(Gray News) – President Joe Biden will deliver remarks Thursday morning from Capitol Hill at the National Prayer Breakfast, which will be attended by members of Congress, Vice President Kamala Harris and other administration officials.
The breakfast is one of the most visible events that brings together religion and politics.
The organizer and host for this year’s breakfast is the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, headed by former Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. It is part of a two-day event that will be attended by more than 1,400 people.
The event has been slimmed down from the multi-day event it was before the pandemic, as it has split from the private religious group that had overseen it for decades, due to concerns the gathering had become too divisive, the Associated Press reported.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is one of the organizations that questioned the appropriateness of a the religious gathering at Capitol Hill.
It, along with dozens of other organizations, sent a letter to members of Congress and the White House urging the boycott of the event, documenting what it called the breakfast’s troubling history.
“The National Prayer Breakfast is an active marketplace of Christian nationalism, and it is not the bipartisan event that it purports to be,” the letter reads in part. Some of the issues cited includes its previous infiltration by a Russian spy, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and its purported use as a way for religious leaders to buy influence.
In February 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend the gathering, and every president since has spoken at the breakfast.
Copyright 2023 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
