National Cathedral to Webcast Inaugural Prayer Service

Tuesday's Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral will include participants from several Christian denominations, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism, according to a cathedral statement.

The prayer service will start at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 22, and will be webcast live at www.nationalcathedral.org. Only invited guests will be attending the service.

"We are so blessed to be joined by leaders of many faiths for this prayer service to lift up our nation and our president," the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the Washington National Cathedral, said in a statement.

"To have represented the diverse faith perspectives of America within the [Washington National] Cathedral’s nave is a sign of the distinct role that people of faith have to play in our national discourse and policy decisions," Hall added.

The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of Washington, will join Hall in welcoming the president and invited guests. The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will offer a prayer for the nation. The Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor at United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS, will offer the sermon. It will be Hamilton’s first sermon delivered from the Washington National Cathedral’s historic Canterbury Pulpit, according to a cathedral statement.

Music will be provided by the "President’s Own" Brass Ensemble of the U.S. Marine Band and the Cathedral Choir, under the direction of Canon Michael McCarthy. Soloist Wintley Phipps and Washington Performing Arts Society’s Children of the Gospel Choir, who both participated in the 2009 prayer service, will sing anthems, according to a cathedral statement.

Presidential inaugural prayer services first took place at the Washington National Cathedral when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first inaugurated in 1933. They've occurred more consistently at the national house of prayer since President Ronald Reagan's second inauguration in 1985. "The exception was President Bill Clinton, who chose Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, the historic black church in downtown Washington, for both of his inaugural prayer services," the statement added.

Nearly all of the 21 presidents of the United States who have died since the cathedral's founding have had funeral and memorial services at the Washington National Cathedral, the statement reported. 

For more information on the 2013 presidential inauguration, click here.