No Pressure, Mr. President! The Power Of True Belief In A Time Of Crisis: The National Prayer Breakfast Speech

by Eric Metaxas

Overview

America's Bonhoeffer moment is here.

There is a difference between real faith in God and mere religion. There is a kind of religion that is lifeless and is the bitter enemy of true faith. Think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prophetic attempts to waken the sleeping German church, often unwitting allies of Hitler and the Third Reich. Or of William Wilberforce’s heroic efforts to rouse his complacent “Christian” countrymen to stand against the monstrous evil of the slave trade. Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce stood against the evil of their times—an evil often repackaged in religious-sounding language.

Eric Metaxas’s electrifying message—delivered before the president and dozens of national leaders at the Sixtieth Annual National Prayer Breakfast—calls readers to follow in the steps of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer, men who lived their faith and swam against the mainstream, instead of drifting along with it. Metaxas makes it clear that phony religiosity offends God himself—and that real prayer is only possible with a living faith in a living God. And that kind of faith can transform the world. No pressure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400275021
Publisher:	Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date:	12/24/2012
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Eric Metaxas is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, If You Can Keep It, Miracles, Seven Women, Seven Men, and Amazing Grace. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, and Metaxas has appeared as a cultural commentator on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. He is the host of The Eric Metaxas Radio Show, a daily nationally syndicated show aired in 120 U.S. cities and on TBN. Metaxas is also the founder of Socrates in the City, the acclaimed series of conversations on “life, God, and other small topics,” featuring Malcolm Gladwell, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, Baroness Caroline Cox, and Dick Cavett, among many others. He is a senior fellow and lecturer at large at the King’s College in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

Read an Excerpt

Jesus Hates Dead Religion

Bonhoeffer, Wilberforce, and the Power of Living Faith

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By Eric Metaxas

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2012 Eric Metaxas
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4002-7502-1

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Chapter One

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the National Prayer Breakfast

I don't know about you, but in my life thus far, I haven't often had the opportunity to speak in front of the president of the United States. Or to chit-chat with the vice president or to publicly pretend the former Speaker of the House is my wife or to lead thirty-five hundred people in singing "Amazing Grace." A capella. But unless I dreamed it, I did have the opportunity to do all these things once. It was at something called the National Prayer Breakfast. It was an extraordinary experience and I'd love to tell you about it. But maybe I should back up a bit.

* * *

The first time I ever got a hint that I might be involved in the National Prayer Breakfast was in a barbershop in Manhattan.

I was waiting for my barber—yes, his name is Angelo— to finish with the person ahead of me when my cell phone rang. It was Foncie Bullard, a friend of mine from Fairhope, Alabama. Foncie told me that she had just spoken with Alabama senator Jeff Sessions about the possibility of my appearing at a prayer breakfast. At least that's what I heard. I had spoken at the Louisiana Governor's Prayer Breakfast in 2008, as the guest of Governor Bobby Jindal, so the prospect of speaking at the Alabama Prayer Breakfast seemed perfectly plausible. I do a lot of public speaking, and I hoped that eventually someone in another state would contact me about speaking at another prayer breakfast. I would love to go back to Alabama to see my friends there. I'd spoken in Mobile, Alabama, several times and in Birmingham, Alabama, twice. I'd even spoken in Marion, Alabama, at Judson College.

But Foncie didn't seem to think that I was as impressed as I should be. "You don't seem that excited," she said.

I didn't know what she expected. I said, "I'm excited and grateful to be asked, of course! I guess I'm just not as surprised as I would be if I had never spoken at a prayer breakfast before."

Foncie paused. "But this is the National Prayer Breakfast," she said.

