WASHINGTON (RNS) — President-elect Donald Trump has selected a slate of religious leaders to pray at his inauguration next week, although changes to planned worship services at the Washington National Cathedral and St. John’s Church will make it harder for the incoming president to leave his stamp on the other religious gatherings surrounding his swearing-in.
The list of religious leaders, according to an inaugural committee spokesperson, includes Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who will provide the opening invocation along with the Rev. Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Offering the benediction will be Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University; Imam Husham Al-Husainy, who serves the Karbalaa Islamic Center in Dearborn, Michigan; Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, who serves 180 Church in Detroit; and the Rev. Frank Mann, a priest from the Diocese of New York.
Several of the speakers have ties to Trump. Graham is a longtime supporter of the president-elect, having backed Trump since 2016. Sewell spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention, saying God plans to use Trump “for such a time as this,” in addition to hosting a roundtable with Trump last summer. Al-Husainy was one of multiple Muslim leaders who expressed support for Trump during the final month of the campaign, helping bolster the Republican’s surprising victory in Dearborn, home to a large but traditionally Democratic Muslim electorate that has expressed frustration with President Joe Biden’s robust support for Israel amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Others, such as Mann, have less clear connections to Trump. Berman, according to the Forward, did not endorse Trump during the campaign.
Dolan, who revealed last month that he would be praying at Trump’s inauguration, also hasn’t endorsed Trump. Dolan will turn 75 next month — the age at which bishops submit their resignation to the pope, who decides whether or not to accept it.
FILE — Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, speaks during a news conference, Sept. 30, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
The Trump inaugural committee also announced Trump would again participate in inauguration worship services at St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Washington, as well as a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.
In both cases, however, the services themselves have been dialed back in ways that allow Trump and his team few, if any, chances to alter the program. St. John’s has announced that its early-morning Inauguration Day service on Monday (Jan. 20) will not include a homily, a change from years past, including at Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, when Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas preached a sermon at the church titled “When God Chooses a Leader.”
“In a departure from recent years, when the service had grown to include many visiting guest clergy and others, I am intentionally returning it to its original, simpler nature,” read a message sent out to members of St. John’s by the Rev. Robert W. Fisher. “The service will be based on Morning Prayer with psalms and other scripture passages interspersed with hymns, an anthem, and collects from the Prayer Book. There will be no homily, and our opening hymn will be ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past.’”
Fisher added: “While Episcopal in nature, the service will be intentionally accessible and open, with prayers aimed at speaking to all. It will be explicitly nonpartisan.”
Washington National Cathedral staked out a similar position in October, when officials said that, regardless of who won the election, they planned to hold a “Service for the Nation” — the Trump inauguration website refers to it as a “National Prayer Service” — on Tuesday that will feature a sermon by the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, who oversees the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
In past years, preachers at the inaugural prayer service tended to reflect the newly sworn-in president: In 2021, the Rev. William Barber, a well-known activist and pastor who endorsed Biden in his personal capacity, preached at the Democrat’s service, as many of Trump’s religious critics also offered prayers.
“This will not be a service for a new administration,” the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, the cathedral’s current dean, said last year in a statement about the upcoming inauguration service.
The inauguration website currently makes no mention of a “One America, One Light Sunday Service” that Axios listed last month as one of several events provided to people who donated $100,000 or raised $200,000 for the inauguration.
