(Washington D.C. – February 17, 2025) Bob Fu, Ph.D., founder and president of ChinaAid, attended the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6.
The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual event in Washington, D.C., typically held on the first Thursday of February. In February 1953, President Eisenhower became the first president to attend the National Prayer Breakfast. Since then, it has been customary for every president to deliver a speech at the gathering. This tradition brings together bipartisan legislators who set aside political differences to study the Bible, pray, reflect, and unite to foster their friendship.
In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast was divided into two dueling events. One was held on Capitol Hill, attended by members of Congress, government officials, and their families and friends. The other, a larger prayer gathering, took place in a hotel ballroom with thousands of attendees. In both 2023 and 2024, President Biden attended only the Capitol Hill prayer breakfast, broadcasting his speech to the larger gathering.
For many years, Pastor Bob Fu has been a guest at the National Prayer Breakfast. During this time each year, he leads a delegation to Washington, D.C., for a series of meetings, engaging with members of Congress, senators, and other officials to advocate for religious freedom in China.
Pastor Bob Fu stated that he only learned on the 5th that President Trump would attend this year’s prayer breakfast. He praised the non-denominational Christian president for breaking from President Biden’s practice in recent years of attending only the Capitol Hill prayer breakfast. He noted that the separation of the two events had only occurred in the past two years under the pretext of pandemic-related risks.
On the 6th, President Trump personally appeared in the Hilton Hotel ballroom to address the guests. Speaking about his experience surviving an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania at a second prayer breakfast later, he remarked, “It was a miracle. It was God who saved me.”
Pastor Fu, deeply moved, declared, “Glory be to God,” and gave a standing ovation.
President Trump continued, saying, “I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.” He further stated, “If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country.”
“And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God. there is no recourse more precious than the faith in the hearts of our people. It’s the thing that makes our nation great. It makes other nations great.”
President Trump repeatedly invoked God’s grace in his speech, stating, “Without God, we are isolated and alone. But with God, the Scripture tells us, all things are possible.”
Pastor Bob Fu responded emotionally to his attendance at the prayer breakfast, noting that President Trump signed an executive order at the event, establishing new mechanisms directly under the President: the “Presidential Commission on Religious Freedom” and the “White House Faith Office.” Additionally, he directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and various federal agencies to identify “laws, regulations, and policies that discriminate against and are anti-Christian” and to propose ways to eliminate these discriminatory and persecutory practices through administrative and new legislation.
These discriminatory and oppressive policies and practices against Christians and churches reached their peak in the free world during Covid 19 in the name of the epidemic, as the extreme ideology of the Marxist-Leninist-radical-Left in the U.S. swept across the U.S. and the world with the full support of the Biden administration. Some principled churches and pastors in the U.S., Canada, and Europe have been subjected to discrimination and persecution by federal and local governments and judicial-political weaponized law enforcement agencies with threats of water and power cuts, threats of heavy fines, violent evictions, arrests, etc., which has resulted in serious “reverse discrimination and even persecution” of Christian believers and biblically committed Christian churches and other conservative believers. It is time to change these policies and practices that suppress religious freedom and classical universal values.
Pastor Fu then added that “The China Aid Association welcomes President Trump’s new initiatives and mechanisms to eliminate all forms of repression and persecution of religions and beliefs, and opposes new “reverse discrimination and persecution” of people of all faiths, including Christian believers and churches, by any ideology and under any name, in the name of “pluralism, equality, and inclusiveness/DEI” in the Western world. We will continue to work to promote religious freedom for all religions or beliefs!”
President Trump and his new administration’s strong emphasis on religious freedom has greatly encouraged ChinaAid in its long-standing mission to advocate for religious freedom in China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appointed by Trump, is a staunch advocate for religious freedom and a close friend of the ChinaAid’s president, as well as a long-term, reliable partner of ChinaAid.
The hosting of the National Prayer Breakfast clearly demonstrates that the United States is not a purely “secular” country. Political scholar Dr. Liu Junning has stated, “The U.S. Constitution has never mandated the separation of church and state. What the Constitution stipulates is that the government shall not interfere in religious affairs or use governmental power to establish religious authority.”
He further noted, “The Pledge of Allegiance affirms that the United States is ‘One Nation under God,’ indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Acknowledging the deep connection between politics and religion in the U.S., another netizen humorously responded, “George Washington, during his inauguration, placed his hand on the Bible while taking the oath of office, symbolically filling the constitutional gap between government institutions and God.”
(Reported by Special Correspondent Gao Zhensai of ChinaAid)
