It is one of those sanctimonious quasi-governmental ceremonies--first held in 1953 to celebrate American superiority to the godless Soviets--that has now become a sacred "tradition."

It is interesting to reflect that both the annual prayer breakfast and the 1954 insertion of "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance are artifacts of the Cold War. Most Americans mistakenly assume that these customs date from the beginning of the republic. Yet somehow, the United
States managed to survive nearly 170 years without anyone throwing elaborate prayer breakfasts for government dignitaries and without requiring children to stand up every morning and pledge their fealty to "one nation, under God."

As this year's National Prayer Breakfast draws near, many Americans (including some politicians planning to attend) might be surprised to learn that the event is sponsored not by the government but by a mysterious organization, based in Arlington, Va., called the Fellowship Foundation. The foundation was originally established in the 1930s as a Christian anti-socialist group and moved on to anti-Communism after World War II. It is now an international nonpartisan Christian outreach group.

Lisa Getter, in an exhaustively researched article in the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 27, 2002), noted that the Fellowship (as it is commonly called) "is a collection of public officials, business leaders and religious ministries that defies easy description." Its members take a vow of silence about their activities, which involve many kinds of contacts with international leaders. (In that respect, the organization resembles the better known and highly controversial Roman Catholic group, Opus Dei.) Getter did her research in Fellowship archives kept at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, and in documents housed in presidential libraries.

Among the less-than-savory figures brought to Washington under the Fellowship's auspices--often for the annual prayer breakfast--was the former Salvadoran Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who in July 2002 was found liable by a Florida jury for civil damages for the torture of thousands of Salvadorans during the 1980s.

According to the Los Angeles Times report, the serendipitously named Casanova was invited to the 1984 prayer breakfast along with Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, head of the Honduran armed forces at the time. Alvarez was later linked to a secret death squad aimed at stamping out political opponents. He became an evangelical missionary before his own assassination in 1989.

To paraphrase the famous dictum of France's Premier Georges Clemenceau, prayer breakfasts are to prayer as military justice is to justice. The moral of the story is that politicians might do better to say their prayers at home. You just never know who is praying in the seat next to you at a public prayer demonstration, and if the attention of God should wander for a split second, you might get an answer intended for someone else--someone whose pleas belongs more properly to the infernal regions than to heaven.