Sermon: Reflections on the National Prayer Breakfast

By Pastor Marcia Moret Sietstra

Presented Feb. 12, 2006 Crestwood United Church of Christ

Edited March 2006

Today I want to share some reflections on the National Prayer Breakfast that I attended last week. Since the Eisenhower administration, members of Congress, the president and thousands of invited guests have met annually in Washington, D.C. to ask God’s blessings on the nation and its leaders.

Although the breakfast starts at 8 am, we were advised to arrive at the Washington Hilton ballroom by 6:30 in order to get through security lines and be seated by 7:30. I wore a clergy collar, and was surprised to see only one other collar among the thousands of people we encountered. Seeing no collars, I wondered, “Where are all the Catholic priests? And where are all the Lutheran and Episcopal clergy, many of whom wear clergy collars to interfaith events?” I saw only one Jewish yarmulke, the skullcap worn by orthodox Jews. I saw very few people of color, except the Black and Hispanic waiters who served our tables.

What I did see were thousands of white, expensively dressed people of means. Not so surprising, given the high cost of registration and staying at the Hilton. Some of the people at the head table included Senator Joe Lieberman, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Sen. Barak Obama, Sen. Norm Coleman, Sen. Mark Pryor, and the rock star Bono. And of course, in due time President Bush and his wife arrived and were seated at the center of the head table. The audience included Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Senators Bill Frist, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as well as at least one member of Congress from our state.

The keynote speaker was Bono, who praised the president for U.S. aid around the world, but also challenged him saying, “You should be proud, very proud. But here’s the problem: There’s so much more to do. There is a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.” The singer is a spokesman for the ONE Campaign which seeks to eliminate extreme poverty worldwide. Bono said it’s unjust to “keep poor people from selling their goods while singing the virtues of the free market, to hold children ransom for the debts of their grandparents and to withhold medicines that would save lives out of deference to the Office of Patents.”

“God will not accept that,” he said. “Mine won’t. Will yours?”

Bono commended the audience members who tithe, but challenged us to increase our foreign aid contribution by 1 % of the federal budget, if we take seriously the laws of God. Sounding like a prophet, Bono said, “It is a matter of justice, not charity.”

My husband and I also attended the optional events, including the luncheon where King Abdullah II of Jordon spoke, and he was equally profound. On the subject of extremists in any religion who resort to violence, he said, “In every generation, people of faith are tested. In our generation, the greatest challenge comes from violent extremists who seek to divide and conquer. Extremism is a political movement under religious cover. Its adherents want nothing more than to pit us against each other denying all that we have in common. We must therefore heed the words of the New Testament: ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ (Rom. 12:21).”

In news accounts the next day, I discovered that following the luncheon the king met with a select group of evangelical leaders. His spokesperson explained that the king knows that if you want to talk about religion in a meaningful way in the United States, you have to talk with evangelicals.

These two speakers were the high points of the event…now for the low points. As I expected, nearly all of the prayers, the written materials, and the very structure of the event reflected a narrow, evangelical theology that held up Jesus exclusively as the one whom people of all religions can emulate.

According to an Associated Press article last year a New Jersey rabbi in attendance named Shmuel Goldin wrote to Norm Coleman, who is Jewish and a co-chair of this year’s breakfast, expressing his concerns about the registration material that said “Jesus Christ transcends all religions.” The phrase appears to have been removed from registration materials, but was still found in the materials distributed to those of us who stayed for the seminar, in a handout with advice for starting our own prayer groups. Goldin said he asked why there were so many references to Jesus if the breakfast were truly nondenominational. “That was one area we couldn’t come to terms on,” said Goldin.

I did a little research when I got home, and found out that in past years, the breakfast planners have been accused of being anti-Catholic. Perhaps that is why there is now a separate, annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, which the president also attends.

In conversation around the table, people generally assumed that we were radically right, politically and theologically. I met only one other clergy person in the entire two days. Nearly everyone I met belonged to an evangelical, non-denominational church or a denomination generally characterized as fundamentalist. There was a good deal of conversation about guests’ work, the networks they were part of, and the mission work many were involved in. The seminar I attended consisted largely of testimonies, and ended with the speaker weeping, and nearly everyone in the room kneeling in prayer. The consistent theme at the regional dinner and seminars was witnessing and evangelizing for Jesus. In an effort to find out why I couldn’t find any moderate, mainline, progressive or liberal Christians, I started asking questions. And I discovered that a helpful place to get honest answers was in the long line in the women’s restroom!

I asked the women near me in line how they got to the prayer breakfast. I’d been invited by our state’s new representative. Each member of Congress gets to invite 2 guests. I learned that each member of “the Fellowship” gets to invite 15. Many of the people I encountered come regularly, year after year, and some had been coming for as long as 25 years.

“What’s ‘the Fellowship’?” I asked.

“It’s the group behind the prayer breakfast, the group that runs it,” one woman explained.

“How does one join?” I inquired. One woman explained that no one officially joins. “You just get active at the local level by starting a prayer group that meets for breakfast and prayer and witnessing. Someone will recommend you.”

I asked about the organization’s purpose. One of the women explained, “We don’t really make any of this public. Not that we’re clandestine, but our real purpose is to witness to Jesus around the world, and we don’t want the wrong people knowing that’s what we’re up to, you know?”