The National Prayer Breakfast? Had I heard that right? I had. Well, naturally that was something else entirely. "Oh," I said, feeling not a little stupid for having missed this. The noise in the barbershop was part of the reason. But what I understood still wasn't all that clear. I thought Foncie was saying that in the next few days I might be invited by Alabama senator Jeff Sessions to be a part of the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. In some capacity. I knew that I would not be asked to be the keynote speaker. That was out of the question, and it never even crossed my mind. But perhaps I would be asked to read a Scripture or something.

The keynote speaking slot was a position reserved for heads of state, or for someone like a head of state, someone like Mother Teresa, like Tony Blair, or Bono. At least those were the three big names that came to mind whenever I thought of the National Prayer Breakfast. They had been keynote speakers, as had many other luminaries. So I knew I wasn't being asked to be the keynote speaker. But the very idea that I might be invited to take part in any capacity was a huge honor, and I looked forward to hearing from Senator Sessions.

I wondered what role they might ask me to play. Perhaps I would be invited to give a short speech, like the one my New York firefighter friend Joe Finley had given in 2002. Joe had been one of the firefighters at the World Trade Center the day the towers came down. My dear friend B. J. Weber—who actually was connected with the Fellowship, the folks who put on the prayer breakfast—had befriended Joe and suggested that he speak at the breakfast. So at the breakfast in 2002, Joe gave a short speech of five or six minutes, recounting his experiences on that terrible and memorable day.

Whatever role I would play, the thought of being involved in any way was humbling and exciting. I might even get to meet the president. Not to mention the keynote speaker! Whoever that might be. Wait—maybe it would be Tim Tebow! The previous year it had been the film director Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart and directed Secretariat. They never told you who the keynote speaker was ahead of time. But it really could be anyone. Still, I tried not to get too excited about any of it, because these inquiries—Foncie's phone call, for example—were usually just tentative feelers and might actually mean nothing. I recalled that when George Pataki was governor, I had been told over the phone that I was chosen to speak at the New York State Prayer Breakfast in Albany, only to have the invitation mysteriously rescinded a few weeks later. I'd rather not get my hopes up to have them dashed. So I took on a stoic attitude.

Later that day, I thought more about the National Prayer Breakfast. The first time I had ever heard about it was through B. J. Weber, whom I mentioned, and my friend Jim Lane. I came to know Jim in 1994, when I was living in New Canaan, Connecticut. He and I started a men's Bible study that met in his living room that year, which in the years since has grown and grown into something called the New Canaan Society. Jim and B. J. would go to the National Prayer Breakfast almost every year, but I hardly knew what it was. Then, in 1997, thanks to the two of them, I went too.

And who could forget that prayer breakfast?

It took place just two weeks after the Lewinsky scandal broke—like a rotten egg—all over the culture. Of course that hadn't been planned. On the contrary, it must have been a nightmare for the president and for the people putting on the prayer breakfast. The tradition was that the president always appeared at this event and spoke. So I remember thinking that the very idea of President Clinton walking into a room filled with Christian conservatives was the proverbial nonstarter. I refused to believe he would show up. Somehow he just had to find a way to wriggle out of this extremely awkward obligation. I had a seat near the very back of the room, which is so vast that the people on the dais in the distance seem like ants. But then in walked Bill Clinton—or at least that's who I assumed it was, since everyone stood and the band played "Hail to the Chief" as a tiny figure crossed the stage and took its position near the center of the long dais.

As he strode into the vast room there was an odd—indeed a unique—sound, like thousands of tinkling glasses. Technically it was applause, since it consisted of people putting their hands together again and again. But it was only technically applause, because it was very different from actual applause. It had to be the most restrained applause in the history of clapping. It was a homeopathic tincture of applause, an applause that flirted with the very definition of the word—that seemed to tease it and make sport of it. The people in the room had a tremendous respect for the office of the presidency, but because of this they also had a palpably negative feeling for the man entering the room, whose boisterous shenanigans had in the past weeks been ubiquitously examined and discussed. And so the superlatively strange tinkling sound that I heard that morning I surmised to be the sound of thirty-five hundred people applauding the office of the presidency. Applauding only that, and nothing more. One might listen for several lifetimes and listen in vain for that baffling, that tragic, sound.

