All the President’s Prayers
Today, Donald Trump placed his hand on a Bible to take the presidential oath of office. Wait, scratch that, he didn’t actually swear on a Bible. Melania stood there holding the same stack he used eight years ago — a Bible used by Abraham Lincoln and a Bible given to Trump as a child — but Trump kept his left arm dangling by his side.
While a Bible (or any book) at swearing-in ceremonies is unnecessary, the Bibles looked even more like props this time than usual. Kind of like when he awkwardly held one up during a photo op in 2020 or when he held one up to help sell it last year. The actual contents remain overlooked.
While lots of news outlets will focus on what Trump said during his inaugural address or the executive actions he started taking, there were a lot of problematic uses of prayer during the inaugural festivities. They should be noted lest we allow ourselves to be desensitized to such partisan and Christian Nationalistic abuse of our sacred symbols and texts. So this issue of A Public Witness offers a potpourri of prayers from Trump’s inauguration and related events.
Sunday Prayers
To celebrate Trump’s coming inaugural, a number of conservative groups held worship and prayer gatherings on Sunday. And Trump’s victory rally featured a particularly bizarre prayer.
Sean Feucht, the musical Forrest Gump of Christian Nationalism, posted images from a prayer gathering where he and other evangelical and charismatic leaders prayed over Trump’s nominees for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and secretary of agriculture (Brooke Rollins). He praised them as “bold believers” about to be in government. Jentezen Franklin, a MAGAchurch pastor in Georgia, similarly posted about being at that event as well as an inaugural ball over the weekend. Few details about the event seem to be public, but it’s a good reminder of how much behind-the-scenes efforts are made to bless the incoming administration.
Later on Sunday, Feucht also appeared at an “Inauguration Praise & Prayer Convocation” put on by two Christian Nationalistic groups, the Family Research Council led by Tony Perkins and Well Versed led by Jim Garlow. Oddly, their event was held at a Black Baptist church that’s part of the National Baptist Convention USA (as is Kamala Harris’s church) and that hangs a “Black Lives Matter” banner on its building. The pastor did not return my comment request about why they hosted the event.
During the event, Barton made his case for why the U.S. should be viewed as a “Christian” nation. He pointed to things like President Dwight D. Eisenhower praying at his inauguration, the creation of the National Prayer Breakfast, the addition of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the adoption of “In God We Trust” as the national motto. Beau Underwood and I not only addressed all four things in Baptizing America, we also noted that Barton and other conservative evangelicals point to those things today, which were put in place by mainline Protestants.
The service was chock-full of Trumpian figures associated with the New Apostolic Reformation. In addition to Feucht leading music and Perkins, Garlow, and Barton speaking, others who spoke or prayed included “apostle” Ché Ahn, “prophet” Cindy Jacobs, Jason Rapert of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, pastor and activist Mario Bramnick, former U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, and defrocked Catholic priest Frank Pavone. Perkins, who compared their gathering to the prophetic witness of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., called on those present to join him in crying out and inviting God to return to Washington, D.C., enter the government buildings, and take over the nation.
Feucht also led worship services on Sunday to celebrate Trump’s return in a tent near the White House and at his property in town. Others similarly held events or joined inaugural festivities, like Southern Baptist MAGAchurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who posted on social media that he was praying at a candlelight dinner Sunday honoring Trump.
As Perkins and Garlow held their event, Trump had a rally at the Capital One Arena (home of the Washington Capitals hockey team). The event kicked off with a long prayer time led by the hosts of the Girls Gone Bible podcast. They started by jumping back and forth between addressing Jesus and Trump before giving a USA-Trump remix of the Lord’s Prayer (which is pretty shocking even considering the history of partisan misuses of that prayer).
As the podcasters took turns, they praised God and Trump. They cited 2 Chronicles 7:14, which was the most-quoted Bible verse during prayers at Trump’s campaign rallies. They also worked in references to several other passages to argue God is on Trump’s side and is blessing Trump. Even by the standard of heretical prayers during Trump campaign rallies, this one was wild.
Monday’s Prayers
Today’s inaugural festivities started with a prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House. As I noted last week, the church made some changes to its service this time in light of the controversy eight years ago when Trump chose Robert Jeffress to preach. That service therefore included the message that God had chosen Trump to build the wall. This time, the church’s rector said ahead of the service that they would be “returning it to its original, simpler nature” without a sermon and “Episcopal in nature.” That promised to be an improvement, though still problematic in advancing Christian Nationalism and giving the appearance of a blessing on Trump and his administration.
