President Joe Biden spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday and called for Americans who disagree about political issues to once again treat each other like neighbors or even friends.
He said his prayer this year is that “we start to see each other again, look at each other again, travel with each other again, argue like hell with each other again but then still go to lunch together,” according to The Hill.
Biden shared how he’s working to model that kind of behavior at the White House, noting that on Wednesday he and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, had a “good meeting” about the debt ceiling.
“Let’s just sort of, kind of, join hands again a little bit. Let’s start treating each other with respect. That’s what Kevin and I are going to do,” he said.
Biden was speaking to a room filled with members of Congress, their invited guests and some other government officials. His remarks were also broadcast at a separate breakfast held in a nearby hotel for people of faith from around the world, as the Deseret News previously reported.
The National Prayer Breakfast, which is held each year on the first Thursday of February, gives politicians the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between religion and politics.
“Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has spoken at the breakfast,” often using the event as a chance to share how their personal faith informs their daily work, The Associated Press reported.
“The event is designed to bring people together across partisan lines,” the article said.
One reason why Biden and other policymakers were gathered in an auditorium at the Capitol Visitor Center Thursday instead of the large hotel ballrooms of years past is that the National Prayer Breakfast’s organizers thought change was needed to protect the gathering’s bipartisan nature.
The event is now run by the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, which took it over from a group called the International Foundation after that group was linked to prominent conservative lobbying efforts, as the Deseret News previously reported.
As part of the change, organizers scaled back the invite list to keep the event focused on lawmakers and their loved ones, including some religious leaders. Mark Pryor, a former senator who now serves as board president of the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, recently told Religion News Service that many current members of Congress called for the adjustments.
“That’s what Congress wants, they want to take it back to its origins and in the early days it really was just the Congress and the president,” he said.
On Thursday, Biden told the assembled crowd of political leaders that it’s crucial for lawmakers to start treating their political enemies as neighbors once again. He cited the biblical teaching to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” according to The Associated Press.
“That’s the hardest one, I think,” Biden said. “At least it’s hardest here. It didn’t used to be as hard. I’ve been here a long time. But it seems to be getting harder.”