Secular Groups Blast Prayer Breakfast Democrats as Unpatriotic
Democrats aided Christian group to keep breakfast afloat despite its anti-LGBTQ+ and reproductive-rights agenda
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America’s major secular groups are dramatically intensifying criticism of Democrats who participate in events tied to the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive Christian group that uses prayer breakfasts around the world to advance right-wing causes.
Democrats involved are “useful idiots,” “enabling” Christian nationalism, attacking the vast majority of Americans, and unpatriotic, according to secular leaders.
The new criticisms follow my reporting last week that Fellowship Republicans plan to reunite the two National Prayer Breakfast events, which severed in 2023 ostensibly to address concerns about the funding and politics of the original breakfast. The new remarks also come as Pres. Donald Trump and allies in government are violating historic checks on government religiosity.
Democrats active with the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) and events run directly by The Fellowship include Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), as well as Reps. Andre Carson (D-IN), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY).
It’s likely that unknown others attend weekly Fellowship prayer sessions in each chamber.
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Coons has been the most vocal Fellowship Democrat in recent years and in 2023 told media that the National Prayer Breakfast would spin off a separate event after some Democrats raised questions about the original breakfast, started by The Fellowship in 1953.
Those questions arose as I was reporting that the NPB was secretly funded by right-wing evangelical crusader Franklin Graham, and that The Fellowship was engaged in right-wing networking in Ukraine and back-door diplomacy protecting a right-wing Guatemalan president from a UN anti-corruption team.
The Fellowship continued its original event, renamed the NPB Gathering, at the Washington Hilton while the new, much smaller, National Prayer Breakfast got the green light of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to take place in the Capitol. The events not only maintained direct ties, The Fellowship continued to use the “new” NPB for its usual ends.
Most notably, after Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) served as “new” NPB co-chair in 2023, The Fellowship cited that role when asking the Ethics Committee to let them pay for his trip to Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast. Walberg then urged his Ugandan audience to stand firm in the face of international sanctions against their LGBTQ+ death penalty. The Fellowship’s Ugandan parliamentary network passed it into law earlier that year.
Democrats have been warned for years how some are still facilitating Fellowship networking, political advocacy, and religious proselytizing. Those warnings have come from advocates for LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, explicit political targets of Fellowship leaders.
I also revealed how Fellowship insiders used the breakfast to radicalize Mike Lindell. Some powerful Democrats soon dropped the NPB, but a handful of Democrats continue to participate.
And now America’s leading secular organizations seem to have had enough.
American Humanist Association Executive Director Fish Stark said in a statement provided to me that, “we are taking note of who attends and is complicit."
American Atheists President Nick Fish had a similar message. “Any elected official who participates in this sham event is contributing to the continued erosion of our Constitution and is enabling Christian Nationalists' attempts to legitimize their exclusionary, divisive, and bigoted agenda,” he said.
Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Steven Emmert told me that, “No patriotic American—especially anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution—should lend legitimacy to the corrupt spectacle that is the National Prayer Breakfast.”
It’s worth noting that secular voters today appear to be increasingly political — a trend observed even before Trump and Christian allies started notching up wins for theocracy.
The ability of Republicans to intimidate Democrats into performative Christianity, however, has diminished as Republican have become more willing to demonize the entire party as enemies of America. After all, if you’re already an ally of Satan, there’s not much more demonizing Republicans can do.
Democratic participation has been critical for the Fellowship. It gives their events a semi-official imprimatur. It also means that hundreds of foreign officials can get their governments to bankroll their trips — if the event is seen as official.
But Fish, the American Atheists leader, suggested the political value of a bipartisan facade has diminished. “I'm not sure if the veneer of bipartisanship matters that much anymore. At this point, they've amassed so much power they almost certainly feel they can do whatever they want. If Democrats won't play ball, they'll just call them un-American and move on.”
In a statement, Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) President Annie Laurie Gaylor said, “Every year, FFRF and our allies advocate against this event. And every year, more members of Congress walk away from it. Leaders like Rep. Jared Huffman [D-CA], co-chair of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, are increasingly speaking out — and we applaud them for doing so.”
Huffman mounted the first congressional protest against the NPB this year. Although other members didn’t join him, his stand resonated with secular groups.
Fish said Republican disinterest in bipartisanship is “all the more reason” for congressional Democrats to “follow … Huffman’s example and not just ditch the event but outright protest it.”
Huffman’s protest was dismissed by Christian Republicans who used the participation of Klobuchar and Hassan — as well as Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden — to push back. Democratic pursuit of prayer-based unity again helped thwart constitutional secularism.
Gillibrand, Carson, and Krishnamoorthi also gave legitimacy to this year’s NPB. They spoke there even though the “new” NPB failed to make good on pledges of donor transparency and even after I revealed that the event’s primary funding was still coming from The Fellowship.
Now, secular leaders are showing increasing impatience with the handful of Democrats still abetting Fellowship efforts. They differ, however, on how culpable participating Democrats are.
