Obama and National Prayer Breakfast

While President Obama has been kind of wishy-washy on some issues during the past year, he seems to be ready to play hard ball on some issues.

Or if he isn't, he at least hit home runs on two issues that I think are important, and both of them at today's National Prayer Breakfast.

The National Prayer Breakfast, for the past eight years, has been dominated by right-wing religionists who shared President George W. Bush's fundamentalist view of religion. Bush, like everything else he touched, tended to drive the short bus on the subject of religion. He had a basic understanding of Christianity, just like he had a basic understanding of foreign and domestic policy, and that was good enough for him. He just drove straight forward down the theological highway, never looking back at the philosophical roadkill he left behind him for others to clean up.

Today, President Obama, a far more in-depth thinker than his predecessor, chose to discuss the importance of civility at the National Prayer breakfast and urged his fellow politicians in Washington to use the tenets of their spiritual beliefs to create a less-rancorous political environment.

He also roundly condemned the pending law in the nation of Uganda which would allow the death penalty to be imposed if anyone is caught being a homosexual person there. Choosing to make this condemnation at the National Prayer breakfast was significant because Uganda's proposed law was heavily influenced by U.S. right-wing evangelicals --- evangelicals whose influenced peaked during the George W. Bush administration.

"SPIRIT OF CIVILITY"

The Associated Press reported that while he was speaking at the annual National Prayer breakfast, Obama said divisions in Washington are nothing new, but "there is a sense that something is different now, that something is broken, that those of us in Washington aren't serving people as well as we should."

Obama said America's leaders are quick to unite in times of crisis, such as last month's devastating earthquake in Haiti. But when it comes to long-term problems, he said, lawmakers can become absorbed by ideology and power contests.

He urged leaders to be empowered by faith to bridge divisions.

"You can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or, for that matter, my citizenship," Obama said, referring to critics who have questioned whether he was born in the United States.

President Obama also said his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships had "turned the faith-based initiative around" from its previous incarnation under the Bush administration to "find common ground among people of all beliefs."

The Americans United for Separation of Church and State and 25 other organizations sent a letter to Obama protesting these remarks and saying Obama has failed to protect the boundary between church and state.

"In all significant ways, the Obama faith-based initiative right now is the same as the Bush faith-based initiative," Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the group's executive director, said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow also participated in the breakfast, which has been held in Washington for more than 50 years. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has participated.

THE FELLOWSHIP FOUNDATION

The Fellowship, also known as The Family, is an international organization founded in 1935 and has been led by Douglas Coe since 1969. Its members include scores of high ranking U.S. government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations, and non-U.S. leaders and ambassadors. It has been described by prominent evangelical Christians as one of the most politically well-connected fundamentalist organizations in the US.

The core purpose of this group is to provide a private forum for public officials to hold Bible Studies, prayer meetings, worship services, or to share their troubles. In Newsweek, Lisa Miller writes that the common love for the teachings of Jesus binds this group together and all approaches to understanding him are acceptable.

The group is most widely known for organizing prayer groups throughout the United States and around the world, including the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, later renamed the National Prayer Breakfast. Every sitting United States president since 1953 has attended the event.

The Fellowship generally practices strict secrecy about its members or activities and eschews publicity and asks its members not to speak about the group; some members have denied that the Fellowship exists.

Prominent evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, and the Family themselves, have described it as one of the most, or the most, politically well-connected fundamentalist organization in the US.

D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies the evangelical movement, says “there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country’s leadership.” He also reports that lawmakers mentioned the Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.

In 1977, four years after he had converted to Christianity, Fellowship member and Watergate conspirator Charles Colson described the Family as a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through the US government."

The Reverend Robert Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, describes the Family's influence as "off the charts" in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship. (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) Schenck also says that "the mystique of the Fellowship" has helped it "gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital."

A series of taped seminars from 1970 for young male members of the Fellowship describes their access to power: “If you want doors opened... there are men in government, there are senators who literally find it their pleasure to give any kind of advice, assistance, or counsel.”

Lindsay also interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom “One in three mentioned Doug Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence."

