The inauguration of Trump as the 47th President of the United States was an event millions of people, not just across America but the entire world, tuned in to watch.
During the many events and ceremonies, there was one that some people are paying a lot of attention to; a sermon delivered at the inaugural prayer service. The sermon touched on a few topics people were shocked to hear at such an event.
On Tuesday, during a prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral, the Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde delivered a sermon that surprised quite a lot of people. In the sermon, she directly addressed President Donald Trump with a few requests.“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” Bishop Mariann Budde said in the latter part of her 15-minute sermon. “Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” As she said this, she appeared to look toward the president.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” she said, referring to the concerns of the LGBTQIA+ community with Trump’s administration.
This sermon is a day after Trump issued a slate of executive orders, one of which was dedicated to “recognizing that women are biologically distinct from men,” another one which called a national emergency at the country’s southern border, and several which had to do with immigration including one which meant to do away with birthright citizenship.
In her sermon, Budde addressed these orders and made a plea to President Donald Trump.
“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they – they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors,” she said in her sermon.
Budde has been critical of Trump before. She made headlines in 2020 when Trump took a photo outside of a boarded up St. John’s Epsicopal Church while holding a bible. Law enforcement had used chemical agents to disburse people protesting racial justice. Budde was angered and said in a statement, “Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence… We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”
While President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance sat through the sermon quietly without betraying too much on their faces, Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins from Georgia took to X and wrote, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”
Towards the end of her sermon, Budde said, “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.”
When Trump was later asked what he thought about Budde’s sermon, he told White House reporters that he “didn’t think it was a good service.”
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