Sunnyside up

Andrew Silow-Carroll
NJJN Editor-in-Chief

Each year in Washington, lawmakers from across the political spectrum gather for the National Prayer Breakfast. The name, setting, and guest list suggest it is an ecumenical event, sanctioned by Congress and perhaps sponsored by a coalition of religious groups. It is none of those things. It is actually a private event hosted by a secretive Christian organization called the Fellowship.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But last year the group took a deserved pounding from a New Jersey rabbi, Shmuel Goldin of Englewood, who objected that the breakfast had taken on a decidedly evangelical tone, with registration material that said, “Jesus Christ transcends all religions.” Goldin alerted Rep. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.).

The Fellowship seemed to have listened, and this year’s breakfast included Coleman as a cochair, Hebrew prayers by Coleman and Sen. Joe Lieberman, and remarks by rock star Bono, a Christian, and Jordan’s King Abdullah, a Muslim. Goldin welcomed the changes, as did groups ranging from the Orthodox Union to the Union for Reform Judaism.

For many Jews, there is an impulse to be wary of events like the National Prayer Breakfast. It’s always a fine line between making room in the public square for celebrations of “civil religion” and appearing to endorse one religion over another. The solution is a broad-based ecumenism (which even some Christians find compromising). Since that’s the case, this year’s breakfast seemed an unqualified success and a real celebration of the religious impulses so many Americans share.

At a time in which the wall between church and state has been allowed to erode, Goldin’s advocacy restored, for the time being, a sense of fellowship in the nation’s capital.

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