Trump Attends ‘Nonpartisan’ Service at Church He Once Used for Photo-Op

The leaders of St. John’s, Lafayette Square, an Episcopal church in Washington, D.C., knew they wanted the second inaugural prayer service for President Donald Trump to be different than the first.

Beginning in 1933 with a private service attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt before his inauguration, the historic church has hosted 14 morning prayer services to honor incoming presidents, including today’s service honoring Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The 8:30 a.m. prayer service was the first event on the Inauguration Day calendar.

Rev. Robert W. Fisher, the rector of the church, told Sojourners in an email before the service that the church was making a concerted effort to return the service to its traditional roots.

“The service is meant to be centered on God and humility before the almighty, and to be a call to ‘the better angels of our nature’ for those who are entering into a new season of service,” Fisher wrote. “It is less oriented to the personality of the individual about to become president, and more oriented to the higher responsibilities of the office. That is one major way that it is more inline with the origins of this tradition as opposed to the more recent services.”

That attempt to return to tradition follows Trump’s previous prayer service in 2017 (former President Joe Biden attended a Catholic service). That year, conservative pastor Robert Jeffress took the St. John’s pulpit to tell President Donald Trump that he was like the biblical prophet Nehemiah — chosen by God to “build a wall.” In 2020, Trump returned to St. John's to pose for a photo-op, holding a Bible in front of the church after using tear gas to disperse peaceful crowds gathered to protest police brutality against Black people.

“There are indeed also some parishioners who attended the service held eight years ago at St. John’s on the day of Trump’s first inauguration, who expressed to me what a bad experience it was,” Fisher wrote. “Some felt that the church was used. And those individuals, seeing the current approach we are taking, have expressed gratitude for the changes being made to the nature of the service, and are glad we have agreed to host this time because we will do it in a different way.”

In a newsletter the weekend before, Fisher told his congregation that the service would be “explicitly nonpartisan.”

“In offering this time of prayer, we come humbly before God to pray for our country, her leaders, and her people. The service will be about upholding our values, especially Jesus' commandment to love one another without reservation,” he wrote in the newsletter.

The order of service

St. John’s service today was loosely based on an Episcopal Morning Prayer service, but the church departed from the daily readings and chose scripture readings in conjunction with the Trump team.

All three scripture readers were close allies of the new Trump administration. Jack Graham, a Texas megachurch pastor and Trump advisor, read from Proverbs 3. Henry Stephan, a Catholic priest and mentor who baptized JD Vance, read 1 Peter 4. And Alveda C. King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and a Republican activist and politician, read from Galatians 3.

In addition to the scriptures, the church sang three hymns: “O God, our help in ages past,” “My country, ’tis of thee,” and “America the Beautiful.” All three selections are from The Episcopal Church’s hymnal.

St. John’s chose — after some deliberation according to Fisher — not to have a sermon during the service. So far, he told Sojourners, the congregation at St. John’s has been supportive.

“I am frankly shocked that there has not been anybody yet who has criticized the way we are handling it, at least not to my face (figuratively). That’s not to say that it is easy for everybody. I have had numerous messages from parishioners who candidly say that they in no way support the president-elect, but that they support us doing the service for all the reasons we have said we are doing it,” he wrote.

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Criticisms of the service

Outside the church, there have been criticisms of the service. Brian Kaylor, president and editor in chief of Word & Way and co-author of Baptizing America, criticized the history of inaugural church services as an example “of how mainline Protestants helped build Christian Nationalism.” In a column, Kaylor lauded the church for some of its changes between 2017 and 2025 while maintaining criticism.

“The changes will clearly bring a better service than the God-chose-you-so-build-the-wall sermon eight years ago. Yet [St. John’s will] give the incoming president a good photo op as a holy leader. And following the church’s self-image as the ‘church of the presidents,’ the attempt to craft a presidential liturgy for the service shows that while they’re shedding the partisan, Christian Nationalistic guest preachers, they’ve not deconstructed their own Christian Nationalism.”

Mark Ardrey-Graves, a professor of church music at Sewanee, an Episcopal seminary in Tennessee, told Sojourners services where the church is closely tied with the nation has its origins in the history of the church. The Episcopal Church belongs to the Anglican Communion, and in places like England its counterparts are literally state churches. But, Ardrey-Graves said, Episcopalians should remember that they are not only not a state church, but they also aren’t a church exclusive to the U.S.

“It’s more than just the United States. We have dioceses that are part of our communion that are in other countries, including a place like Haiti,” he said. “When we say ‘we’ in the context of the church’s prayers, who are we really meant to be talking about?”

Like other churches in the U.S., Ardrey-Graves said Episcopalians have “struggled with [nationalism] for many decades.” In its struggling, Ardrey-Graves said, there needs to be reflection on how singing together builds a collective identity. A song like “O God, our help in ages past,” based on a Psalm, is not “on its face,” a nationalist hymn, but it can become one if “our” is meant to suggest that God was the help of a particular nation.

“My country, ’tis of thee,” first appeared in an Episcopal hymnal in 1892. That song and “America the Beautiful,” both belong to a section of the Episcopal church’s 1982 hymnal known as “National Hymns.” As a professor at a seminary, Ardrey-Graves said that he often finds that students of all backgrounds question the “propriety of these songs being called hymns.”

“There’s a sense of recognition, from them, that this is something worth critically examining,” he said.