It's Sunday

On its face, the National Prayer Breakfast is a serene, bipartisan event full of spiritual reflection.

But over the years, the breakfast has also been a source of controversy — full of shadowy fundraising, behind-the-scenes lobbying and even infiltration by a Russian spy.

So lawmakers now have taken it out of the hands of the secretive Christian evangelical group that has run it for decades — the International Foundation, also known as the Fellowship Foundation or "The Family," a name popularized in recent years by a book by the same name and a 2019 Netflix docuseries based on it.

  NPR

It shouldn't even be allowed to exist.

"When Sen. [James] Lankford, [R-Okla.], and I were co-chairs of the National Prayer Breakfast a number of years ago, there were a lot of questions raised about the finances, about who was invited, about how it was structured," said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and frequent participant in the prayer breakfast. "And we frankly had to admit, as co-chairs, we didn't know as much as we felt we should have."

Inexcusable.

With Coons' and several others' help, a new, nonprofit group was formed — the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation with the sole purpose of putting on the signature event. It's headed by former Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who said the first big change, in addition to the new legal status, is it will be smaller and more controlled.

And it will become infiltrated and used in the same way as it has been.

"We expect there to be maybe 300 people in attendance as opposed to like 3,500 in years past," Pryor said. "So it's going to be just members and plus-ones. ... And hopefully it'll be a smaller, more intimate gathering."

So 300 possibilities to improperly influence policy with religion.

The event is also being moved from a prominent Washington hotel to the U.S. Capitol complex.

Absolutely inappropriate.

The changes will essentially wall off members of Congress from mixing with any unforeseen guests who present potential conflicts of interest — or worse.

It is still a religious event in a supposedly secular government.

The article has some short history on both the National Prayer Breakfast (started by Dwight Eisenhower and Billy Graham) and "The Family". If you haven't seen the documentary on the International Foundation, you should check it out if you have Netflix. (If not, you can read a synopsis and analysis on it at The Atlantic here*, a New Yorker article** titled "Frat House for Jesus", or read the book by Jeff Sharlet on which it's based.) It's creepy (the organization being essentially a secret society) and should be an outrage to everyone who believes in a democratic republic free from secrets and religious dogma and influence.

"I do think there were concerns raised and expressed by members of both parties, both houses, about a range of different issues," Coons said. "Some involved who were the invited guests. Some involved the book and a Netflix documentary that you referenced. Some just involved a lack of clarity from an ethics perspective about how the event was structured and organized."

It certainly doesn't mean the Fellowship's influence still won't be entrenched in Washington. It will continue to hold its own event at a D.C. hotel and will beam in the speeches of the event for the gathered audience.

[...]

There is also a question of just how much of a break from the past the new foundation is, considering several of its board members have ties back to the Fellowship Foundation. That includes Stan Holmes, who is a board member of the Core Fellowship Foundation and has been involved with not just the National Prayer Breakfast but the House and Senate prayer breakfasts, which are closed to the public, for more than 40 years.

[...]

There has also been criticism of the new iteration of the breakfast because, even though Pryor and others say people of all faiths are welcome, it still seems to be very much rooted in Christian evangelicalism.

The new foundation's website, for example, notes in explaining the breakfast's purpose:

"...[O]ur annual Breakfast is an opportunity for Members of Congress to pray collectively for our nation, the President of the United States, and other national and international leaders in the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago. Every president, regardless of party or religious persuasion, has joined since. All faiths are welcome."

No doubt people of other faiths - or no faith - will feel comfortable with praying to Jesus of Nazareth, eh?

A little less than two-thirds [of Americans] identify as Christian, down from 90% 50 years ago.

And yet, we are obviously still being controlled in politics and policy by the one-third.

"I think they struck the right balance," Coons said, "and that's a balance that delivers transparency and accountability to the members of Congress for this new foundation for a much smaller event."

I suppose that even outside the government, if these people got together for a religious event as private citizens, they would still mingle government business in. Like business getting done on golf courses. But it's still highly inappropriate for them to do it in the guise of a governmental body such as Congress.

The reforms put in place were enough for lawmakers like Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who had boycotted the event for years in wake of the controversies, but will now attend.

I think he shouldn't. But maybe he can be a lay spy.

A spokesperson for Kaine said in an emailed statement that the senator stopped going after 2016 because it had "become an entertainment and lobbying extravaganza," but it has "now been completely reformed to be an opportunity for members of Congress to gather with the president and vice president once a year to reflect upon the deeper meaning of our work."

Fine, but do it without the prayer and the religious overtones.

* From The Atlantic article:

The Family tries to expose an institution whose most prized currency has always been secrecy, delving into its origins at the hands of a Norwegian minister and fervent capitalist, its ties to some of the world’s nastiest autocrats, its more recent amity with Russia, and its eager embrace of Trump as a “wolf-king” who can change the course of history.

[...]

But there’s something fascinating, and tragic, in the way it documents a group of ordinary men so easily convinced that they’re exceptional, even to the point of being handpicked by God like ripe fruit in a celestial grocery store. [...] . That politicians are, instead, chosen by voters is an inconvenient fact that keeps interrupting so many careers. But it is, nevertheless, a fact [...] .

  The Atlantic

They're working on that.

**From the New Yorker...

D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who has studied the ways in which evangelicals have become part of the American élite, was astonished by what he discovered about the Fellowship. “They are the most significant spiritual force in the lives of leaders—especially leaders in Washington—of any entity that I know,” he says. “They are mentioned more often in the interviews I’ve conducted than any other group. They have had a more sustained influence over the decades than any other entity. There is nothing comparable to them.”

  New Yorker

And just because they will no longer be officially sponsoring the National Prayer Breakfast by no means indicates they will not have the same influence. It only means it will be more hidden from the public.