Obama Speaks at 2010 National Prayer Breakfast

4 February 2010

Thursday morning, President Obama spoke at Washington's annual National Prayer Breakfast.

This year's Prayer Breakfast stirred controversy because an ethics group asked the president to boycott the event. According to the New York Times, they did so because they were morally against one of the sponsors of the breakfast, a secretive evangelical Christian group known as The Fellowship. The group is thought to have called for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals.

Despite this, President Obama attended the breakfast, along with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He gave a heartfelt and inspiring speech.

He reached out to world leaders and scholars around the world to foster a more peaceful and productive dialogue about faith. "I believe this good is possible" he says, "because my faith teaches me that all is possible, but I also believe because of what I have seen and what I have lived."

As reported by the USA Today, Obama also stated, "There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we are going next and some subscribe to no faith at all. But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know."

Obama also announced he is creating an Advisory Council on Faith. He is naming Joshua DuBois (who ran his faith-based outreach efforts during the campaign) to head a White House Office for Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.