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Obama prays over phone with handful of pastors: Otis Moss Jr., Jim Wallis and others

President Obama, still without a church home, keeps in touch with as many as a half-dozen clergy for private prayer by telephone—all of them evangelicals.

Five of the men—three black and two white—were identified in a news story published March 15 by the New York Times.

California pastor Rick Warren, who prayed with Obama during the campaign and was chosen to open his inauguration with prayer, was not mentioned in the Times story. A Warren spokesperson told the Century March 24 that the two men “still connect.”

Praying for the president—regardless of party: Presidential Prayer Team

The church sign of a Pentecostal congregation facing a busy Los Angeles–area street bore a single message for months: let us pray for our new president. The church’s pastor, a Republican, said that right after the November elections he and congregational leaders decided to follow New Testament admonitions to pray for those in governing authority.