The second event, dubbed the NPB Gathering, and held again this year at the Hilton, drew about 2,000 people from more than 125 countries, including heads of state, and featured a livestream of Biden’s remarks, said A. Larry Ross, media representative for the International Foundation.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame was the keynote speaker at that event, and former Reps. Jim Slattery, D-Kan., and Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., were the co-emcees.
The first event, however, had a shift of location, and there are proposals for it to have another.
Last year, it was held at the Capitol Visitor Center. On Thursday, it was held in Statuary Hall, which is just south of the Rotunda.
Rep. Tracey Mann, R-Kan., introduced a resolution in November to authorize use of the Rotunda for the event. It has been referred to the House Committee on House Administration.
Mann and Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Ind., were honorary co-chairs of the 2024 breakfast, where they jointly read a prayer and members of Congress from both parties read Scripture and prayed for the president. House Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben said the closing prayer and Senate Chaplain Barry Black was the keynote speaker.
Black described how people working on Capitol Hill turn to fasting and prayer, especially in times of crisis, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas-Israel war and the last two U.S presidential elections.
“I’m talking about representatives, senators, chiefs of staff, waiters, waitresses, janitors were fasting and praying,” he said. “Hundreds of us have been doing that.”
He cited numerous religions that include the practice of fasting and prayer — Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism — and suggested people in the nation and world should adopt the guidance of British Methodist leader John Wesley of not eating until 3 p.m. twice a week.
“It’s easier than it sounds,” he said.
The existence of the breakfast on Capitol Hill — and at all — has been opposed by church-state separationists.
“Using the U.S. Capitol as the venue would incontrovertibly give the distasteful appearance that this private, Christian-dominated event is an official governmental function of Congress,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, in a statement to Religion News Service ahead of the events. “Conducting a ‘National Prayer Breakfast’ at the conspicuous seat of federal government is what would be expected in a theocracy, not a republic predicated on a secular Constitution.”
