President Obama, appearing at his fifth National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 6, touted the power of prayer to create unity and humility in a 20-minute speech to more than 3,000 people.
While an interfaith event, the prayer breakfast has a heavily evangelical Christian emphasis. It is sponsored by members of Congress who meet weekly for prayer when Congress is in session. Every U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 has attended the annual event that attracts thousands from around the world.
At this year’s event Obama shared the dais with first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and keynoter Benjamin S. Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
Opera star Andrea Bocelli sang “Ave Maria” for the gathering and Gabrielle Douglas, the gold-medal-winning Olympic gymnast, offered the closing prayer.
During his remarks, Obama steered clear of political topics and spoke of his faith in both personal and general terms.
“Sometimes I search Scripture to determine how best to balance life as a president and as a husband and as a father. I often search for Scripture to figure out how I can be a better man as well as a better president,” he said. “And I believe that we are united in these struggles. But I also believe that we are united in the knowledge of a redeeming Savior, whose grace is sufficient for the multitude of our sins and whose love is never failing.”
Obama also took the opportunity to chide lawmakers from both parties for Washington’s ongoing partisan divide.
“I do worry sometimes that as soon as we leave the prayer breakfast, everything we’ve been talking about the whole time at the prayer breakfast seems to be forgotten,” Obama said to laughter. “I mean, you’d like to think that the shelf life wasn’t so short. But I go back to the Oval Office, and I start watching the cable news networks and it’s like we didn’t pray.”
Obama then called for humility among political leaders “for no one can know the full and encompassing mind of God.”
As examples of how the nation withstood times of deeper divisions, the president turned to the faith journeys of President Abraham Lincoln and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
(BP, RNS)
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