The heavy favorite is, of course, the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington with evangelical football star Tim Tebow giving the closing prayer, no less.

President Obama, Michelle and a chunk of the cabinet will chow down and pray up with the 3,000+ folks from here to...

Well, I was going to say Uganda but several of those NPB-regulars were disinvited after their rampant homophobia went public. (See earlier posts on Ugandan David Bahati, formerly a friend of the breakfast sponsors, and his bill to kill gays and imprison people who fail to report them.)

Gatekeepers for this event: The Family and/or Fellowship -- a network of evangelicals who generally prefer to keep their prayers private except for the NPB, the peak event of several days of spiritual shmoozing.

Many of the participants are business and political leaders involved in nothing more nefarious than networking for development and building houses, factories and clean water projects with their fellow Christian pals. Mostly, they pray together together -- nothing wrong with that -- and hold each other privately accountable for straying from Biblical values.

But I can't get Family folks who do the good works to go on the record. The Family has no web site. So the group is stuck in the public mind as folks who paper prayer over some reprehensible politicians abroad and shelter some adulterous pols such at Sen. John Ensign at C Street, a Family base in D.C.

Long before the Family stumbled into the spotlight, the standard objection to decades of presidential participation at the National Prayer Breakfast is that it scrambles church-state eggs that should be separate. Secular Coalition Executive Director Sean Faircloth says the NPB has

... the appearance of an officially sanctioned government ceremony, implying an endorsement of a particular religious agenda."

But the Family/Fellowship's ties to Uganda gave a wider group of critics the perfect 2010 excuse to launch a prayer offensive of their own.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is co-hosting the American Prayer Hour -- 8 a.m. at locations scattered around the country or wherever you'd like to pray for "inclusive value and celebrate diversity."

And this was before they knew about Tebow's NPB invite. They've been spending the last few weeks in uproar over Tebow's up-coming anti-abortion at the Super Bowl, an ad sponsored by Focus on the Family which opposes gay rights as well as reproductive rights.

Word from the White House: Obama will talk about:

The need for civility in the public square, and how Americans can work together in a spirit of good will. He will also stress the importance of an openness to compromise and differing perspectives, to disagree without being disagreeable and to step out of our comfort zones to bridge divides."

Where's your prayer comfort zone today? Does Obama get an amen?

FEb. 4, 2010

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