BWA Staff at Inaugural Breakfast

From the Baptist World Alliance

Washington, D.C. -- Several members of staff of the Baptist World Alliance, including General Secretary Neville Callam, attended a prayer breakfast held to honor Martin Luther King Jr., and to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States.

The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast was held in the US capital of Washington, DC, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, January 19, a national public holiday within the US.

Guests at the prayer breakfast included Lee Tae-sik, South Korean ambassador to the United States, William Rudolph, rabbi at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland, and 11-time Grammy Award-winning gospel singer and evangelist Shirley Caesar.

BWA staff attending included directors Fausto Vasconcelos, Emmett Dunn, Paul Montacute, and Eron Henry.

Keynote speaker John Howard-Wesley--pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church in the Washington, DC, suburb of Alexandria in Virginia--stated that the occasion of the inauguration of Obama to the US presidency is a special moment to be marked.

He said that “Martin Luther King gave us the audacity of a dream of a land of freedom” that inspired a generation “who saw the dream and believed the vision.” Wesley declared to the largely African American audience that this was a moment filled with excitement and celebration, but that “this is not the end of the journey, we have battles still to fight.”

Barbara Williams-Skinner, president of the Skinner Leadership Institute, told the approximately 1,000 guests that “we are the change we are looking for” and that Obama or the government cannot do it all. She called on persons to “tithe” to help raise scholarships, to help those who need childcare and healthcare, and to assist battered women.

The breakfast was one of several events of The People’s Inaugural Project sponsored by the Stafford Foundation, held to celebrate and mark the inauguration of Obama, the first African American to become president of the United States.