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The last thing Rabia Ali wanted to do after her 16-hour flight from Doha to Dallas was sit in another chair. When she arrived at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on a Friday morning in early March, a five-hour layover was all that stood between her and returning to her hometown of Austin.Instead of sitting for hours at a gate waiting for her plane to arrive, Ali searched for a place to pray. Tucked in the corner of Terminal D’s Gate 40, Ali found what she was looking for — an interfaith chapel. The chapel greeted Ali with a sign of a person kneeling and the words “All are welcome.” Inside was an ablution station for Muslims to wash their feet before prayer and a worship room with painted silhouettes of various houses of worship in the clouds. “I was so excited to find this place when I came in, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what a blessing,’” Ali said. A chapel in Terminal D of the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has paintings symbolizing various houses of worship. A curtain is used to cover the paintings and other religious structures inside the prayer room depending on which religious service is occuring. (Marissa Greene | Fort Worth Report) For more than 45 years, the DFW Airport Interfaith Chaplaincy nonprofit has offered emotional and spiritual support to airport staff and travelers like Ali. With a chapel in each of the airport’s five terminals, a team of over 20 chaplains is readily available to offer counseling, prayers and worship services to the faithful and transient. 

Ranked by the Federal Aviation Administration as the third-busiest airport in the country in 2024, airport chaplains serve as “spiritual first responders” to crises, addressing the religious needs of travelers and airport staff, said Anglican priest the Rev. Greg McBrayer, executive director and senior chaplain for the nonprofit. “We know not everybody traveling out here today is going to Disney World. They’re doing life out here. They’re going to important business meetings. They’re going to bury loved ones,” McBrayer said. “When people are out here traversing on life’s journey, we can intercede with them when the troubles and complexities of life come in that just drop into their lives.” The DFW Airport Interfaith Chaplaincy offers services for various faiths, memorials, weddings and special services for holy days and dignified transfers, a process honoring the remains of fallen U.S. military members. Last year, over 2,500 people attended the chapel’s prayer services — across all five terminals — that served thousands of airport employees, travelers and military, according to the nonprofit’s website. The Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has five chapels, one in each terminal. The airport will soon have a sixth chapel, once Terminal F is expected to open in 2027. (Marissa Greene | Fort Worth Report) As recent plane crashes spark anxiety in many travelers, imam and chaplain Muhsin Shaheed said he hopes that his work offers a “sense of calm” to both flyers and employees inside North Texas’ bustling airport. Shaheed has been a chaplain for the nonprofit since 1998 and conducts weekly Juma prayer services at the airport. He remembers offering prayer and counsel to Muslim travelers and airport staff who felt anxious after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon led to heightened Islamophobia. “We’re simply there to bring a sense of calm and help them to relax as much as possible,” Shaheed said. “There’s a lot of anxiety when you’re about to get on the plane, more so today than ever before.” While some people of faith travel to another part of the globe to go on mission trips, Anglican priest and chaplain the Rev. John Kalimi, says his mission is inside the airport where he is “touching lives that are going all over the world.”“God is available to them, and ministers available to them everywhere, and the airport is one of them,” Kalimi, an immigrant from Uganda, said. The DFW Airport Interfaith Chaplaincy offers a nondenominational service on Tuesdays and Saturdays, Mass on Sundays and a Juma prayer service on Fridays. (Billy Banks | Fort Worth Report) Inside the chapel’s worship room, Ali pulled out her green prayer mat, awaiting the midday service offered later in the afternoon. Her travels and unexpected discovery of the interfaith chapel reminded her to have a “perspective of how unpredictable life is,” she said, and to “rely on God for things that are out of your control.” “I find that these places … allow you to connect with God and to communicate your fears, and it brings a lot of peace to the heart when you do that,” Ali said. “If the world and everybody in it lived like this, it would have so much harmony and peace in the world.” Billy Banks is a multimedia fellow at the Fort Worth Report. You can contact him at billy.banks@fortworthreport.org. Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.