Prayers in Washington, DC

on February 7, 2014

The National Prayer Breakfast embodies American civil religion, with the President and members of Congress, joined by several thousand, including hundreds of international visitors, sharing their faith and praying for the nation. Every president since Eisenhower has participated. Yesterday’s breakfast was emceed by a conservative Republican congressman and a liberal Democratic congresswoman, whose bantering shtick focused on their common love of Jesus despite disagreement about all else.

Two popular Gospel singers performed. There was testimony from a young woman who lost an arm to a shark and recovered thanks to her faith. The chief of USAID spoke of the spiritual urgency of alleviating global poverty. President Obama emphasized the importance of religious liberty, urged freedom for a imprisoned Iranian pastor and a captive missionary in North Korea, and denounced anti-blasphemy laws, stressing that individuals should have the freedom to change religions and have no religion. He also briefly included barely veiled talking points for his GLBTQI advocacy and support for mass legalization of illegal immigrants, plus climate activism.

Foreign visitors I met, a Russian and a German, lamented that U.S. diplomacy now includes heavy lobbying for GLBTQI causes in their countries and around the world. It’s surprising that even relatively permissive Germany is considered repressive towards so-called sexual and gender minorities, meriting U.S. arm twisting. (Germany has civil unions but not same sex marriage.) It’s also alleged that some USAID assistance is now contingent on yielding to the U.S. GLBTQI and abortion rights agenda. It’s sad that our own government now seeks to undermine marriage and family globally. We should all pray that these policies are replaced with more morally and strategically commendable diplomatic objectives. Material poverty cannot be successfully addressed while advocating moral poverty.

Despite these disturbing developments, and the inevitable hypocrisy and double standards common to any mass display of piety, the National Prayer Breakfast commendably if only briefly points our nation and its leaders onward a transcendent moral order at least partly based on Christianity. Civil religion is not redemptive but it does offer a framework for integrating faith inclusively into public life. The German friend I met spoke of vast sections of the former East Germany that are almost totally empty of religious faith. Sociologists study these areas as laboratories of atheist societies. May our nation never reach that point. Wherever there are faith and prayer, there remains hope.

  1. Comment by Marco Bell on February 8, 2014 at 10:19 am

    Mark Tooley writes: “…Material poverty cannot be successfully addressed while advocating moral poverty”.
    So by that standard, a well intended coalition of (LGBT) individuals cannot effectively assuage social (material) poverty? Wow!
    That sells short a particularly compassionate group of capable people…Sheesh!
    Please let go of such prejudiced thinking!

  2. Comment by Paul Zesewitz on February 16, 2014 at 4:50 am

    So the President emphasized religious liberty, did he? Ok. Will someone please tell me, then, why his administration seems so anti-Christian? I read a few months ago that military chaplains are no longer allowed to proselytize (IE share the Gospel) outside the confines of the base/ post Chapel. This means no longer visiting sick soldiers or shut-ins who have no way to get to Chapel worship, among other things. And it is the Pentagon that has been enforcing this, under his watch. Someone please tell me when he wakes up and decides to stop this bigotry.

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