National Prayer Breakfast to be held virtually in 2021 due to COVID-19
The annual National Prayer Breakfast will be held virtually in 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The ecumenical gathering, which brings together thousands of global leaders from many sectors to Washington, D.C., each year in early February, will be streamed online, according to A. Larry Ross, a public relations professional who is a friend of the Fellowship Foundation, the nonprofit organization that organizes the annual invitation-only event, Religion News Service reported.
President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast in 1953 with approximately 400 elected officials, business and faith leaders in attendance, including evangelist Billy Graham.
Former Vice President Joe Biden's transition team has not confirmed whether he has been invited to speak. The Electoral College certified Biden as the winner of the 2020 election on Dec. 12. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has continued to challenge the election results in court.
Biden has previously attended the event.
This year's event was held on Feb. 6 after the U.S. Senate voted to acquit Trump on articles of impeachment.
While at the event, Trump held up a copy of The Washington Post with the headline “Trump acquitted," and blasted the “very corrupt and dishonest people” who orchestrated his impeachment.
The House of Representatives voted to impeach the president in late 2019 on two articles which charged him with engaging in foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, allegedly to help his re-election bid by asking the Ukrainian president to look into the Biden family's dealings in that country, and for obstruction of justice by instructing his staff to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony.
“I don’t like people who use faith for justification for doing what they know is wrong, nor do I like people who say ‘I pray for you’ when they know that is not so,” Trump said at the time, referring to Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Speaking at the prayer breakfast is often one of the first major speeches a president gives after being inaugurated.
The organization behind the Prayer Breakfast, The Fellowship, which is also known as the International Foundation, was scrutinized last year in a Netflix miniseries titled "The Family." The five-part secular docudrama argued that the Christian leaders in the organization are operating in a highly secretive fashion and are proclaiming a gospel of American power and have ill motives.
The Fellowship said in response that the series misrepresented what they are about.
“Though the Netflix docudrama series mischaracterizes the work of the Fellowship and attempts to portray people of faith in a bad light, we are encouraged by how often viewers are introduced to, and challenged by, the person and principles of Jesus, which are at the core of our mission and message," the group said in a statement to People magazine.
Doug Coe, who became the leader of the Fellowship in 1969, died in 2017.