Douglas Evans Coe, 82, is the reclusive leader and "first brother" of The Fellowship. Coe also has been referred to as the "stealth Billy Graham." In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in the United States by Time magazine. Although Coe is not an ordained minister, D. Michael Lindsay surveyed more than 300 top evangelical politicians in Washington and one in three said The Fellowship was one of the most influential Christian groups in the nation's capital.

The Family also has relationships with numerous non-US government leaders. Lindsay reports that the Family "has relationships with pretty much every world leader— good and bad— and there are not many organizations in the world that can claim that."

“The Fellowship’s reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp,” says David Kuo, a member of the Family and former special assistant in George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

The following politicians are among those who have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having done so: U.S. Jim Inhofe, R-OK; John Ensign, R-NV; Tom Coburn, R-OK; Sam Brownback (R-KS); Chuck Grassley, R-IA; Bill Nelson, D-FL; and U.S. Reps. Joe Pitts, R-PA; Zach Wamp, R-TN; Frank Wolf, R-VA; Randy Forbes, R-VA; Bart Stupak, D-MI; and Gov. Mark Sanford, R-SC. There are also several other former government elected officials who have been a part of the Fellowship.

The Fellowship, through Senator Brownback and Representative Pitts, redirected millions in US aid to Uganda from sex education programs to abstinence programs, thereby causing an evangelical revival, which included condom burnings, and doubling the incidence of AIDS.

In a November 2009 National Public Radio interview, the author Jeff Sharlet alleged that Ugandan Fellowship associates David Bahati and Nsaba Buturo were behind the recent proposed bill in Uganda that called for the death penalty for gays.

Sharlet reveals that David Bahati, the Uganda legislator backing the bill, reportedly first floated the idea of executing gays during The Family's Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008. Sharlet described Mr. Bahati as a "rising star" in the Fellowship who has attended the National Prayer Breakfast in the United States and, until the news over the gay execution law broke, was scheduled to attend this year's U.S. National Prayer Breakfast.

Family member Bob Hunter gave an interview to National Public Radio in December in which he acknowledged Bahati's connection but argued that no American associates support the bill.

UGANDA

The AP also reported that this year's National Prayer Breakfast also drew controversy when an ethics group asked the president to boycott the breakfast over objections to the sponsor, The Fellowship Foundation.

In a letter to Obama and congressional leaders, the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington said The Fellowship Foundation has "been cultivating an unorthodox brand of Christianity amongst the political, military and economic elite of America." The group says the foundation is also linked to efforts to pass strict anti-gay laws in Uganda.

In response, Obama, at the Prayer Breakfast, denounced as "odious" the Ugandan proposed anti-gay law.

"We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or ... more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda," Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking before Obama at the annual bipartisan gathering of religious and political leaders, also criticized the draft law being considered by Uganda's parliament.

Clinton said she recently called Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and expressed the "strongest concerns" about the proposed legislation. The call was made on December 20, a State Department official said.

The East African country has faced intense pressure from Western governments and human rights groups over the draft legislation, which was presented as a private members' bill last year.

It would prohibit sexual relations between people of the same sex as well as the recognition of homosexual relations as an acceptable lifestyle, Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said last month.

Pillay said the draft law would breach international standards and it "proposes draconian punishments for people alleged to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered -- namely life imprisonment, or in some cases, the death penalty."

It could lead to a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone failing to report within 24 hours the identities of any lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered person, she added.

Uganda's Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo has said a revised law would probably limit the maximum penalty for those convicted to life in prison rather than execution.

Obama's statement against the Ugandan pending anti-gay policy is the strongest made by an American leader to date. The fact that he made it at the primary public event organized by the religious organization which gave aid and comfort to Uganda's discriminatory proposal is significant, not only because it rebukes Uganda, but also puts The Fellowship on notice that their days of influencing the presidency are waning.

Overall, Obama's remarks, in my opinion, can be seen as a call not only to Washington policemakers to step beyond rancor, but also to Americans, who, having become accustomed to being isolated from each other through increased usage of communication through Internet blogs and tweets, are becoming less civil and less caring and aware of each other's feelings.