At National Prayer Breakfast, Obama to Address Shadowy Christian Group Tied to Uganda's 'Kill the Gays' Bill

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on February 1, 2010, Printed on February 1, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145366/

The National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Washington exercise attended by politicians of all stripes who wish to demonstrate their piety, is one of those must-go events for the U.S. president, or so the conventional wisdom has it. Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended.

But the prayer breakfast, however benign it may seem on the surface, is really a display of power for an underground religious group that often shapes U.S. foreign policy in ways not easy to see, and sometimes at odds with the policy goals of the government. This Thursday, President Barack Obama is expected to address the gathering, as he did last year. But if there was ever a year for the president to have a sudden scheduling conflict, it's this one.