The only other time I had attended the National Prayer Breakfast was in 2002. The president at that time was George W. Bush and, of course, only months earlier the nation had suffered the monstrous tragedy of the 9/11 attacks. Up on the dais that day was Lisa Beamer, the widow of Todd Beamer, who had used the phrase "Let's roll" as he heroically led his fellow passengers in an attempt to take down the plane before it could hit its target, which was the US Capitol building. Todd Beamer had been a Wheaton College graduate, as was my friend Jim Lane, who had invited me that morning. Also on the dais was the Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert, another Wheaton alumnus.

And finally, there on the dais was my new friend, New York City firefighter Joe Finley, whom I've mentioned. Since I am a writer, B. J. Weber, who had arranged for Joe to speak, asked me if I would mind helping Joe craft his speech. Of course I was honored to do so. Whether I had a hand in helping with it or not, it was a thrill to hear Joe tell his moving story that morning in front of all those people and the president of the United States.

So these two events had been extraordinary and memorable. Nonetheless, I am not a morning person. So after the 2002 breakfast, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be returning for quite some time. The pressure to make conversation with strangers in that loud, vast room could be a bit much. And being seated something like a quarter of a mile from the people on the dais was also not my cup of tea. So I figured that in the future I might attend some of the events surrounding the breakfast—for example, I had spoken at Cal Thomas's Media Dinner in 2011, which is always held on the night before the Prayer Breakfast, in the same hotel—but I certainly didn't plan on going back to the National Prayer Breakfast itself. And did I mention that it cost $175?

Of course the phone call in the barbershop would alter those plans.

In that phone call it really had sounded as if there was a decent chance that I would play some role in the upcoming National Prayer Breakfast. But as I said, I wasn't holding my breath. Then, lo and behold, the very next morning there it was: an e-mail from someone in Senator Sessions' office! It was from the senator's executive assistant, who told me that she would later that day be mailing the invitation for me to be the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast. But since regular mail could be slow, and because my calendar might be filling up, they had attached a scanned copy of the invitation letter with the e-mail, just so I would know right away.

But a strange thing happened when I read her e-mail. Somehow—please don't ask me for details—my eyes glossed over the word keynote. Perhaps we see what we want to see or what we expect to see, and I expected to read a letter inviting me to play a small role in the upcoming National Prayer Breakfast, not to be the keynote speaker.

I then opened the attachment to read the official invitation letter. It was from Senator Sessions and from Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. But in reading their letter I again glossed over the word keynote. I'm not making this up. As my addled mind read and reread the letter (you will recall that I am not a morning person), I eventually did see the word. And slowly it began to dawn on me that I may have misread the situation and that perhaps I was not being invited to be one of the speakers at the National Prayer Breakfast, but to be the speaker—to be the keynote speaker.

I wasn't prepared to absorb this information. I simply didn't know how to take it in. So I didn't take it in. I sort of hovered in the space above the words, unable to allow them to penetrate my brain. I assumed there was a mistake of some kind, and that if I read the letter carefully enough, I would see there was some crucial clause I had missed. But eventually I realized that there was nothing else to it. There was no missing clause. It was a stranger-than-fiction truth: I was being invited to be the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast.

At this point I needed a witness. "Susanne!" I called to my wife, not taking my eyes off the screen, lest the magic e-mail disappear and never return. "Would you come here, please?" Susanne came into the room and corroborated what I was reading. For some reason, it really did take time to sink in. I'm not sure what the mind is doing as something sinks in, nor what "sinks in" really means, but eventually I came to believe that this invitation was real, and not just a vain imagining on my part. The invitation was from one Republican senator (Sessions) and one Democratic senator (Pryor), as all National Prayer Breakfast invitations were, because the National Prayer Breakfast is all about setting aside partisan differences and "coming together in the Spirit of Jesus," as they invariably put it.

