National Prayer Breakfast

Not to be confused with National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
President John F. Kennedy addresses the Prayer Breakfast in 1961.

The National Prayer Breakfast is a yearly event held in Washington, D.C., usually on the first Thursday in February. The founder of this event was Abraham Vereide.[1] The event—which is actually a series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners—has taken place since 1953 and has been held at least since the 1980s at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW.

The National Prayer Breakfast, held in the Hilton's International Ballroom, is yearly attended by some 3,500 guests, including international invitees from over 100 countries. Up until 2023 it was hosted by members of the United States Congress and organized on their behalf by the Christian organization Fellowship Foundation[a] (also sometimes just referred to as The Fellowship). As of 2023 the official National Prayer Breakfast is run by the a new organization, the “National Prayer Breakfast Foundation”.[2] It is designed to be a forum for the political, social, and business elite to assemble and pray together. Since the inception of the National Prayer Breakfast, several U.S. states and cities and other countries have established their own annual prayer breakfast events.

The National Prayer Breakfast split from the Fellowship Foundation (reported in some press under its DBA[b] name International Foundation) in 2023 due to recent controversies and questions regarding the transparency of the coordination of the event. There was a letter signed by 30 groups to boycott the event.[3] The Congress will take over the coordination of the event starting in 2023.

  1. ^ Getter, Lisa (September 27, 2002). "Showing Faith in Discretion". Los Angeles Times.
  2. ^ Olmstead, Molly (February 2, 2023). "Schism! At the Prayer Breakfast". Slate. Retrieved February 2, 2023.
  3. ^ "Concerns over prayer breakfast lead Congress to take it over". AP NEWS. 2023-01-29. Retrieved 2023-01-29.


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