The annual National Prayer Breakfast will take place in Washington, DC, this coming Thursday, February 2. It is not an event that is usually on most people’s radar. The only occasion it was on mine, the only time I can ever recall commenting on it, was three years ago, coinciding with the first impeachment and acquittal of President Trump, who spoke at the event (as presidents do). At that time, I wrote:
The annual tradition of the National Prayer Breakfast (originally called the Presidential Prayer Breakfast) goes back to 1953, the first year of the Eisenhower Administration. It is held every year on the first Thursday in February and often features speeches by special guests as well as the President. Out of an apparent desire on the part of Congress to return the event somewhat back to its original spirit, a new organization, the « National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, » will oversee the event this year, and the number of the attendees is being limited to members of Congress, the Administration, their families, and their guests. (It will still be live-streamed online and on C-SPAN.)
In the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries, for example, the presence of an Established Church facilitates religion’s decorative role in civil life – part of what Walter Bagehot called the « dignified » dimension of a country’s constitution. Even without the benefit of formal religious establishment, displays of religious ritual and, in particular, invocations of religious language and exercises of public prayer have been a ubiquitous part of American civic life from the very beginning. The National Prayer Breakfast is an honorable part of that long tradition. As its misuse in recent years by Republicans’ religious allies has made evident, however, the line between dignified prayer and idolatrous prayer can be an easy one to cross.
