Brooks urges reconciliation at prayer breakfast

WASHINGTON—Harvard business professor Arthur Brooks reminded attendees of Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast of the Biblical admonition to love your enemies, as President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sat to his right and left, respectively. The keynote speaker at the 68th annual event in the nation’s capital described growing up in a family with liberal political views and asked audience members to raise their hands if they love someone with whom they disagree politically.

“Contempt is ripping our country apart,” said Brooks, who is Catholic and the former president of the American Enterprise Institute. “Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew didn’t say, ‘Tolerate your enemies.’ He said, ‘Love your enemies.’ … Ask God to give you the strength to do this thing … and sometimes when it’s just too hard, ask God to help you fake it.”

Who else participated in the event? Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., offered prayers before Trump spoke. As the president walked on stage, he held up the front pages of Thursday’s USA Today and The Washington Post announcing his acquittal of impeachment charges in big, bold type. “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you’ when they know that that’s not so.”

Dig deeper: Read Marvin Olasky’s interview with Brooks about the compassion of conservatism.