National Prayer Breakfast Tightens Its Rules (for Congress, Anyway)
Next week's controversial event is imposing new restrictions, but still aiding far-right networks overseas
I’m an independent journalist who covers Christian extremism and other issues.
Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast will see some changes, yet again.
The controversial event has new rules in place affecting who members of Congress can and cannot bring.
Overseas, however, the secretive Christian group behind the event is still using the event to elevate its allies and justify sometimes costly travel to the U.S.
This comes at a time when the new president has appointed open advocates of theocracy in unprecedented positions of power throughout his administration. And it will be held, again, at the symbolic heart of the legislative branch that Christian extremists sought to seize by force in 2021.
At his last National Prayer Breakfast, in 2020, Pres. Donald Trump was coming right off his first impeachment acquittal and used the occasion to tell the assemblage — overwhelmingly Christian — “I don’t know if I agree” with the Christian commandment to love thy enemy.
An RSVP reminder I obtained, sent last week for the Thursday breakfast, confirms my earlier reporting that Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) is co-chairing the event with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), although their titles aren’t given.
A followup email went out from Hassan’s office yesterday, urging members of Congress to RSVP by today’s deadline.
The National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) used to be held at the Washington Hilton. It was founded in 1953 by a group now known as the Fellowship Foundation and popularly known as “The Family,” courtesy of the Jeff Sharlet book and subsequent Netflix series.
Scandal after scandal over The Fellowship, its breakfasts, and its global spinoffs led Democrats to defect. Their participation, however, is crucial for The Fellowship to maintain the veneer of semi-official status that gives its events — and their guests— both prestige and much-coveted access to U.S. officialdom.
So, in 2023, The Fellowship split off the main event of its sprawling, multi-day, 3,500-attendee events. That year, a much shorter, “new” National Prayer Breakfast was held on Capitol Hill.
Invitees were restricted: Just Congress, administration leaders, and plus ones. Anyone from their districts. Until now, that is.
As I reported, members of Congress in both parties broke the rules. There were, again, lobbyists attending. And non-constituents; Kari Lake, in particular. She was invited by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) despite not living in his district, his office told me, because “At no time did Jesus ask where Kari Lake lived before accepting worship."
Next week, however, He may have to check wedding and birth certificates. Because according to an invitation I obtained, the prayer breakfast has a new rule: Plus ones are limited to immediate family members only.
Ironically, that may inconvenience or annoy members of Congress more than it impacts The Fellowship’s work.
The group running the “new,” Capitol Hill National Prayer Breakfast is the NPB Foundation. It was, as I revealed, launched with members of its board drawn entirely from The Fellowship’s inner circles.
The current chair is former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND). But a website to RSVP for next week’s NPB bears a message co-signed by her and former Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL), a lobbyist for Illinois bankers.
The message is explicitly Christian. It refers to the breakfast as “an opportunity for Members of Congress to pray collectively … in the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago.”
It also endorses religious faith. The message says that participants “seek to build and strengthen personal relationships and deepen our ties across the aisle through our love of God…”
With no effort to include people who don’t believe in a monotheistic god, the message says, “our hearts are strengthened as we seek God’s wisdom and guidance together.”
It goes further, attributing specific positions to God: “We are united in our belief that God’s one-item agenda is reconciliation through the power of prayer.”
The conclusion — “We pray that this gathering will serve that agenda” of reconciliation — is wildly at odds with history. Prayer breakfasts have been used to move politicians to the right and build networks actively campaigning against LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, sowing division more than unity.
Overall, the language of the “new” event’s messaging is consistent with the ethos of The Fellowship. And Hultgren isn’t just an opponent of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, he’s a longtime Fellowship insider.
Hassan never issued a press release, in keeping with The Fellowship’s culture of secrecy. Nor did she respond to my emailed questions and request for comment.
And as I reported on Jan. 4, The Fellowship continued to fund the “new” organization. Their donation totaled $46,800 in 2023, the most recent year tax returns are available. Why keep funding it if it’s truly not theirs anymore?
There are several possibilities.
The “new” National Prayer Breakfast remains a singular star in the evangelical world, the most overtly religious event boasting regular appearances by the most powerful person in the world.
While The Fellowship may not be able to get most of its people in the same room anymore, it continues to use the “new” NPB to elevate its allies overseas and justify their trips here.