Today’s service proved my concerns were not overblown. First, there was the imagery of a priest standing outside and warmly greeting Trump as he returned to the church for the first time since holding up the Bible like a prop after peaceful protesters (and an Episcopal priest) were teargassed. Then there was news that the short service wasn’t just led by Episcopal ministers after all. In fact, Trumpian evangelicals like Jack Graham and Alveda King were part of the program to read Scripture, thus helping assure Trump that this service was to bless him and not prophetically challenge him.
Inside during the private service, Trump sat alongside many of his Cabinet nominees, including Robert Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pam Bondi. Others present included disgraced Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, controversial advisor Boris Epshteyn, and tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple, and and Sundar Pichai of Google. Yet, in a sanctuary full of powerful politicians, billionaires, and multiple people accused of sexual abuse, the church offered a simple blessing on the oligarchy-fueled administration. One cannot be “the church of the presidents” and the church of the prophets.
Shortly after the service, U.S. House Chaplain Margaret Kibben prayed in the Capitol to bless the new administration. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister also quoted from 2 Chronicles 7:14 and ended her Christian Nationalistic prayer with, “God bless America. Amen.” Kibben, who Speaker Mike Johnson wants to replace with a more conservative figure, was the source for Johnson’s recent false claim about Thomas Jefferson and prayer. She has long pushed Christian Nationalism, which isn’t surprising given the role mainline Protestants played in creating and maintaining the congressional chaplain position (as documented in Baptizing America).
Then came the main event, held inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda instead of outside on the Capitol lawn as usual. While members of Congress and the few other invited guests (like the various billionaire tech leaders) waited, at one point the prelude music included “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”
Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York offered the first of two invocations. He similarly prayed during Trump’s first inaugural, hosted Trump during the campaign, and in December insisted on Fox News that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously.” This time, he appealed to a Christian Nationalistic reading of U.S. history as he mentioned prayers by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others. This included invoking Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but he ironically praised the pacifist immediately after quoting Gen. George Patton’s command to “pray when fighting” as a sign of U.S. godliness.
Dolan also pointed to similar items as David Barton: “We, blessed citizens of this one nation ‘under God,’ humbled by our claim that ‘In God We Trust,’ gather indeed this Inauguration Day to pray: for our president Donald J. Trump, his family, his advisers, his Cabinet, his aspirations, his vice president.”
The other invocation came from evangelist Franklin Graham, who also prayed at Trump’s first inaugural and George W. Bush’s first, and has been even more strident in his support of Trump and spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Graham’s father, Billy, prayed at inaugurals for Nixon, H.W. Bush, and Clinton, and he spoke at multiple inaugural prayer services (including ones at St. John’s Episcopal Church). However, his father never offered anything as grossly partisan at an inaugural as what the younger Graham did.
“Mr. President,” Graham said to Trump before the swearing-in while Joe Biden was there, “the last four years there were times I’m sure you thought it was pretty dark, but look what God has done. We praise him and give him glory.”
In his prayer (after the applause for the partisan opening), Graham thanked God for Trump taking office and praised God for having “saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand” when Trump’s “enemies thought he was down and out.” Graham also compared Trump to Moses while comparing the U.S. to Israel during the time of Samuel.
The inauguration ended with benedictions from a Jewish rabbi, a Protestant pastor, and a Catholic priest. Pastor Lorenzo Sewell previously hosted Trump for a campaign event at his church in Detroit, Michigan, and spoke at the Republican National Convention. At the RNC, Sewell declared Trump had been saved by God from an assassination attempt “for such a time as this.” He also used a popular meme at the time to argue that since Trump was shot at 6:11 p.m., Ephesians 6:11 showed God protected Trump. However, Sewell then quoted not Ephesians 6:11 about the “armor of God” but Ephesians 6:10 about being “strong in the Lord.”
In his benediction at the inauguration, Sewell did not invoke Ephesians, but he did praise God for the “miracle” of protecting Trump from assassination so he could be president “for such a time as this.” Sewell also compared Trump to MLK.
Why it Matters
Most reporters will overlook the prayers and religious comments. But they matter. It’s important to understand how Christianity is being used to bless and defend the Trump administration. And it matters because it’s impacting how Trump views himself.
“Just a few months ago, in that beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear,” Trump said during his inaugural address. “But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Hearing from the “prophets” around him, Trump believes he has a divine mandate for a messianic mission. And that’s dangerous. That’s why it matters to pay attention and call out the abuse of Christian prayer, Scripture, and sacred spaces.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
Truly makes me sick. I had to stop reading at Girls Gone Bible and come back later. Just utterly sickening.
Thank you for your part in calling out the dangers of "baptizing politics". Keep up the efforts to stand against Christian Nationalism and keep up the the encouragement for every person of good will and common sense to stand against it also.