NEW YORK (RNS) — On a recent Monday evening as commuters hurried past, a group of faith leaders set out a microphone and battery-run candles at the Columbus Circle entrance of Central Park in Manhattan for their weekly prayer vigil and held up a worn-out banner reading “Multifaith Monday: Witness for Democracy.”
Within minutes, nearly 30 people had assembled, greeting one another as organizers handed out signs with slogans such as “Justice Matters” and “Witness to Democracy.” The Rev. Jacqueline Lewis, senior minister at New York’s historic Middle Collegiate Church, kicked off the night’s service by declaring, in her clarion voice, “This fascist administration is wreaking havoc on freedoms left and right.”
Though surrounded by the sounds of the city, the vigils’ organizers aim to re-create the atmosphere of a sanctuary. Music, sung a cappella save for a drum and guitar accompaniment, consists of songs clergy have sung in Minneapolis while protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On a recent Monday, attendees chanted Minneapolis worship director Katie Eckeberger‘s anthem: “We are many, we are one. We won’t stop fighting until ICE is gone. We won’t stop until love has won.”
Hundreds of religious activists have taken part in Multifaith Mondays since the vigils began in March 2025, answering what they see as the Trump administration’s overtaking of democracy with spiritually centered protest. Lasting just 30 minutes, the service includes prayer and singing and plenty of impassioned sermonizing on topics ranging from food insecurity to affordable health care.
As the Trump administration ramped up its immigration enforcement operations, the vigils’ focus has gravitated toward mourning — and organizing — for immigrant communities.
The vigils, said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi emerita at congregation Beit Simchat Torah, break with the narrative that “everybody in America agrees with what Donald Trump is doing.” They also, she added, offer attendees a space to dissent publicly.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, right, and other clergy gather to protest at Target, Jan. 23, 2026, in Minneapolis. They demanded the retailer stop cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
RELATED: Rev. William Barber arrested in Capitol Rotunda after praying against Republican-led budget
“You can’t just sit in your apartment and scream at the TV or throw the remote at the wall. We have to be outside,” she said.
The founders of the group represent the Interfaith Center of New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and the Episcopal Diocese of New York. But other prominent New York clergy soon joined them. The Rev. Adriene Thorne, senior minister at Riverside Church, a congregation with a long history of opposing racism and war, recalled feeling weary as she thought about how the government’s policies might affect marginalized communities.
“As an African American woman, it was sort of like a deep breath and ‘here we go again,