National Prayer Breakfast After-Action Report
As Trump and Democrats alike snub the Capitol Hill prayer breakfast, it's already sliding downhill
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Most people probably didn’t know there were two National Prayer Breakfasts on Thursday.
There was the big one at the Washington Hilton, grabbing all the headlines thanks to Presidents Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele. Then there was the other one, on Capitol Hill, virtually ignored.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The original National Prayer Breakfast started in 1953. A couple of decades ago, the organizers — the Fellowship Foundation, aka The Family — began racking up scandals. Journalist Jeff Sharlet and others began peeling open the history of the global shadow diplomacy that brought thousands of Fellowship insiders and wannabes to the Hilton every year to rub shoulders with U.S. politicians.
Democrats began bailing. In the wake of COVID, The Fellowship held a smaller version in 2022, ostensibly free of lobbyists, free of dictators and arms dealers, free of scandal. Ostensibly.
The small spinoff, run by the new NPB Foundation, took the National Prayer Breakfast name. The Hilton original returned in 2023, rechristened as the NPB Gathering. But the predictable conflation of the two let The Fellowship continue drafting off the prestige of the Hill version.
The question was, would Democrats continue showing up to either? The Fellowship still used its breakfast network for things like boosting Uganda’s LGBTQ+ death penalty and, just last month, bestowing upon Bukele — self-professed dictator and credibly accused wholesale abuser of human rights — a prayer breakfast of his own.
At first, the dueling events appeared to operate in harmony. (I was even cc’ed on an internal 2023 email seeking to prevent division between the two.) Trump spoke at both last year; first the spinoff, then downhill to the Hilton.
So this year’s breakfasts represented a stunning break.
Trump ghosted the Capitol Hill breakfast. He took what looked like the lion’s share of his cabinet with him to the Hilton.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not only spoke at the Fellowship’s breakfast, he delivered what Baptist minister Brian Kaylor said “represented the Christian Nationalist climax of the more than three-hour service.”
The Trump administration wasn’t alone ghosting the NPB Foundation’s Capitol Hill breakfast. So did three out of four congressional Democratic leaders. Only Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) showed up.
Last year, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) explained the absence of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is Jewish, as a scheduling conflict. This year no one bothered explaining his absence or that of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
Three Democrats spoke, all senators. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) co-chaired with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS). Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) also took the podium.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) could be seen in the audience, but I didn’t recognize any other Democrats. And I didn’t spot a single House member even in the audience. Which was small: Empty seats even toward the front.
According to an invitation I obtained, there was some form of breakfast at 7am, an hour before the program’s start time, but it’s not clear where it was or how lavish the spread. (Coons appeared to be noshing on something, so maybe there were pastries).
I’ve already written on my other (NSFW) Substack about the remarks from Trump and Bukele at the far bigger Hilton event staged by The Fellowship.
And two House Democrats did show up for this breakfast, taking the stage to address The Fellowship’s Hilton audience. At least one more joined a singalong of House members.
The two who spoke were Co-Chair Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) and Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA). The one who sang was Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY).
Although it wasn’t clear which National Prayer Breakfast they were talking about, the Interfaith Alliance on Friday published a video in which four House members — secular and religious, said they weren’t going.
One House member, Congressional Freethought Caucus co-founder Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), protested last year’s Hill breakfast, which took place in the Capitol Building. Last week, he responded to my report that this year’s would be co-chaired by Gillibrand, saying, “I’m dismayed that some Democrats still choose to play footsie with this scandal-plagued prayer breakfast movement.”
The other three who spoke to the Interfaith Alliance were past breakfast participants. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) spoke at the 2022 National Prayer Breakfast, before the split, and co-chaired the 2023 Hill breakfast.
Her co-chair was Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI). His prayer breakfast role was cited in a Fellowship congressional filing later that year to establish that addressing Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast would be part of Walberg’s official duties. The Fellowship flew him there, and in his remarks he urged Uganda to stand firm by its LGBTQ+ death penalty.
McBath told the Interfaith Alliance she’s done with the breakfast. She said she’s lost faith in it, alleging that “our faith has been hijacked by political ideologies.”
Another past co-chair, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO), also told the Interfaith Alliance he’s out. In the past, Cleaver, a minister, noted being a leader in The Fellowship’s weekly House prayer breakfasts.
Cleaver referred to one previous breakfast speaker attacking the Affordable Care Act and said he hasn’t been since. That appears to be a reference to Dr. Ben Carson, whose political keynote speech assailing Pres. Barack Obama to his face made Carson a right-wing cause célèbre1.
As I previously reported, Cleaver apparently disappeared from The Fellowship’s host committee several years ago.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), a longtime party leader, also said he’s bailed on the breakfast. “Several years ago, I noticed it was taking on a decidedly political, shall we say, tone,” he said. “The whole thing, it just got to be one big farce.”
Records I obtained for the 2016 and 2018 prayer breakfasts, prior to McBath’s election, indicated that Cleaver attended in 2016 but Clyburn and Huffman did not. None of them attended the 2018 breakfast.
