Breakfast prayer wars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The way President Barack Obama sees things, Americans should be able to find unity in prayer -- even if they disagree on the details of faith and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Breakfast prayer wars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The way President Barack Obama sees things, Americans should be able to find unity in prayer -- even if they disagree on the details of faith and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Terry Mattingly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-02-15T11:01:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/\",\"name\":\"Breakfast prayer wars\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-02-15T11:01:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-02-15T11:01:55+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"The way President Barack Obama sees things, Americans should be able to find unity in prayer -- even if they disagree on the details of faith and\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Breakfast prayer wars\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\",\"name\":\"Terry Mattingly\",\"description\":\"On Religion\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. 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{"id":1811,"date":"2010-02-15T07:01:55","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T11:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2010-02-15T07:01:55","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T11:01:55","slug":"breakfast-prayer-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/02\/breakfast-prayer-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast prayer wars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The way President Barack Obama sees things, Americans should be able to find unity in prayer \u2014 even if they disagree on the details of faith and politics.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true in the current debates about health care, poverty and even gay marriage, he said, at the recent National Prayer Breakfast.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSurely we can agree to find common ground when possible, parting ways when necessary,\u201d said Obama. \u201cBut in doing so, let us be guided by our faith and by prayer. For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm, while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle \u2014 and I assure you I\u2019m praying a lot these days \u2014 prayer can also do something else. It can touch our hearts with humility. \u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cThrough faith, but not through faith alone, we can unite people to serve the common good.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while the president preached unity, this year\u2019s National Prayer Breakfast was surrounded by controversy. There were signs this event on the semi-official Washington, D.C., calendar may no longer be able to serve as a safe forum in which a wide variety of religious and political leaders can unite their voices. The breakfasts began in 1953 and every president since Dwight Eisenhower has taken part.<\/p>\n

Before the event, the leaders of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the White House and to Congressional leaders calling for a boycott. They also urged C-Span not to televise the breakfast. Meanwhile, a coalition of gay-rights activists and religious liberals announced a series of alternative \u201cAmerican Prayer Hour\u201d events in Washington and other cities nationwide.<\/p>\n

Both groups focused intense criticism on The Fellowship, the nondenominational Christian organization that sponsors the prayer breakfast and similar networking events in Washington and around the world. The key is that numerous Ugandan leaders are active in Fellowship activities in that country, including the politician who introduced anti-gay legislation that includes capital punishment for some offenses.<\/p>\n

The ethics group\u2019s letter accused this organization \u2014 often called \u201cThe Family\u201d \u2014 of being a \u201ccult-like secret society with unknown motivations and backing\u201d that preaches an \u201cunconventional brand of Christianity focusing on meeting Jesus \u2018man-to-man.\u2019 \u201d The American Prayer Hour coalition simply called it a \u201csecretive fundamentalist organization.\u201d The New York Times noted that the group has no \u201cidentifiable Internet site, no office number and no official spokesman.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, some religious conservatives have also expressed doubts about The Fellowship. In an investigation of its property holdings in and around Washington, World magazine called attention to The Fellowship\u2019s \u201cmuddy theology,\u201d its \u201cdistain for the established church\u201d and an emphasis on privacy that \u201cgrew into an obsessive culture of secrecy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing the participants in Fellowship events, Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma told World: \u201cSome of them are Muslims. Some of them are Christians. But they meet in the spirit of Jesus, so it\u2019s not a denominational thing, it\u2019s not even a Christian thing, it\u2019s a Jesus thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ultimate issue is that this organization needs to admit that it exists and talk openly about its activities and goals, said journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of \u201cThe Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.\u201d It\u2019s a sign of progress, for example, that many Americans who are active in the organization have rejected the Ugandan legislation and communicated their dismay to their contacts in Uganda.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the National Prayer Breakfast, the Fellowship\u2019s leaders \u201cshould go completely public,\u201d said Sharlet, by email. They should \u201cacknowledge their existence, the fact that this is their event, make their account of it accountable (it was not Ike\u2019s idea), explain the process by which people are invited and \u2026 make explicit that this is about consecrating leadership to Jesus. Everybody is welcome, but it\u2019s about Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n

This kind of transparency might accelerate what already seems to be happening. Some leaders \u2014 on the left and right \u2014 might reject the big-tent approach offered by the National Prayer Breakfast and create their own events, which could focus on more explicit messages about faith and politics.<\/p>\n

If the Fellowship\u2019s leaders are truly \u201cserious about what they\u2019re about,\u201d noted Sharlet, this \u201cwould be great by their lights. They would lose a lot of clout, but the prayer breakfast movement would at last become an actual movement, of many strands.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"