By Lloyd Mackey

A BOOK called The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper Perennial, 2008), by Jeff Sharlet, is getting a little attention these days, south of the border.

And a smidgen, as well, north of selfsame border. Sharlet was interviewed on CBC a couple of weeks ago. In the process, he was asked if there is a Canadian link. Yes, he replied, and he is looking forward to researching it next.

He allowed that the Canadian story is a little different because our equivalent to The Family is seemingly much more transparent.

I know what Sharlet is talking about by the moniker of "the prayer breakfast movement." Its main public focal point is the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast, which draws about 4,000 people to Washington, DC, for a focus centred on the person of Jesus.

In Canada, the link is the National Prayer Breakfast which, in recent years, has grown from about 300 people to close to 900. And Jack Murta, a former Mulroney cabinet minister who shepherds whatever part of the parliamentary flock who want to be involved, agrees with Sharlet's contention of transparency. He is also a bit curious to see what the American journalist will discover when he starts his research on Canada.

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Being a typical mushy, middle-of-the-road Canadian Christian, I would observe that too much secrecy, as Sharlet is alleging with respect to the prayer breakfast movement, is a bad thing. And, interestingly enough, so is too much transparency.

One of the hallmarks of the movement, as I have observed it, is the intensity -- and integrity -- with which its leaders will work to help politicians and diplomats of all sorts to understand what the life and person of Jesus can bring to their lives and work. To put it colloquially, they understand that you can take a horse to the water, but you cannot make that horse drink.

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By too much transparency, I mean the tendency of some Christian leaders to be publicity hounds. They like to be in the limelight so much, sometimes, that Soli Deo Gloria gets pushed to the side. (Colossians 3:17 will provide an interpretation to that little bit of Latin.)

But in working quietly with leaders, with the clear focus of leading them to Jesus, and nurturing them to an understanding of what he is about, the prayer breakfast people I know strike the right balance -- both in Canada and the United States.

In More Faithful than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005), I have a chapter titled 'Bobbie: Getting it Together.' It tells about a 13-year-old boy who grew up to be an American congressman. The story about how he got there can be retold another time.

But the point of the prayer breakfast movement is summarized in the congressman's recounting of the reasons why he gets together each week with a few of his fellow politicians

Their main objectives, paraphrased, go as follows.

They gather to:

1. Get to know Jesus better.
2. See what the Bible says about how they should live.
3. Make sure they walk straight.
4. Be accountable to each other and to God.
5. Pray together.

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

August 20/2009