WASHINGTON (RNS) — Appealing to a form of camaraderie increasingly rare on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden lauded the power of faith in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday (Feb. 3), calling for unity at an unusually intimate iteration of the annual religious gathering.
Speaking in an auditorium in the visitors center of the U.S. Capitol, Biden singled out those in the room who had recently lost loved ones, recalled with frustration the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack and lamented the waves of death spurred by the ongoing pandemic.
Amid such difficulties and division, Biden told the audience comprising mostly members of Congress that his Christian faith reminded him of the importance of service. “In a moment of a great division, our democracy is at grave risk. I pray that we follow what Jesus taught us: to serve rather than be served,” he said.
Biden added: “Rather than drive us apart, faith can move us together. Because all the great confessional faiths share the same fundamental basic beliefs: not just faith in a higher power, but faith to see each other as we should. Not as enemies but as neighbors. Not as adversaries but as fellow Americans, as leaders of this nation who work and pray together.”
Faith, the president said, comes in many forms, which include faith in American values. “I pray to keep the faith (in) the very promise of America: believing that there’s nothing we can’t do, where every person is created equal in the image of God, no matter where we come from, who we are, what our color or how we choose to pray — or whether or not we choose to pray — (we) deserve to be treated equally throughout their lives.”
Thursday’s prayer breakfast was smaller than before the pandemic, a byproduct of COVID-19 restrictions and an effort by organizers to refocus the gathering. In recent years the now 70-year-old event had become a sprawling series of assemblies with an international roster of more than 3,000 attendees, typically held at the Washington Hilton hotel.
In 2018, a woman was accused of attempting to exploit the event as an agent of Russia, and two years later President Donald Trump, celebrating his acquittal at the prayer breakfast after his first impeachment, suggested House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a liar for saying she prayed for him.
Organizers suggested this year was meant to shift the focus of the National Prayer Breakfast: Its keynote speaker was Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and longtime advocate for criminal justice reform and racial equality. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the bestselling book “Just Mercy,” Stevenson was instrumental in creating the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Alabama memorial to the 4,400 victims of lynchings in the U.S.
Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat and Presbyterian who spoke at the prayer breakfast and was one of its chief organizers for several years, told Religion News Service this week the gathering’s small size was partly due to an effort to “reset” the event by framing it as a “narrower engagement between Congress, the president, and some inspirational singers and speakers.”
The prayer breakfast was co-chaired by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, and Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, who also spoke, along with other leaders from both parties.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and pastor of a historic Black church in Georgia, opened the event with a prayer, noting that “Justice is what love looks like in public.” He was accompanied by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington state, who read from Proverbs. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York read from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, occasionally slipping into Hebrew as he did so. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell read next, reciting a passage from Matthew.