Say a litle prayer for me

Last week was the occasion for the annual National Prayer Breakfast.    Hosted in Washington D.C., the event has become a fixture on the DC social and power calendar.  President Obama continued a tradition that dates back to Eisenhower and spoke the gathered clergy and guests.

I am of two minds about the National Prayer Breakfast.  On the one hand, I think it is a good thing for religious leaders to show that we are concerned with issues of policy and politics.  And on occasion, the breakfast has been an opportunity for speaking truth to power (think Mark Hatfield berating Nixon and Kissinger for the sin of the Vietnam War.)  I am a firm believer in Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state.  The point is to keep one from dominating the other and not to prevent the vocabularies of faith and citizenship from mingling in the same minds.

Then there is the other hand.  The National Prayer breakfast has, over time, devolved to a carefully vetted event peopled by like-minded “leaders” of the church.   The Fellowship Foundation continues to act as host of the gathering.   By most accounts, the Fellowship is a group of mostly evangelical social conservatives.  Because the group is so secretive it is difficult to know who exactly pulls the strings, but whoever they are they can get the President of the United States to show up every year. 

That is power.  And power rarely speaks truth to itself.

There is no religious test for citizenship in the United States.  However, there is a growing de facto litmus test measuring the adequacy of faith’s patriotism.  Through events like the National Prayer Breakfast, the doctrine of American Exceptionalism is celebrated and the power elite clothe themselves in the mantle of religious legitimacy.  

In a time when there is a great deal that the church should be saying to the powers of society,  it borders on the offensive that instead of standing up for the poor, outcast, excluded and downtrodden, these “church leaders” instead sat down and broke bread with those same powers.  Where were the poor?  Where were the foreigners living in our lands?  Where were the prisoners?  Where were the hungry, the thirsty, the suffering and the sick?  These are the people Jesus broke bread with.

Next year, on the first Thursday in February, there needs to be a real National Prayer Breakfast.  Our churches should fling wide their doors and break bread with whomever will come.  The table of fellowship should not be an invitation only table and prayer should not be reserved for the well-heeled and well-connected.