The rejection by McBath, Clyburn, and Cleaver is especially noteworthy. As Democratic leaders — then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) — backed away, The Fellowship apparently sought to fill the gap with Black Christian members of Congress, especially newer ones such as McBath and then-Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), an ally of longtime Fellowship insider Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), her state’s senior senator.
So to have Clyburn, an influential lion in the House, and McBath, a recent face of the breakfast, publicly criticize the event — without even carving out an exception for the Hill iteration — could send a strong signal to Black members of Congress, only one of whom, Jackson, appears to have participated in either breakfast this year. (Jackson ended up delivering a mild rebuke to Trump’s use of his platform to assail Democrats.)
And now, after just a few years, the Hill event already appears to be withering. It wasn’t held in Statuary Hall, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) allowed it for the previous couple of years. It was held in a less prestigious chamber in a Senate office building, not the U.S. Capitol Building.
There was no guest speaker. No Andrea Bocelli to fill the seats by lifting the room in song. No president.
If it was livestreamed by C-SPAN or anyone else, I couldn’t find it, although the full event did show up on the YouTube page of Senate Republicans. Even the NPB Foundation’s website doesn’t seem to have streamed it, doesn’t have video up of it now, and its page listing board members appears to have been offline since at least Thursday.
All of which raises the question of what a resurgent Fellowship breakfast might look like in the second age of Trump, at a time when U.S. officials no longer conceal Christian nationalism but tout it.
Back To Fundamentals
With Trump all to themselves, with three Democrats giving them legitimacy and at least a whiff of bipartisan officialdom, The Fellowship’s National Prayer Breakfast was back in all its glory Thursday. His glory.
Dictators were back in style.
I’ve already covered the back story of The Fellowship wooing and elevating Bukele. But there’s more to Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Felix Tshisekedi.
Less flagrantly than Bukele, Tshisekedi has been credibly accused of human-rights abuses. This includes failing to safeguard human rights, but also overseeing government persecution of dissidents and journalists.
There was money at stake, too, in Tshisekedi take the stage at the breakfast, although African media addressed it a lot better than U.S. media did.
As I wrote the day before the breakfast, African media had flagged the State Department — run by Fellowship insider Secretary Marco Rubio — planning a summit on critical minerals at the same time as the breakfast.
Not, apparently, coincidentally.
A trade publication reported beforehand that the summit would “coincide with the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, providing diplomatic leaders with another forum for informal talks and deal-making.”
It also provided Tshisekedi with a prestige boost for his domestic audience.
And while such wheeling-and-dealing was standard operating procedure in the back-room meetings of the old National Prayer Breakfast, this time, at the new, unleashed National Prayer Breakfast, God and mammon shared the stage.
In his address, Trump announced a new critical-minerals deal with the DRC.
UPDATE: I neglected to mention Ukraine’s typically robust use of the National Prayer Breakfast.
Back in 2024, I reported on how The Fellowship’s Ukrainian point man, evangelical Pavlo Unguryan, was a key player in lobbying efforts for U.S. aid and promised an evangelical Ukraine in return.
This week, Ukraine’s embassy has been posting about how The Fellowship’s National Prayer Breakfast was the hub of several activities to build U.S. support for Ukraine.
Ukrainian media reported that the Ukrainians held their own prayer breakfast in Washington on Friday, and used it to lobby for tighter U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Speakers included:
Trump’s White House Faith Office advisor Paula White
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R–AL), a Fellowship insider
Former Rep. Jim Slattery (D-KS), a Fellowship insider
Former Rep. Bob McEwen (R-OH), a Fellowship insider and executive director of the right-wing Council for National Policy
Former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, a Fellowship insider
Fellowship breakfast organizer Doug Burleigh, perhaps best known for inviting Russian spies to the National Prayer Breakfast.
Independence, the embassy wrote, “is born from faith, shared values and a willingness to fight for freedom.”
UPDATE 2: The Fellowship Foundation used the presidential seal as a backdrop not just when Trump spoke, but for the entire event, including separate events held later.
UPDATE 3: Delegate Aumua Amata (R-American Samoa) was also part of the Fellowship choir, according to a press release from her office.
Her statement suggests Amata mistook the Fellowship’s event for the Capitol Hill breakfast. It says the Hilton event was “Organized by the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation” and that “The Foundation is led by Chairman J.C. Watts, and years ago, Congresswoman Amata was employed by then-Congressman Watts.”
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The Fellowship, their breakfast, and Carson, were also instrumental in the radicalization of Mike Lindell.
Reading this conjured up an image that I can't unsee...
"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth...delivered what Baptist minister Brian Kaylor said “represented the Christian Nationalist climax of the more than three-hour service.”"
Thanks, as always, for your work, Jonathan. Regarding the NPB, I still cannot understand how any faith-based meeting or bible study can be held in government buildings. The Hilton, sure, but not USG property, even if it is leased. In my (and I'm sure others') opinion, faith should have no role in governance. Faith is corruptable, always has been, always will be.
What I WOULD like to see are regular national meetings and weekly discussions among Congressional members and staffers as well as USG officials across all political stripes founded on ethics and governance. Through a little philosophy in as well for good measure. Will this ever happen? I doubt it.