Inaugural tradition returns to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday. Here’s how it’ll work

It’s an Inauguration Day tradition in the nation’s capital, and is so unlike every other event that occurs whenever a president is sworn into office.

On Monday morning, President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and a small group of others, will gather inside St. John’s Episcopal Church for a brief, solemn and traditional prayer service before the rest of the pomp and circumstance begins.

Leading the service for the first time will be Rev. Robert Fisher, rector at St. John’s. In recent weeks, he’s been meeting with the Trump team, planning out a service that needs to be brief but still provide incoming leaders with a chance to think about the four years that lie ahead.

“This service is intentionally different from what the rest of the day is going to be,” Fisher said while sitting in the same spot where Trump will sit in Monday. “What we offer is a time that’s actually a meditative time, a reflective time.”

Since the tradition started 92 years ago, it has been the calmest and most private events of the busy day. There will be no cameras or videos allowed, and while the small church will be packed, it’ll still be an intimate event.

“It’ll be just the people in the room, having a time where they can breathe,” Fisher said. “One of my goals and hopes for a service like this is for us to provide a space so that people can be brought in touch with, as Lincoln said, the better angels of their nature.”

Over the years, the services have varied in the way they’re conducted. This time, Fisher is hearkening back to the original services held for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman in the 1930s and ’40s.

“Those were very simple services that were straight out of the prayer book,” he said. “I did the first cut of making the choices of what readings, which hymns and things like that and other prayers. And then the people from the incoming administrations team looked at those, and we had conversations to eventually get to a place where we all felt good about what we would finally have in the service.”

Fisher won’t be giving a sermon, instead allowing the prayers to speak for themselves. That’s not a political statement, though — in fact, the entire event is purposely apolitical.

“My intention this year is that the service should be actually timeless,” Fisher said. “Not something that is just for 2025 or just for the individual that’s becoming inaugurated, but rather something that speaks to the role of the office and the importance of our citizenship.”

Trump will sit on the left side of the front row of the middle section — the only time the president has ever sat in the front row there. Sitting on the right side of the front row will be Vance and his family.

There’s a specific pew more toward the middle of the church reserved for presidents whenever they attend services any other day — the same pew used by James Madison, who was the first president to attend services there. Madison sat there because the pews used to be rented by members of the congregation, and that way, the church was able to maintain a source of revenue when it was built in the early 1800s.

Of course, when Abraham Lincoln would attend services, he would sit in the far back row in the corner, a spot that’s also marked with a plaque on the wall there.

Fisher said he’ll wake up earlier than usual on Monday, but otherwise hopes to go into the service treating it like any other prayer service he’s given.

“We hope that what we offer is going to be a way to give people a chance, those who are stepping into new roles of leadership, to reflect on what it means for them to give over their lives in service and to serve faithfully,” Fisher said.

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