Every year around this time, foreign media accounts are full of stories with headlines like, “President Trump Invites So and So to National Prayer Breakfast.” That’s still happening, even though So and So — invariably a Fellowship ally or potential ally — wasn’t actually invited by Trump or or even to the “new” National Prayer Breakfast. (I’ll be sharing specific examples in an upcoming article.)
They were invited — by a Fellowship insider — to the Fellowship’s renamed (but not too renamed) NPB Gathering. The conflation of names and events serves The Fellowship well.
It can be hard for Americans to gauge the impact of a reported invitation from the U.S. president. It can elevate Fellowship allies overnight, and open the checkbooks of local benefactors eager to accept Christ in the closed-door “breakout sessions” where they can pray with powerful U.S. politicians.
The Fellowship, for instance, turned a Guatemalan pariah into the ambassador to the U.S., with help — witting or otherwise — from Democrats.
As one evangelical attendee noted in 2022, “When there’s a prayer breakfast in America, we don’t always pray, but we network.”
Another reason for The Fellowship to keep the NPB as a semi-official religious lodestone is that it’s an anchor. Every year, publicly or not, advertised or not, a variety of religious events take place in Washington around exactly the same time.
The purpose, of course, is to amortize the main event’s attention and prestige and draw in right-wing networks from around the world. That in turn boosts other events, some much more explicitly right-wing.
There’s the International Religious Freedom Summit. There’s Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins’s National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance. There’s a recurring Hill session held by Fellowship insider Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), ostensibly to focus on Balkan security issues or something along those lines; it’s populated uniformly by his fellow travelers.
And, of course, there’s the NPB Gathering itself.
And that raises the third possible motive The Fellowship might have for supporting the “new” National Prayer Breakfast.
They want it back.
Former Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) is a longtime leader of the breakfasts and insider at The Fellowship. He was also a founding member of the “new” event’s board.
When I learned of the NPB spinoff in 2023, I interviewed former Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) about his role as president of the NPB Foundation board.
Pryor told me he wanted transparency. After all, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), The Fellowship’s most visible Democrat, said publicly that there were questions about who was funding the old NPB. Democrats were getting skittish.
I had some followup questions, so I emailed Pryor and some board members, including Wamp.
Wamp apparently hit reply-all, because I got a copy of his email apparently intended for Pryor, advising Pryor on how to respond. Specifically, not to.
Wamp counseled against responding, contributing to “stories and slander” (he never informed me about anything inaccurate in my stories). It would, Wamp said, “only lead to more division.” Division, that is, between the two events and the people running them.
Wamp has since returned to The Fellowship. And addressing The Fellowship’s 2024 gathering at the Washington Hilton, he said the two events remain separate “at this moment.” But he alluded to the continuing connection:
“COVID separated us, and at this moment we’re still in this capacity where the international prayer breakfast [the NPB Gathering] is here and the National Prayer Breakfast is there at the same time. Simultaneous. Connected that way.”
And that’s not the only connection.
The Fellowship long ago set up weekly prayer breakfasts in each chamber.
Hassan and Marshall use the NPB invitation to promote those breakfasts. “We hope that you will be able to join us … at the Senate Prayer Breakfast,” the invite says.
Whether it’s due to Trump’s victory and his history at the breakfast, or to growing awareness of The Fellowship’s continued involvement, there’s a subtle indication of weakened interest in the event this year.
The RSVP message says the deadline was Jan. 22. Yesterday’s followup email said the definite, final deadline was today at 5pm.
And the organization seems to be showing signs of stress. The invitation reminder that went out on Jan. 22 had an uncharacteristic number of typos and mistakes.
For instance, the event is taking place again in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, a virtually unprecedented symbolic breach of the First Amendment prohibition against respecting an establishment of religion. But the letter — with no small irony given the theocratic bent — advises participants that they’ll be praying, “in Statutory Hall.”
Note: A reader points out that I screwed up and referred to Trump’s impeachment and acquittal as his second of each. I wrote that trusting my memory and shouldn’t have done either. I’ll try to do better in the future and appreciate the reader who pointed it out and every reader who flags my errors. I regret the error and any problems it may have caused and I’ve now corrected it. Thank you.
I’m a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC, CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. You can support my reporting with a donation or paid subscription. Thank you.
Thanks so much for this. I'm a long-time fan of Jeff Sharlet. The thought of the NPB makes my teeth hurt. I'm planning a no-prayer breakfast with friends.
It's love THINE enemies.