Guest post: On behalf of the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast Group
Originally a comment by Seanna Watson on Mandatory Xianity.
The purpose of the National Prayer Breakfast is to unite leaders in our capital in order to pray together, build relationships, and seek to walk together in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual Christian event and is historically offered under the auspices of the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons on behalf of the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast Group.
It’s also sponsored by the Canadian Fellowship Foundation, which appears to be related to the US group of the same name (though details are sparse, and I occasionally have wondered if Sharlet might know anything about the relationship). Though the event is no longer held in government buildings, it still consumes public resources, since there is an designated official MP whose office staff does planning and mailing etc.
I attended one about 10 years back with a small group of CFI Canada people, when it was billed as “an ecumenical event in the spirit of Jesus Christ”. At that time, they were claiming to welcome everyone, including Muslims (well, except for the pork sausages), and even gave lip-service to dialoging with atheists (but not surprisingly ignored all our attempts at followup). More recently, it has turned back inwards as the theoCons have been increasingly seeing themselves as a downtrodden persecuted minority, and they have become rather more explicitly Christian in their marketing.
They love their favorite toys so much that they simply *cannot* be happy unless you play with them too. [H/t Christopher Hitchens for this metaphor.] It is just like T “validation.” They’re never happy enough in themselves or among themselves. They can never just leave other people alone. THEIR belief matters. Yours? Not so much. “Every knee will bend.” The totalitarianism is frightening.
(Ophelia: Thanks for the GP.)
@maddog, I think it goes beyond wanting validation (which I agree is bad enough). As I once said to a (sadly, now ex-) friend of mine, the problem is not so much that you think that *I* am going to hell, but that you think that *you* are going to heaven. At base is the mindset that the essence of their being is their immortal soul, and therefore everyone’s earthly existence is but a small blip in the face of eternity. And based on that premise, all manner of horrible things can be rendered permissible.