Religious conservatives split over Trump's Prayer Breakfast remarks

President Trump delivers remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 6, 2020. Creative Commons photo.

President Trump delivers remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 6, 2020. Creative Commons photo.

The National Prayer Breakfast generated supplications to the almighty as usual and declarations and debate more abnormal this year. The bipartisan event occurred a day after the highly partisan Senate impeachment trial that acquitted President Donald Trump of charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress.

Established in a spirit of fellowship and shared values, the breakfast is a place where lawmakers and faith leaders with opposing views traditionally put their differences aside to dine and pray together in acknowledgment of the unifying nature of spirituality. Yesterday, the nation’s polarized politics were on display, prompting a range of reactions from religious leaders and other observers.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say ‘I pray for you’ when they know that’s not so,” Trump said at the breakfast.

He delivered his remarks after the keynote speaker, Harvard Kennedy School professor Arthur Brooks, called on the politicians in the room to follow the Christian command to “love your enemies.” Trump challenged that notion.

“Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you,” he said.

Pastor Robert Jeffress, a steadfast Trump ally who served as a member of his 2016 campaign’s Evangelical Advisory Board and White House Faith Initiative, defended the President on “Fox & Friends” on Friday.

“This president, he absolutely hates phoniness. He can smell it a mile away. The President thinks there’s something inherently phony about saying you’re praying for him when you’re working to destroy him,” Jeffress said, referencing Nancy Pelosi’s recent comment that she prays for Trump in spite of her political opposition to him.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a Trump appointee to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said on Twitter that the impeachment made it hard for him to like the President’s political enemies.

Other religious conservatives decried Trump’s remarks. Michael Gerson, a Wheaton College graduate and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, penned an op-ed denouncing his comments as “unholy and immoral.”

Gerson said that Brooks’ exhortation was taken directly from Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount. “It might be expected for a president to express how difficult obeying such a mandate can be,” Gerson wrote. “Trump decided to dispute the command itself. And some in the crowd laughed.”

It amounted to a spectacle that might sully the event henceforth, he said:

First, the president again displayed a remarkable ability to corrupt, distort and discredit every institution he touches. The prayer breakfast was intended to foster personal connections across party differences. Trump turned it into a performative platform to express his rage and pride — the negation of a Christian ethic. Democrats have every right and reason to avoid this politicized event next year. And religious people of every background should no longer give credence to this parody of a prayer meeting.

Rod Dreher, a senior editor at The American Conservative, echoed Gerson’s criticisms. He called Trump a “small, ugly, godless and graceless man” who behaved disgracefully toward the Democrats in the room.

What I found more disturbing though, was the large amount of pure adulation I could feel running through a noticeable portion of the crowd. Folks who’d introduced themselves as Pastors earlier were clearly enthralled with their earthly ruler, between the whoops, cheers, and joy on their faces. What mainly got me though was the uncomfortably long applause. Many stopped clapping, but others did not, and as a result we all stood there a long time, waiting for it to end. I was reminded of accounts of the Soviets, when nobody wanted to stop clapping first…

I’m not from or much familiar with the evangelical world so I admit that, but responding with “yeahs,” “amens,” and other affirmations when an obviously angry and contemptuous man is lashing out at his enemies during a PRAYER BREAKFAST WHERE WE JUST TALKED ABOUT LOVING OUR ENEMIES was crazy.

On Friday, Dreher, who is Eastern Orthodox, shared a clip on Twitter of the host of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, who is Catholic, praising Mitt Romney for being the sole Republican Senator to vote to convict Trump.

“Hearing Mitt Romney take his oath to God seriously was like finding water in the desert, because we know Republicans are lying when they say that Trump didn’t do anything wrong, or that maybe he did but he shouldn’t be removed,“ Colbert said.

He charged that many Republican leaders are known to be privately uncomfortable with Trump’s behavior, but publicly support him anyway.

“Now oaths may not mean a lot to some people, but here’s what it’s about: When you take an oath, you can’t think one thing and say another. You are asking God to witness, on the pain of your immortal soul, that what you whisper in your heart is what comes out of your mouth — though most of these guys are talking out their ass,” Colbert said.

Dreher said he mostly agreed, and praised Romney for his "herd-defying act of conscience.”

The Rev. Tom Lambrecht, general manager of Good News, a conservative United Methodist magazine, told the Associated Press that Trump’s comments were wrong for the setting.

“A bipartisan prayer breakfast is the last place one would expect to find political attacks on opponents,” Lambrecht said. “Our country would benefit from a return to the kind of civility and grace reflected in Jesus’ words.”

On the left, author Jeff Sharlet argued that Trump’s appearance was actually in line with what the event is really about. Sharlet wrote the book that the controversial Netflix documentary series “The Family” was based on. In it, he presents the breakfast and its organizers as a shadowy group focused on political influence that verges on operating like a cult.

“Lot of talk about Trump's hateful speech at the National Prayer Breakfast as desecration of another institution,” Sharlet tweeted. “In fact, he was making visible what the Breakfast has always been: a celebration of political power on behalf of strongmen.”

Micah Danney is a Poynter-Koch fellow and a reporter and associate editor for Religion Unplugged. He is an alumnus of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and has reported for news outlets in the NYC area, interned at The Times of Israel and covered religion in Israel for the GroundTruth Project.

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