WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden on Thursday called for a confrontation of the “political extremism” that inspired the American Capitol riot and called for collective power during such turbulent times in remarks during the National Prayer Breakfast, ‘ a tradition from Washington that asks political fighters to put aside their differences for one morning.
The breakfast has sparked controversy in the past, especially when President Donald Trump used last year’s delivery to defeat his political opponents and question their faith.. Some liberals viewed the event cautiously because of the conservative faith-based group behind it.
Yet Biden campaigned for the White House as someone who could unite Americans, and breakfast gave the country’s second Catholic president the chance to talk about his vision of faith as a force for good.
“For so many people in our country, this is a dark, dark time,” Biden told those who watched the event. ‘Where are we going then? Faith. ”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., Said the event was an “inclusive and positive” event that “acknowledges the teachings of Jesus, but is not limited to Christianity.”
The breakfast continues at a time when the capital of the country is experiencing a series of historical crises. Biden struggles to win significant Republican congressional support for a coronavirus response package, which increases the likelihood that he will only rely on Democrats to pass the legislation.
Many in Washington are still navigating the aftermath of the deadly uprising at the American Capitol last month, to which Biden referred in his remarks Thursday, citing the “political extremism” that drove the siege. Trump faces unprecedented second indictment next week in the Senate on his role in inciting the riot.
Biden’s message Thursday was his latest call to put Washington back on a more traditional basis after four years of Trump’s aggressive style. During breakfast in 2020, Trump singled out Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the Democratic House, and Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who during his first process of indictment voted to convict the president. Trump even held up a newspaper with a headline titled “ACQUITTED” about his own picture.
Every president has attended the breakfast since Dwight D. Eisenhower made his first appearance in 1953. The event went completely virtual this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, with Biden and all the other speakers appearing on tape comments. Four living former presidents sent messages to breakfast, with three on tape, while Coons read out a message from former president Jimmy Carter, making Trump’s absence conspicuous.
South Scott Senator Tim Scott, co-chair of this year’s breakfast GOP, pointed to regular faith-based gatherings on Capitol Hill that draw senators from both sides of the ideological spectrum as a model for the event. “We do not see philosophically, politically, but we embrace each other as brothers in faith,” Scott, who also made virtual remarks at breakfast, said in an interview.
Breakfast has declined since the administration of President Barack Obama from gay and civil rights activists, and many of the opposition is focused on the Fellowship Foundation, the conservative faith-based organization that has long supported the event. Religious liberals protested outside Trump’s first appearance in 2017and criticized his restrictions on admission to refugees in the US, and a Russian arms rights activist convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent attended the breakfast twice during his administration.
Norman Solomon, co-founder and national director of the progressive activist group RootsAction, warned Biden ‘not to pursue a path to bigotry’.
“We do not need unity with triviality,” Solomon said. ‘I fear a subtext of this involvement is:’ Can’t we all cope? ‘But it is not suitable in this case, given the well-known right-wing and anti-gay background of the sponsors of the event. ”
Solomon said Democratic presidents continued a tradition of attending an event where their Republican counterparts often felt more comfortable because they feared they would be labeled ‘anti-religious or non-religious’. He said that Biden, a religious Catholic who attends Mass every week, could better send a unifying message by skipping the opportunity and instead sharing one that is truly dualistic.
“God knows that there are many religious leaders and gatherings who are pious and who affirm human equality,” he said. “It’s not one of them.”
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, agrees that ‘there are far better ways’ than breakfast for Biden to connect with people based on shared spiritual beliefs.
“We want to work with the administration to find a way to change the sponsorship of an event like this and make it a place for Americans with different faiths,” Laser said.
But Democratic leaders, aware of Biden’s devout Catholic faith and calls for healing, have largely refrained from public comment on the event this year. Pelosi, D-California, recorded her own message at the event on Thursday morning.
Both Laser and Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a fellow member of the Liberal Center for American Progress think tank’s faith initiative, pointed to the Christian symbolism seen as an opening for the Biden to riot in the Capitol last month to offer pluralistic, open language about faith going forward. .
“I hope President Biden realizes that we are in a new moment,” Graves-Fitzsimmons said, “and that the threat of Christian nationalism is a threat to the sacred religious pluralism of the United States and to Christianity.”
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