National Prayer Breakfast

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. 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 (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”. 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 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. The Congress will take over the coordination of the event starting in 2023. History The origin of the National Prayer Breakfast is traced back to prayer groups with business and civic leaders in Seattle, organized by Abraham Vereide in the 1930s. When he moved to Washington, DC, he established similar groups with members of Congress. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended a meeting by invitation of Congressmen, Vereide, and Billy Graham. Vereide's successor Douglas Coe and Rev. Richard C. Halverson have also carried leadership roles in organizing the event. A government leader was quoted as saying that the Breakfast and Coe's influence offers foreign leaders access to the President that "circumvents the State Department and usual vetting... that such a meeting would require," and other participants indicated that their purpose for attending was political.