National Prayer Breakfast

The National Prayer Breakfast is the name for various annual conferences held in the United States and the United Kingdom which are used to promote a pro-Christian agenda among politicians, celebrities, news media figures and business leaders.

In the United States
In the United States, the Breakfast is held on the first Thursday of February. The actual breakfast meal &mdash; the only portion of the conference covered by the news media &mdash; kicks off a series of meetings and lectures that lasts into the weekend. The first Breakfast was held in 1953, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in attendance. Every president since Ike has attended at least one Breakfast while in office. The Breakfast is held in the International Ballroom at the Washington Hilton Hotel, and is attended by 3500 guests.

Presidents who have had their faith called into question often give speeches about their faith at the Breakfast, including John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan outdid any president under these circumstances, using the 1983 breakfast to proclaim that year as the first Year of the Bible.

Because it is organized by the secretive and ultra-fundamentalist group known as The Fellowship, who allegedly use the event to influence public policy, the Breakfast is often opposed by atheists, civil rights advocates, and other groups who wish to see a greater separation of church and state.

Not to be outdone, there is a National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, started in 2005 at the request of Pope John Paul II, as well as a National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. Lunch and dinner must have been left for the Satanists!

In Great Britain
In Great Britain, the National Prayer Breakfast is a two-day conference held in early summer in the Houses of Parliament. The Fellowship is not affiliated with the UK Prayer Breakfast.

Spin-off financial product
Following the 2009 financial crash, the NPB's UK organisers took advantage of widespread demand for sustainable investments and worked with the London Stock Exchange to launch a new index tracker to allow "investment in the loving fellowship of communal breakfasting". Although initially based around religious breakfast events, greater than expected interest led to the index led to more heavy City involvement and the expansion of the index to include the morning catering operations of over 2000 hotels, including budget chains Avis and Premier Inn. The index provided strong and robust returns for many years until a complete collapse of the industry following the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic caused the value of the fund to drop to near zero, ruining many small investors who believed their money was safe.