Praying and preaching in the presence of the president is an honor — and also a delicate matter. Prayers at inaugurations have been customary since FDR, and there are church services, as well. It is “meet and right” so to do, as Episcopalians would say. It is a recognition that God alone is above all rulers, all laws, all sovereignty. 

At the same time, God ought not be addressed in a partisan manner. That is neither meet nor right.

President Donald Trump’s inauguration included prayers at the beginning (invocations) and the end (benedictions). As has been the case more often than not, Catholics were among those invited to lead the prayers. This year, two of the five clergy were Catholic: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Father Frank Mann, a retired priest of Brooklyn and a personal acquaintance of President Trump.

Cardinal Dolan got the balance right in his well-crafted prayer. Not everyone did. 

A prayer service at the National Cathedral the morning after the inauguration included a plea to Trump “for mercy” in the homily delivered by Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington. 

Departing from the usual nonpolicy nature of the occasion, she made an explicit plea on behalf of “gay, lesbian and transgender children … some who fear for their lives,” as well as challenging Trump’s immigration policy. 

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.” 

Praying for the President

In the United Kingdom and Canada, with a nonpartisan head of state, the fitting formula is straightforward: “We pray for His Majesty The King and all who govern in his name.” No particular candidate or officeholder even needs to be mentioned. The king himself was anointed at his coronation, making it clear that his authority points to God himself in a way that an electoral victory does not. 

Americans do not have a king, but do not lack for guidance in the public invocation of religion. Abraham Lincoln showed the way in his famous reply to an interlocutor who claimed divine sanction for his position: “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” 

At inaugurations, the guide ought always be Lincoln, whose second inaugural address took up the question of God’s Providence in human disputes, a central question of the Civil War. 

In his March 4, 1865 speech, the greatest of all inaugural addresses and perhaps the greatest political speech ever given in the English language, Lincoln said of the warring North and South:

“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 

“Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

At the conclusion, Lincoln urged “firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”

Cardinal Dolan quoted Lincoln’s last line in his prayer. He wrote a robustly American prayer, but it was a prayer primarily, and only then about America and her leaders. The cardinal-archbishop of New York quoted George Washington, George Patton and Martin Luther King — whom he explicitly and pointedly referred to as “Reverend” not “Doctor” — in tracing the history of prayer in American public life. 

He prayed for both President Trump and President Biden by name. None of the other clergy prayed for the latter, which Cardinal Dolan did to indicate that prayers are not partisan endorsements — and that our prayers for others ought to be expansive. Catholics familiar with the prayers at Sunday Mass know well how broad that intercession can be.

“I wish to reiterate that the Catholic Church is not aligned with any political party,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said this week. “No matter who occupies the White House or holds the majority on Capitol Hill, the Church’s teachings remain unchanged.”

Praying to Make America Great Again

Reverend Franklin Graham began his invocation with an observation that the last four years had been “dark” for Trump, but that God had delivered him an election victory. 

Graham, like his father Billy Graham, has prayed at inaugurations before. His decision to read the election results as God’s will was thus deliberate. Franklin had campaigned with Trump last year and appeared at his events, most notably following Hulk Hogan on stage at the Republican convention.

Franklin prayed that “when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you, and you alone, saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand.” 

He, like all the other clergy, aside from Cardinal Dolan, nodded toward the Trump campaign theme, “Make America great again.”

Trump himself claimed in his inaugural address that he survived the assassination attempt due to God’s support for his political program.

“I was saved by God, to make America great again,” Trump said, making a bold claim about reading God’s Providence in history.

Benedictions were offered by Father Mann, Rabbi Ari Berman, president of New York’s Yeshiva University, and Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, pastor of a nondenominational Black church in Detroit.

Rabbi Berman made the mistake of trying to do too much, addressing as he did “unrest” on college campuses, Israeli security and the release of hostages taken by Hamas. All of that left him theologically confused.

“For while we trust in God, God’s trust is in us, the American people,” Berman says. That is simply wrong, either meaningless or blasphemous, but embarrassing for the head of Yeshiva University. God did not trust in ancient Israel, much less the American people today.

“America is called to greatness — to be a beacon of light and a mover of history,” was Berman’s MAGA touch. Biblical greatness, as the Old Testament teaches, is always about fidelity and only occasionally about worldly success.

Preaching Public Policy

At the National Cathedral the day after the inauguration, a service was held to pray for the new administration. Budde delivered the homily, and toward the end, in a gentle but firm tone, took issue with Trump’s gender and immigration policies, asking him to “show mercy” in his presidency.

Prayers for leaders to have wisdom — Cardinal Dolan echoed Solomon’s prayer at the inauguration — and other virtues are common enough. 

Prayers often ask for humility, compassion and courage in our leaders. Thus a prayer for Trump to be merciful — which may well have been understood as an implicit rebuke of “unmerciful” policies — would have been in order. To tie it though to a particular policy was a departure from the norm, and did cause upset that Budde had commandeered the pulpit — and the president’s presence — for political purposes.

What, though, if Budde had delivered a plea to President Trump and Vice President JD Vance to return to their previously pro-life positions? A plea for mercy from the unborn? Would that have been different?

A useful example might be the annual Red Mass in Washington, held the Sunday before the Supreme Court begins its term. Historically it has been attended by both Catholic and non-Catholic justices. At one time the invited homilist usually included strong pro-life language. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that she stopped attending after hearing an “outrageously anti-abortion” sermon. 

In recent years, the Red Mass has had a different tone. A good example would be the 2017 homily given by Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, in which he explicitly said, “There is a time for politics and a time for prayer. This is a day for prayer.”

That noted, Archbishop Gómez did preach explicitly about poverty, immigration, abortion and religious liberty. He addressed issues without addressing personalities or specific policies. 

Making Martin Luther King Present Again

Surely the most memorable prayer was the benediction by Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, a close Trump ally who campaigned with him — and, just hours after the inauguration, launched his own cryptocurrency coin, just like the president and first lady.

Noting that the inauguration took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Sewell concluded by reciting — at much greater volume and with greater animation — the concluding lines of King’s 1963 I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. King had concluded with a reference to the patriotic hymn My Country ’Tis of Thee. When Aretha Franklin sang it at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, she too riffed some lines from King’s soaring address. 

Sewell made King’s conclusion resound in the Capitol dome, at the opposite end of the Mall from the Lincoln Memorial. It was an homage to one of the great spiritual speeches of American history, delivered at the memorial of the president who, like no one before or since, knew how to speak of God on political occasions.

Lincoln’s wisdom — even in the midst of a brutal war — was that God’s providence acts in unknown ways, and through unlikely instruments. The point of prayer on public occasions is not to argue that God is one side or the other, but to encourage all parties to strive to be on God’s side. 

All candidates, all parties, all countries fall short. As Cardinal Dolan concluded his prayer, quoting America the Beautiful:

“God bless America, please mend her every flaw.”