And so they had invited me to be the keynote speaker at the 60th Annual National Prayer Breakfast. There was only one downside to this fantastic news: I probably wouldn't be meeting Tim Tebow.

Later that morning the phone rang, and it was Senator Sessions' office, with the senator on the line. He called to ask me whether I would accept the invitation. Of course there was no question whether I would accept. But I couldn't just say yes. I had to play hard to get. So I asked whether the gig included breakfast. He laughed and said that it did. And then I decided to push it: Would they throw in breakfast for my wife and daughter? They would. Well, that was all it took.

Later in the day I fielded another call, this time from Senator Pryor. I was not used to getting phone calls from United States senators. I had once chatted with Senator Joe Lieberman and had once in an airport buttonholed Al Franken, whom people have said I resemble, presumably to nettle me. But to yak on the blower in my living room with senators from Alabama and Arkansas was something new.

In any case, I was told in the course of these phone calls that I mustn't broadcast the news of my being chosen. Certainly not to any media outlets. The National Prayer Breakfast had a strict policy of always keeping the keynote speaker secret. I knew I couldn't tell the media, but I was free to tell a few friends, and at the top of that list were my friends Jim Lane and B. J. Weber, whom I called immediately.

But now that all that was settled, and I really was to be the speaker, what would I talk about?

Of course, the opportunity to address the president of the United States and innumerable dignitaries from around the world could be—how does one put it—paralyzing. But by God's grace, it wasn't. I knew very well that the invitation was a miracle, so I really could trust God with the results. It followed logically that if Jesus had chosen me to speak—for his purposes—I could count on the fact that he had something to say, and that he wanted to say it more than I wanted him to say it. I could absolutely trust him with all of it, and I knew that, which was extraordinarily freeing. All I had to do was get out of the way, as they say. So I was very happily confident in him about the whole thing. I was absolutely sure that Jesus would take the wheel when I got behind the podium on the morning of the breakfast.

* * *

As the weeks passed I prayed about it. Now and again I had ideas and phrases I thought were worth jotting down. I often get ideas while running around the Central Park Reservoir. At some point during those weeks I remembered Mother Teresa's famous speech from 1994. I hadn't been there, but a number of my friends had—including Jim and B. J.—and people had been talking about it ever since. Mother Teresa had spoken of abortion as the greatest enemy of peace, because it is the taking of a life of the most innocent among us. And she had done so within a few feet of President and Mrs. Clinton, saying, "Don't kill your babies! Give them to me!" What she had said that day somehow inspired me. I could certainly not speak with the moral authority of this woman who was considered a living saint when she was still among us. But perhaps I, too, ought to say something about this incredibly important issue of innocent life. In any case, I had lots of ideas, as usual, and I wasn't used to writing out a completely new speech. In most of my speaking engagements I typically just tell the story of Bonhoeffer's life or the story of Wilberforce's life. But this was something unprecedented.

The invitation had come mid-November, so I had plenty of time to think about what I would eventually say. But Christmas came and went, and I still didn't have any clear sense of what I would be talking about. And as the New Year came, I realized I had many speaking engagements to keep me busy throughout January. And then, in the second half of January, I would have to go to Germany for a week. My Bonhoeffer book had been translated into German, and the Willow Creek Church pastor, Bill Hybels, had invited me to speak at a large conference he was putting on in Stuttgart. And just a few days after I got back from Germany, the big date would be here! Perhaps it was just about time to get cracking on what I was going to say, eh?

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Jesus Hates Dead Religion by Eric Metaxas Copyright © 2012 by Eric Metaxas. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

1. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the National Prayer Breakfast....................1
2. Jesus Hates Dead Religion: The National Prayer Breakfast Speech....................25
3. Can I Get a Picture?....................40
4. Watch the Speech....................45
Notes....................47
About the Author....................53