Donald Trump’s inaugural weekend will include an interfaith prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral, a customary event but complicated this year by anger over the president-elect’s rhetoric on Muslims, immigrants and others.
The service was announced Wednesday by the presidential inaugural committee, which provided no details on the ceremony or participants. A similar 2013 event for President Obama’s second-term inaugural included about two dozen religious leaders, including three Muslims, along with representatives of Judaism, evangelical Christianity, mainline Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity and Sikhism.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, has been helping plan the Jan. 21 service and will participate, said his spokeswoman, Chieko Noguchi. She said the organizing “is still in its early stages.”
Washington Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, who oversees the cathedral, declined an interview request Wednesday. A cathedral spokesman released a brief statement saying the service “is a moment for our next president to pause and contemplate the incredible responsibility he has been entrusted with and to listen as the faith community offers prayers for the office of the president.” In an interview Tuesday on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show,” Budde said “all faiths will be represented at (Trump’s) request and we will pray for the good of our nation.”
Trump won 81 percent of white evangelical voters and 52 percent of the overall Catholic vote. Conservative Christians and others have been deeply heartened by Trump’s promise to appoint conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices, among other pledges.
But Trump lost Latino Catholics and attracted only 24 percent of Jews. He has drawn condemnations from a wide range of religious leaders for calling Mexicans rapists, while pledging to deport large numbers of immigrants in the country illegally and promising during the campaign to temporarily ban immigrants from Muslim nations. Earlier this month, more than 300 American Muslim leaders sent a letter to Trump expressing grave concern about his incoming administration, including appointees who have cast suspicion on all Muslims as a potential terror threat.
These tensions could discourage some religious leaders from participating in the cathedral service.
Rizwan Jaka, board chairman of the Washington-area mosque ADAMS, one of the largest mosques in the country, said “it would be very good for Muslims to be a part of this” cathedral service. The spiritual leader of ADAMS, Imam Mohamed Magid, was one of the three Muslims who participated in the 2013 service at the cathedral for Obama.
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