First White House Cabinet Meeting Opens in Prayer

by Paul Batura | February 26, 2025 | Culture

On Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump invited Scott Turner, the 19th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to open the cabinet meeting of his second administration in prayer.

A former pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, Secretary Turner was also a nine-season player in the National Football League. Prior to joining the new administration, Turner worked with a firm committed to developing multi-family housing.  He also served as a representative in the Texas State Legislature.

With a capacity crowd jammed into the White House Cabinet Room, President Trump invited Secretary Turner to pray. Here was how he addressed the Lord as he stood behind a seated President Trump,

Father, we thank you for this awesome privilege, to be in your presence. We thank you you’ve allowed us to see this day. The Bible says your mercies are new every morning, and Father God we give you the glory and honor. Thank you, God, for President Trump, for appointing us, for anointing us to do this job.
Father, we pray you’ll give the president and the vice president wisdom as they lead. Father, I pray for all my colleagues around this table and in this room.
Lord God, we pray that we would lead with a righteous clarity. Father God, as we serve the people of this country in every prospecticve agency, every job that we have, we would humble ourselves before you, and we would lead in a manner that you’ve called us to lead and to serve.
The Bible says “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” But Father, we today honor you, and in your rightful place, Father, thank you for giving us this opportunity to restore faith in this country and be a blessing to the people of America.
And Lord God, today in our meeting, we pray that you would be glorified in our conversation.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Social media sites lit up with positive reaction with many calling the prayer a dose of “fresh air” and a recognition of our inability to do anything outside of God’s authority.

President John Adams was only in the newly constructed White House for one night when he wrote to his wife, Abigail:

“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House, and all that shall hereafter inhabit.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had that phrase carved into a White House fireplace mantle.

The tradition of opening government functions in prayer dates to the Republic’s beginning. A chaplain was first appointed in 1774 to open both the Senate and House in prayer.

Critics of such public prayers mistakenly suggest the practice is unconstitutional but just saying something doesn’t make it so. Over the years, the Supreme Court has upheld public prayer (Marsh v. Chambers in 1983, Town of Greece v. Galloway in 2014, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District in 2022,

Writing for the majority in 2002 in a case involving football coach Joe Kennedy praying on the 50-yard line, Justice Gorsuch rightly declared:

Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.

But Secretary Turner’s prayer wasn’t just constitutional, but also eloquent, elegant, personal and practical. May the Lord be merciful and answer such prayers.