Photo provided by The Council for Global Equality
The Buffalo News published an op-ed from a faith leader calling for an end to congressional involvement in the National Prayer Breakfast.
Interconnected Justice founder and President Bishop Joseph Tolton, who resides in New York City, urged in his piece that New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand step down from her role as co-chair of this year’s National Prayer Breakfast. The event took place on Feb. 5.
“The National Prayer Breakfast, to be held Thursday, has never been a gathering for reflection. It has operated as a place where religious identity is fused with political power and access,” Tolton writes in the piece. “That reality has intensified sharply in recent years. Last year, President Trump used the breakfast to lay out a MAGA Christianity agenda, claiming divine sanction for his leadership, asserting that the nation must bring religion back much stronger and casting political authority as a religious mission.”
Tolton explains the powerful connections the prayer breakfast has fueled, and how dogmatic policies have emerged in its wake:
The same networks that shape the prayer breakfast have helped strengthen anti- democratic and anti-LGBTQ+ forces abroad. Uganda’s extreme anti-LGBTQ+ law did not emerge in isolation. It was reinforced by international religious actors who framed repression as a moral obligation and exported ideology developed through the National Prayer Breakfast network.
These dynamics now intersect directly with American diplomacy. In recent years, U.S. foreign policy has increasingly blurred the line between state authority and sectarian religious advocacy. Human rights have been reframed through a narrow theological lens aligned with conservative Christian legal movements. A specific religious worldview is promoted globally under the banner of U.S. engagement.
Tolton ends his column by calling for leadership through reason, not belief: “Stepping away from the National Prayer Breakfast would affirm that faith does not require proximity to political power and that prayer does not need a government stage to be meaningful. It would signal respect for the diversity of belief she represents — and for democratic institutions that rely on religious neutrality.”
You can read the full op-ed here.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 42,000 members and several chapters nationwide, including over 2,100 members and a chapter in New York. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
