Washington, D.C. is home to hundreds of churches; any would have been a more fitting location for a Christian church service like last week’s National Prayer Breakfast than the U.S. Capitol. In the prestigious National Cathedral, for instance, 4,000 worshippers could have enjoyed Andrea Bocelli’s melodious tenor and the Christian speakers, sermons, and prayers.
Unfortunately, some members of Congress —oblivious or hostile to church-state separation—are determined to make this annual Christian ceremony a government-run, taxpayer-funded institution, stamped with the imprimatur of Congress and the president. Essentially, a state church.
Last week, Speaker Mike Johnson , a strident Christian nationalist, moved the historically private National Prayer Breakfast into the heart of the U.S. Capitol, Statuary Hall, a blow to the separation of church and state he has long scorned.
The rationale for the National Prayer Breakfast—that our leaders must unite in Christian prayer because “the challenges that face them cannot be solved in their own strength”—ignores a lot of history.