Gaylor came down hard on The Fellowship, and the pretense of a split. But sounded a somewhat forgiving note about Democratic accomplices, depicting them as dupes:
“The National Prayer Breakfast has always been a Trojan horse for Christian nationalism. Despite public claims of reform, the Fellowship Foundation — aka the Family — is back at it, manipulating members of Congress, laundering bigotry through the language of goodwill and bipartisanship, and legitimizing an agenda that’s hostile to secular government, the separation of state and church, and democracy itself.”
Ironically, this year, both events paid even less lip service than usual to bipartisanship. Trump, of course, was openly partisan and political, but Fellowship Republicans had their moments, too.
In fact, as I’ve reported, former Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) bullied the head of the NPB board not to respond to my questions about ties to The Fellowship when the two events split in 2023. The board president, former Sen. Mark Pryor (R-AR), told me and other media that the two events were splitting.
In an email to Pryor, which was cc’ed to me, Wamp clearly intended to keep the two groups unified behind the scenes. The public split would help keep Democrats participating; the secret ties would allow The Fellowship to keep using both events. For right-wing ends.
Coons participated in both events last year, and persuaded Pres. Joe Biden to address the Capitol Hill NPB.
He and other Democrats continued to aid The Fellowship directly with the original breakfast — even though the questions about it remained unanswered. Suozzi let The Fellowship use his name for a misleading invitation to thousands of international guests, some questionable, and Jackson co-chaired and delivered theistic remarks dismissing secular “protestations” at this year’s Hilton event, the NPB Gathering.
This was a year after The Fellowship made national news by sponsoring Walberg’s trip to boost Uganda’s LGBTQ+ death penalty.
It’s not clear whether Coons and other Democrats understood that Fellowship Republicans intended to use the split for public-relations. But some secular groups think Democrats can no longer claim ignorance.
Fish, from American Atheists, described the Fellowship’s political accomplices in adversarial terms, as enablers of Christian nationalism:
“No matter how organizers try to spin it, the National Prayer Breakfast has always been about reinforcing a Christian Nationalist narrative of Christian supremacy. It's that simple. Years of reporting make their motives crystal clear. Any elected official who participates in this sham event is contributing to the continued erosion of our Constitution and is enabling Christian Nationalists' attempts to legitimize their exclusionary, divisive, and bigoted agenda.”
Ironically, where the religious faith of non-attendees was questioned in the past, now the patriotism of those who do participate is coming under scrutiny. Emmert, the Secular Coalition for America’s executive director, said of the NPB:
“It is a private, unaccountable gathering that uses the language of faith to cloak political influence and undermine our founding principle of church-state separation. True patriotism means standing up for our democracy, not participating in shadowy ceremonies that betray it.”
Stark, of the AHA, also said there’s no more latitude for any politicians to participate, and said the AHA is tracking who does:
"At this point there's no excuse for participating in the National Prayer Breakfast, regardless of your faith.
“Allowing a corrupt hate group to stage events in the Capitol that promote Christian nationalism makes a mockery of Congress, of the Constitution, and of religion itself.
“Pray if you want to. Honor the fact that America is a nation of religious pluralism and celebrate the many belief systems in our country. That's fine.
“But giving a platform to an organization that is complicit in human rights abuses, to individuals who use their stage time to mock the Constitution and demand an end to the fundamental American values of religious pluralism and freedom of conscience and instead promote a country where conservative Christianity is legally and culturally privileged, and giving it the imprimatur of a bipartisan event in the halls of Congress, is an attack on the vast majority of Americans, who don't believe in The Fellowship's extreme, retrograde version of evangelical Christian nationalism.
“We'd expect rabid Christian Nationalists to attend an event like this. But we're disappointed in the many [congressional] members who claim to be against Christian Nationalism, and once a year allow themselves to be paraded around as useful idiots by a Christian Nationalist group. And they know better, because the American Humanist Association, the Congressional Freethought Caucus, and our allies in the secular movement have been sounding the alarm about this event for years.
Members of Congress work for us, not The Fellowship. And we are taking note of who attends and is complicit."
For all of Pryor’s and Coons’s talk in 2023 of addressing Democratic concerns and separating from The Fellowship, as I reported at the time, the board of the “new” NPB was dominated by Fellowship insiders.
Just two years later, with Trump back at this year’s NPB Gathering, The Fellowship was already talking about the split in the past tense. Rep. Ben Cline (R-PA), who co-chaired the NPB Gathering with Jackson, told Trump, to the approval of the Fellowship audience, “as the co-chairs of the breakfast, next year we want to make it easier on you. We want to bring the members [of Congress] back here for next year’s prayer breakfast. One-stop shot.”
I’m a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC — as co-creator of Up w/ Chris Hayes and senior producer for Countdown with Keith Olbermann — CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. This Substack of my original reporting is made possible by a handful of paid subscribers. Thank you.
Separation of church and State, it’s that simple. Keep your damn religion to yourself. God knows there is nothing Christian about this govt
The entire event is a disgrace. I firmly believe that many politicians are less religious than they let on in public because the US population still distrusts atheists.
Religion is a scourge that needs to be eradicated. As a proud atheist Unitarian Universalist, I can say that the non-religious people I know behave in a far more Christian manner than the majority of Christians.