MDSF: Breakfast with The Family

Here's a quote from Breakfast with The Family at KtBlog:

So when Obama admits that “something’s broken, that those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should,” I completely agree. When he speaks of “division and distrust among our citizens,” I can understand why. When he insists, “neither side has a monopoly on truth,” I think of how The Family stands in tacit disagreement with that sentiment. And when he emphasizes the importance of “stepping out of our comfort zones,” I wonder why he couldn’t have stepped out of his own and refused to participate in the Family’s Breakfast.
It’s not like there weren’t alternatives. The National Prayer Hour founded in part to protest the Family, would have permitted me to hear Obama’s words as he meant them. It’s difficult to take him on face value when, writes Jeff, “the breakfast is regarded by The Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can ‘meet Jesus man to man.’” The only thing holding Obama back is tradition—the event has taken place since 1953—but for a man dedicated to change, that’s no excuse at all.

I'm a little surprised that the author Garrett Baer misses the point about national prayer breakfasts that jumps out to me, but which sneaks into the article in the photo caption "Who are we praying to, again?" As a Christian I am perplexed by the very idea of a "national prayer breakfast" in a country with Constitutional support for separation of Church and State, and tend to think of any such event as an exercise in American civil religion, so the best alternative might be no prayer breakfast at all.

MDSF

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Breakfast with The Family

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