What are National Prayer Breakfasts for? Chine McDonald compares her experience in the UK to recent events in the US. 12/02/2026
I’ve attended pretty much every National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast for the past decade. Except one. Sadly maternity leave meant I missed the one that will go down in history as the prayer breakfast that brought down a government.
Once a year, the prayer breakfast draws hundreds of church and charity leaders, MPs and peers, to Westminster Hall. That year, the event – which took place in July 2022 – was themed around Serving the Common Good. Over the usual pastries, teas and coffees, Rev Les Isaac – founder and CEO of Ascension Trust and founder of Street Pastors – delivered a sermon on Psalm 23. He spoke about integrity, humility and the courage to act when conscience demands it.
Listening intently was Sajid Javid – the then health secretary – who, stirred by Rev Isaac’s words, decided that day to resign from Boris Johnson’s Cabinet.
“I made my decision then,” he said. “Sitting there listening to his sermon, and I just thought, it’s about integrity, it’s about a duty. If you haven’t got confidence in the boss, you owe it to yourself and the country to tell the boss nicely that you can’t serve and that was it.”
It’s not often that a prayer meeting is linked, however indirectly, to the fall of a government. But that’s what can happen when Christian scripture is given the space to speak into public life. For much of the past few decades, Christianity has at times been sidelined; seen by some as irrelevant at best, and at worst – dangerous. But perhaps Christianity poses a danger to any dominant narratives that might act against human flourishing.
Last week in Washington DC, the US version of the National Prayer Breakfast featured a very long address from Donald Trump. Seventy–seven minutes, to be precise. You can read the full transcript of the speech here, which starts with the words:
“And, you know, I never get a fair break from the fake news, which is back there. That’s a lot of fake news.”
He went on to talk about religion being “back hotter than ever”, in part because of the good things he’s doing for it, his popularity, and whether or not he’ll get into heaven [“I really think I probably should make it.”] Read this great post by John Kuhrt for more analysis.
The prayer breakfast has always been intended to be a moment of reflection, repentance and reorientation towards God, and l a recognition of the role of Christianity in American public life. But this felt something closer to a campaign rally. Michael Wear, founder of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, has written extensively about the prayer breakfast, and warned about the dangers of it being co–opted by partisan interests. And also, by ego.
For Wear, who was a former faith adviser to Barack Obama: “One purpose of the breakfast in history has been to position presidents and political leaders in such a way that they are humbled – their remarks typically focused on ways they fell short, the nation’s reliance on grace that politics and politicians can’t provide. Not until this president has someone gone to the breakfast to make so much of himself, and so little of God. And he does it every year.”
We don’t get everything right on our side of the Atlantic, but the UK National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, which drew a record number of MPs last year (170), does things differently. We at Theos, via our colleagues at Bible Society and Christians in Parliament, play a key part in organising the event. The Prime Minister is never invited to deliver the keynote address; he or she is an honoured guest in the audience/congregation. The platform isn’t handed to the most powerful political figure in the room. Instead, a Christian leader opens up the scriptures and offers wisdom to those who hold power. Maybe this distinction matters.
Because power has a gravitational pull. It bends institutions towards itself. It’s hard to resist.
Christian scripture, however, doesn’t exist to sanctify the powerful. Time and again, it unsettles them. The prophets speak woe to unjust rulers. In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the mighty being cast down and the humble lifted up. Jesus stands before Pilate and redefines what power and authority look like.
When Rev Les Isaac addressed Parliamentarians, he did not flatter them. He spoke of service, of character formed in obscurity, of communities crying out for justice. In that space, MPs were not the main characters. They were listeners under the authority of an ancient text that judges – and hopefully speaks to – us all.
This vision sits at the heart of Theos’ work. Our aim is to promote a Christian imagination arising out of that scripture of human flourishing for society – across politics, the media, the arts, education and business. That imagination doesn’t merely point to the old days of “Judaeo–Christian values” and civilizations. It asks what kind of society enables people and communities to thrive; what virtues sustain democratic life; what stories shape our common good. It offers the wisdom and riches of the Christian intellectual and spiritual tradition to help meet some of the biggest challenges our society is facing today: from AI to nationhood to economic inequality to immigration to motherhood.
We know that Christianity has so often failed, but we also believe that good public theology, which tells the stories of Christianity, can be a gift to society.
In an adrenaline–fuelled political culture (see Keir Starmer’s week), the quiet power of a well–preached sermon, rooted in scripture and addressed to the conscience, can ripple far beyond a single morning in Westminster Hall.
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