Mike Johnson’s oddball National Prayer Breakfast takes ‘a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state’

How far are we into Donald Trump‘s second presidential term, again? It’s got to be at least three months, with all the insane decisions he’s already made, right? Right?!

In reality, it’s been three weeks — not three months — since Trump took office, but that time has been so overstuffed with wild updates and mind-boggling announcements that no one can keep track. It feels like we’re on day 225 of Team Trump, as American heads spin nonstop from the constant efforts to flood the zone with endlessly changing information.

Which is probably why so many people missed that Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is stomping all over the separation of church and state that this country was built on. It’s literally in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which leaves no room for questions about its proclamation that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

This nation was built on the notion that government and religion should never be intertwined, but here Johnson is, inciting broad criticism over his insistence on enmeshing church and state ever-more. The National Prayer Breakfast that Johnson and Trump participated in on Feb. 6 isn’t a Johnson brainchild — it’s actually been around for decades — but the renewed criticism it’s receiving this year nonetheless strikes true.

For the second year in a row, Johnson is taking it upon himself to see the prayer breakfast continue, despite pushback from those who believe it tramples all over the idea that church and state should remain separate. That decision provoked a reaction — and a protest — from California Representative Jared Huffman, who took to social media to share his thoughts. Flashing several notable pins — including one warning of our move toward Gilead — Huffman explains, in a posted video, that “we should not be having a Christian prayer service in the sanctum of the United States capitol.”

“This is an actual violation of chuch/state separation,” Huffman goes on to explain. He also added that Johnson is conducting the prayer breakfast in “open collaboration with a group called the Fellowship Foundation,” which he describes as a “radical, extremist group” that’s previously engaged in horrendous treatment of women and LGBTQ+ people.

Commenters and fact-checkers were quick to point out that both presidents Obama and Biden attended the breakfast, much like Trump did in early February, which is true. It has become tradition, at this point, for presidents to attend the breakfast, but that doesn’t invalidate the representative’s criticisms.

A non-secular prayer would certainly be better than a Christian one, but even then we’re blurring the line between religion and government. There’s a reason our nation strives to keep the two separate, and there’s really no cause for religion to ever have a place in our statehouses.

It must be noted that the website for the National Prayer Breakfast does invite people of “all faiths” to participate in the breakfast, but it’s clear reference to Jesus of Nazareth massively narrows down who will feel at home at the event. Everyone may be welcome, but it seems their religions will not be recognized in the service, which leans on Christianity to preach the “spirit of love and reconciliation.”

It’s unlikely that Huffman’s protest — or our discomfort with the event — will bring a decades-long tradition to an end, but it’s worth considering the slippery slope issues like this set us on. With other presidents, it was just an event, but with Trump, it could be the first step in a dangerous direction. We’re already experiencing an increasing level of religious overstep in our government, and with Trump at the helm, we’re likely to see things inch closer to a theocracy of Gilead proportions with each passing day.