It began as a movement, became a business, and finally degenerated into a racket.

Solid observation.
 

At Prayer Breakfast, Guests Seek Access to a Different Higher Power



WASHINGTON — With a lineup of prayer meetings, humanitarian forums and religious panels, the National Prayer Breakfast has long brought together people from all over the world for an agenda built around the teachings of Jesus.

But there on the guest list in recent years was Maria Butina, looking to meet high-level American officials and advance the interests of the Russian state, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a Ukranian opposition leader, seeking a few minutes with President Trump to burnish her credentials as a presidential prospect back home.

Their presence at the breakfast illuminates the way the annual event has become an international influence-peddling bazaar, where foreign dignitaries, religious leaders, diplomats and lobbyists jockey for access to the highest reaches of American power.

The subculture around the breakfast was thrust into the spotlight last week with the indictment of Ms. Butina, who was charged with conspiring to act as a Russian agent. Her goals, prosecutors said, included gaining access to the breakfast “to establish a back channel of communication” between influential Russians and Americans “to promote the political interests of the Russian Federation.”

Ms. Butina’s spy-thriller-like tactics hint at the more widespread, if less sensational, international maneuvering that pervades the prayer breakfast, and the lucrative opportunities it creates for Washington’s corps of lobbyists and fixers, according to more than half a dozen people who have been involved in peddling access around the event.

Ahead of Mr. Trump’s first appearance at the breakfast last year, some of the people said, foreign politicians clamored for tickets, with some offering to pay steep fees to get into the event and the myriad gatherings on its sidelines.

One lobbyist, Herman J. Cohen, offered what he billed as an exclusive invitation to last year’s breakfast, and three days of meetings around it, to an African leader for $220,000.
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James C. Slattery, a former Democratic congressman from Kansas whose firm was paid more than $1.8 million since 2011 to provide lobbying help for Ms. Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian leader, and her political causes, encouraged her to attend the breakfast. He accompanied her to last year’s event, where she secured a photograph and brief conversation with Mr. Trump, which her allies used to promote her nascent presidential candidacy back home — to the apparent surprise of the White House, and to the chagrin of the sitting Ukrainian president.

Held every year at the Washington Hilton, the prayer breakfast festivities span several days during the first week of February, with the American president appearing at a ceremonial breakfast on Thursday. The days are packed with programming, after which guests head to private suites with names like the Africa room and the Middle East room, or to fancier hotels in nearby Georgetown, where they mingle late into the night — praying, sharing business cards and sometimes draining expensive bottles of cognac. A favorite activity is an annual midnight tour of the Capitol, hosted by a former congressman.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/us/politics/national-prayer-breakfast.html

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

tennyson wrote:

I don't believe the Evangelical Movement is over, but I DO BELIEVE a LOT of it has been shown for what it truly is. 

I would call it a Zombie Movement.
Evangelicalism still looks like a religious movement,,,, it's leaders still call themselves Reverend,,,, they still use the cross as a symbol,,, still use the name of God.

But, it's no longer about personal salvation, and the worship of God. No, it's about seeking political advantage and power  for conservative white people while limiting the power and freedom of other groups.
And God?
Now God serves their political masters. He has become the justification for a political agenda.