind of prayer he said for each one, and when he delivered the blessing.
“For a piece of blessed political furniture to command a premium price, it must have a certificate of authenticity,” Throckmorton said. “You really need for it to be signed by the holy person delivering the blessing and it should provide as much detail as possible.”
Throckmorton said several dealers had been trying to contact Schenck and arrange for the creation of verifiable certificates of authenticity.
He also expressed his hope that Schenck had the foresight to go into the rest rooms near the hearing rooms and bless them.
“You’d be surprised at the kind of price that a single pristine paper towel might fetch fifty years from now if you have the right certificate of authenticity for something like the confirmation of a Supreme Court chief justice,” he said.