Abcarian: Steve Bannon discovers the hard way that defying Congress is no joke
President Donald Trump may not have been a regular attendee at the National Prayer Breakfast, but one thing that he definitely did was pay respect at the close of the annual event by inviting the likes of Stephen Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief evangelical adviser, and a long line of religious leaders to the White House.
The event was held at the White House in April. As is required, the president had invited a number of leaders, including the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., the leader of the American Christian Coalition, the Rev. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Liberty University’s Jonathan Merritt, founder and president of the Christian Coalition, and many other religious leaders, including former White House chief strategist and current Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon.
And just to be clear, the group in attendance that day was comprised of religious folks who believe in the sanctity of life, while also being staunch opponents of anti-abortion laws. In other words, the group not only included people who oppose the current pro-life laws on the books, but also oppose the anti-abortion laws that are in the works in several states, which would grant more rights to the unborn that are currently afforded to the born. (A side note here, one of my favorite pastors, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, who is considered a conservative evangelical leader, was not in attendance that day. However, he is a prominent evangelical leader in Dallas, Texas, and his sermon at the National Prayer Breakfast was an eloquent call for the unborn in Christ’s name.)
As the Washington Post reported:
Most prominent among them were a handful of conservative Christians who have faced intense criticism for their involvement in politics, including one who has been denied access to an abortion clinic but has served in Congress for 25 years, and another who has never held public office and has opposed abortion publicly and privately. The group also included leaders, including Falwell, who has said he opposes abortion and has said he would “rather die than see my fellow human beings lose their lives in an abortion.” He has called abortion a “crime against humanity.” Another prominent Christian leader, Richard Land, who supports abortion rights, praised the gathering as “an historic moment
