FPL provided media support for this event.
Every February, the National Prayer Breakfast brings thousands of dignitaries, diplomats, politicians and clergy to Washington, D.C., for one of the most high-profile and exclusive networking events in the country for power-brokers and the faithful.
For over 50 years, the breakfast has been organized by the Fellowship Foundation, a discreet but highly influential group, and has drawn every U.S. president since since Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as famed humanitarians ranging from Bono to Mother Teresa. President Barack Obama has attended each year of his presidency, as he will this year.
But when leaders gather in the Washington Hilton ballroom on Thursday morning, they won’t be the only game in town. The National Prayer Breakfast is about to get “occupied” — sort of.
Just half a mile from the hotel, dozens or perhaps hundreds of a network of clergy and their supporters, part of “Occupy Faith” within the Occupy Wall Street movement, plan to converge for their own “People’s Prayer Breakfast.”
“We thought prayer shouldn’t be used for access to power or to move forward people’s agendas,” said Brian Merritt, an organizer of the alternative breakfast who is pastor of the city’s Palisades Community Church. “Prayer connects us to something greater than ourselves, but also moves us in action for those around us. It challenges us to confront others’ needs.”
So while dignitaries and the nation’s leaders munch on an elaborate meal — a ticket to the formal prayer breakfast has been $650 in past years — the free People’s breakfast will entertain a little over 200 people for coffee, danishes, meditation and prayer.
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More than 40 Catholic leaders and theologians have issued an open letter to Catholic candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, warning them “to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”
The signers of the open letter, which was released Friday (Jan. 20), cited Gingrich’s repeated criticisms of Barack Obama as a “food stamp president” who encourages government dependency for the poor, especially for African-Americans.
They also criticized Santorum’s statement that he does not want “to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Santorum later said he intended to use a word other than “black” but did not say what that word would have been.
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A group of interfaith clergy plans to deliver a petition to Lowe’s headquarters in Mooresville today, asking the retailer to apologize for pulling ads from a TV show about Muslim Americans.
The coalition, which includes national activist and faith-based groups Faithful America, Change.org, CREDO, Sum of Us and Groundswell, are angered by Lowe’s Dec. 5 decision to stop advertising on the TLC show “All-American Muslim.”
The retailer, which had nearly $50 billion in sales last year, said it was responding to complaints from the religious group the Florida Family Association. The group had petitioned Lowe’s to stop advertising on “All-American Muslim,” which it said was propaganda that hid the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism.
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The mood among many U.S. Roman Catholic bishops was captured in a recent speech by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. His talk, called “Catholics in the Next America,” painted a bleak picture of a nation increasingly intolerant of Christianity.
“The America emerging in the next several decades is likely to be much less friendly to Christian faith than anything in our country’s past,” Chaput told students last week at Assumption College, an Augustinian school in Worcester, Mass. “It’s not a question of when or if it might happen. It’s happening today.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meets Monday in Baltimore for its national meeting feeling under siege: from a broader culture moving toward accepting gay marriage; a White House they often condemn as hostile to Catholic teaching; and state legislatures that church leaders say are chipping away at religious liberty.
Many Catholic academics, activists and parishioners say the bishops are overreacting. John Gehring of Faith in Public Life, an advocacy network for more liberal religious voters, has argued that in a pluralistic society, government officials can choose policies that differ from church teaching without prejudice being a factor.
“Some perspective is needed here,” Gehring, a Catholic, wrote on his organization’s blog.
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FPL provided media support for this event.
Religious leaders and members of Congress this week are getting a firsthand taste of what it’s like to eat on $4.50 a day as part of the “Food Stamp Challenge.”
In the challenge, participants try to live for a week on the average amount received by people who use food stamps, now known as the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).
“We do need to put ourselves sometimes in other people’s shoes so we can really feel what they have to go through every day,” said Donna Christensen, a Democrat who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands as a nonvoting delegate.
The Food Stamp Challenge is part of Fighting Poverty with Faith, an annual interfaith initiative endorsed by 50 national religious organizations.
This year is a particularly critical one for the cause, faith leaders said, because Congress is considering significant cuts to the more than $64 billion program.
On Thursday (Oct. 27), religious and political leaders teamed up with current SNAP recipients to shop at a Safeway grocery store near Capitol Hill.
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