While aides scour the nation's capital for a new spiritual home for the first family, the Obamas spent Easter Sunday at an historic Episcopal church across the street from the White House.
It took the presidential motorcade less than two minutes to drive from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to St. John's of Lafayette Square, a small, yellow Episcopal church with an impressive presidential pedigree.
Every U.S. president since James Madison has attended a worship service at St. John's, according to the church, which reserves a pew – No. 54 – whenever the chief executive attends. Former President George W. Bush, a Methodist, made St. John's his unofficial D.C. church home; John Quincy Adams, James Monroe and Franklin Delano Roosevelt also worshipped there, said Gary S. Smith, a historian at Grove City College in Pittsburgh.
Obama himself attended St. John's, sometimes called the "church of the presidents," for a pre-inaugural prayer service on Jan. 20; several days earlier, he visited Nineteenth Street ...
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