WASHINGTON — Differing religious beliefs should not prevent people from loving and serving one another for the “betterment of our world,” President Barack Obama said Feb. 5 in his first speech at the National Prayer Breakfast since taking office.
At the annual event attended by about 3,000 people, the new president said the “very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same.”
“But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate,” Obama said. “There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.” He said the golden rule — “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matt. 7:12) — unites all major religions.
“Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what has broken; to lift up those who have fallen on hard times,” the president told the audience of legislators, administration officials, foreign diplomats, religious leaders and others gathered in a Washington hotel ballroom.
Tony Blair, former British prime minister, delivered the keynote speech. Reps. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., a Southern Baptist, and Vern Ehlers, R-Mich., co-chaired this year’s breakfast. Members of Congress read Scripture and prayed during the event.
The National Prayer Breakfast, which is sponsored by an evangelical Christian organization, began in 1953 during President Eisenhower’s first administration.
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