NBC News – Secretive Christian group at heart of D.C. politics ready for its close-up in Netflix docuseries “The Family” puts the spotlight on the enigmatic Fellowship Foundation, the Christian group behind the National Prayer Breakfast. Aug. 9, 2019 By Ethan Sacks While the annual event is purportedly hosted by members of Congress, it is actually organized and run by an evangelical Christian organization called The Fellowship Foundation, or “The Family,” as it is referred to internally by its members. The series, which debuts on Netflix on Friday, takes a look at the group that operates with its own higher purpose — quietly building its influence on global politics “in the name of Jesus.” “The Fellowship isn’t about faith and it spreads very little. It’s about power,” said Jeff Sharlet, whose books, “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” and “C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy,” inspired the Netflix series. “Internally, it is spoken of primarily as a ‘recruiting device’ with which to draw ‘key men’ into smaller prayer cells to ‘meet Jesus man to man,’” according to Sharlet. “Practically, the Prayer Breakfast has functioned from the very beginning as an unregistered lobbying festival.”
The new prayer breakfast same as the old breakfast.
National Prayer Breakfast Backed by Dark Money, anti-LGBTQ+ Group “New” Capitol Hill breakfast is funded by the same theocratic group behind the original Jonathan Larsen Jan 04, 2025 The Old Breakfast Is Still Served. The NPB Foundation could have chosen to hold the “new” breakfast any day of the year, but chose instead to stage it at the same time it used to be held, the first Thursday of every February. That’s also when The Fellowship has continued to hold what used to be the original breakfast (now confusingly titled “The NPB Gathering,” to help maintain the connection) at the Washington Hilton, just downhill from The Capitol. The two events are tied together by title, time, and the links between the groups behind them. All of this helps The Foundation because their international allies often need the same kind of “official” trip status Walberg cited — but in their case it’s to justify charging their taxpayers for the trips. And, sure enough, some international officials — entirely predictably — have conflated the two events, purposely or not. It’s an easy mistake to make, given how confusing the two groups have made things; a convenient mistake to justify billing taxpayers, inconvenient when it comes to light.
My letter to reps:
The National Prayer Breakfast has a distinct appearance of impropriety. It seems disingenuous to wrap political lobbying in an aura of religiosity. Making it a more “intimate” meeting with the President and Congress only accentuates the potential for corruption or at least enforcing one type of religion over others, indeed, one sect of culty wealthy libertarian Christianity over all others. It’s not really a good look for the politicians who get involved.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
Freedom From Religion Foundation – January 25, 2023 FFRF calls National Prayer Breakfast changes ‘subterfuge’ The National Prayer Breakfast Foundation has no business summoning the president or Congress to a religious event requiring a show of obeisance and partaking in private religious rituals.” Yesterday, former U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor announced that the National Prayer Breakfast will become a “more intimate gathering between the Congress, the president, and those in his administration.” Pryor said the 70-year-old event will no longer be hosted by the controversial group he described as “the International Foundation,” but which is commonly known as The Family or The Fellowship. The Fellowship was exposed as an elite network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful, using “free-market fundamentalism” and “imperial ambition,” in the book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by journalist Jeff Sharlet, first published in 2009, which was turned into a 2019 Netflix documentary. In recent years, the Christian Right group has been dogged by reporting on its ties to despots, anti-LGBTQ policies and other scandals.