Here is a little of what I learned about “the Fellowship.” It used to be called “the Family” and also goes by the name Fellowship Foundation. It is a large group of devoted evangelical Christians, who share a belief in Jesus as king. The Fellowship is described by journalists who have written about it as a heady mix of high octane networkers who control serious money, and who participate in international power politics. They own property all over the world, including a magnificent mansion in Arlington called The Cedars, which is used for hosting the politically powerful. Several former presidents have used it as a private meeting place for world leaders, and recently the presidents of Congo and Rwanda began their peace negotiations there. Its members extend to every branch of government, including senators, representatives, Bush administration officials and a former assistant secretary of the Air Force. The Fellowship owns another property at 133 C Street where they rent rooms to 6-8 congressmen at bargain prices. The congressmen dine together once a week to discuss religion in their daily lives. The Fellowship counsels legislators and others in high positions, and has served as a refuge for more than one senator going through marriage problems or other difficulties.

Just up the road from the Cedars, the Fellowship owns another lovely home called Ivanwald, where a group of young, male “believers” live and work. They own another home nearby called Potomac Point, for young female believers who are mentored for future leadership positions as well. A journalist named Jeffrey Sharlet spent several weeks as a young believer at Ivanwald, and then wrote an expose that was published in Harper magazine in March, 2003. He had access to some of their internal documents, and says, “They state their goals in their private documents pretty explicitly. A world leadership led by Christ. Every single world leader and politician making every decision under Christ’s will. And you could quibble over semantics, but I would say that worldwide theocracy is their goal.”

The Fellowship sponsors prayer breakfasts across the country. Its members typify American Evangelicalism, which former Sen. Jack Danforth calls, “the us-versus-them, my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God, velvet-fist variety of Christian evangelism.” The velvet fist is an apt metaphor because the folks I met do a lot of good, charitable work in the world, but they have a tight grip on power that reflects their claim to exclusive truth.

What’s wrong with the Fellowship’s relationship to the National Prayer Breakfast? The Fellowship, or the Family, as it was formerly known, is allowed to plan, organize and facilitate a national prayer breakfast that members of congress sponsor in principle. It controls the major share of the invitation list of nearly 4,000 guests. The Fellowship, comprised of conservative, Evangelical Christians, represents one segment of one religion in America, a segment that believes all other religions are inferior to theirs. In a world where respect for different religions is desperately needed, this is the group which is given privileged access to Congress and others via weekly prayer breakfasts on Capital Hill and the National Prayer Breakfast. King Abdullah’s private meeting with twenty Evangelical leaders following the breakfast demonstrates the kind of possibilities for access at this event. As the leader of a Muslim nation, it would have been preferable to have King Abdullah meet with leaders reflecting the rich pluralism of religions in America.

It is frightening to realize that this network of powerful people regularly advises the powerful leaders of government on how to “follow Jesus,” not because they are religious leaders or scholars—they are not—but because they are wealthy, powerful, and well connected. Christians widely disagree on how “following Jesus” translates into public policy, pointing to the need for a more qualified, diverse group of advisers. Equally troubling is the Fellowship’s presumption that devout people of the other great religions of the world need to “follow Jesus.”

How might Congress address these problems? First, if members of Congress are going to support and sponsor an event called the National Prayer Breakfast, it should reflect the diverse praying people of this nation, which includes far more people than Christian Evangelicals. The solution is to have the event planned by a broad based group of representatives from the many, diverse denominations that call themselves Christian AND representatives of other religions that represent a substantial number of Americans, including Jewish, Muslim, Native American, Hindu and Buddhist, for starters.

It is also important that the planners be persons who do not work secretly, but openly and cooperatively with representatives of all the religious groups in our nation in order to give congress a more balanced advisory group, at the prayer breakfast and in their small prayer groups on Capital Hill. Religion should inform our politics, but in an atmosphere of open dialogue and debate, with all religious groups truly “at the table.”

By ending the practice of granting favored status to the Fellowship, and by discontinuing its disproportionate access, Congress could avoid the risk of fostering the establishment of a state religion. It could also reassure a nervous world that not all Americans are willing to engage in a holy war to build a theocracy of any kind.

As I tried to put my finger on what bothered me about the prayer breakfast, I found myself reflecting on Jesus’ instructions to pray in private, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret; and your father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt. 6:5-6).

Some might say that the Washington Hilton ballroom is today’s equivalent of the ‘street corners’ on which hypocrites used to pray ‘so that they may be seen by others.’

The problem is not with being seen in prayer; the problem is praying in order to be seen. No doubt there are devoutly religious people at the National Prayer Breakfast who want nothing more than to earnestly pray for our nation. But no doubt, this event is also very much about ‘being seen’; it is about political access and influence, which runs both ways—i.e. the Fellowship network want access to legislators, and legislators want to be seen by this block of voters as being “religious.” The secrecy practiced by the Fellowship, the control of the event, the lack of any authentic ecumenism—all suggest that this group is not gathered simply for humble prayer, but to extend their considerable power and influence.

The church has a great deal to lose in this relationship. The role of the Hebrew prophets is illustrative, for they consistently called the established powers to justice. The danger is this: it is hard to critique power when you are part of the power structure. Whenever religion is too closely allied with political power, it risks losing its prophetic voice. Fortunately, the rock star Bono was the prophetic voice at this year’s breakfast…not many would have been brave enough to subtly indict the president and congress for withholding justice and aid from so much of the world.

Mindful of our own fallibility, we more moderate Christians have been more humble about translating our beliefs into a political voice. We recognize that devout people of faith can come to different conclusions as to how faith is translated into ethical living and public policy. But we dare not passively allow one religious ideology to impose itself on the nation, with disastrous implications in a world that desperately needs religious tolerance and respect. Our work is cut out for us.