What's at stake?
Elected officials and community leaders gathered for the annual Fresno Clovis Prayer Breakfast, featuring Hobby Lobby President Steve Green.
Residents and community leaders gathered on Tuesday morning for the annual Fresno Clovis Prayer Breakfast.
The event, which began in the 1940s, was held at the Fresno Convention Center and was attended by more than 2,000 people, including elected leaders from both the cities of Fresno and Clovis, and the county Board of Supervisors.
“As Christian leaders in our position, I pray that, as leaders, we would avoid the political rhetoric that we see in our nation’s capital today,” said Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer.
“This year is an important year, a special year, because it is the 250th year of this great nation,” said Clovis Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua. “Clovis will be 114 years old, Fresno will be 141 years old.”
Additionally, the breakfast boasted appearances by community leaders from around Fresno and Clovis, including Rabbi Amnon Shor of Bet Shalom Messianic Congregation and Bishop Joseph Brennan of the Catholic Diocese of Fresno.
The featured keynote speaker was Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby and Chairman of the Board for the Museum of the Bible.
“Our government’s not perfect, it never has been, nor will it ever be,” Green said during the breakfast. “We are grateful, though, that our nation has been built on concepts, on principles found in God’s Word, and we stood on the fact that our founders enshrined in our Constitution our religious freedom.”
In his speech, Green went on to recount how Hobby Lobby won a landmark 2014 Supreme Court case in a lawsuit over the corporation refusing to provide health care services to cover contraceptives and abortion for its employees.
Currently, Hobby Lobby operates three locations in Fresno. The Business Journal reported that Green joked at a private event on Monday night that California used to be “off limits.” When the state’s first Hobby Lobby opened in Visalia in 2011, the store set a company record for first-store sales.
The keynote speaker for next year’s breakfast was also revealed at Tuesday’s event — Amir Tsarfati, founder of Behold Israel, is slated to speak during next year’s breakfast.
