President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance looked visibly irritated during the national prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday when the sermon took a political turn.
Among the faith leaders who spoke was Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, who had been a vocal critic of Trump and the U.S. government following George Floyd’s death.
On Trump’s first full day back in office, Budde, of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, delivered a sermon focused on ‘unity,’ but her remarks grew pointed when she brought up immigrants and LGBTQ youth.
The reverend spoke directly to the president, saying ‘Let me make one final plea, Mr. President, 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 on the people in our country who are scared. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic and Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.’
‘And the people – the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meet packing plants, who wash the dishes at their 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,’ Budde said. ‘They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues… and temples.’
The reverend asked Trump to have ‘mercy 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 of persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome, our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to a stranger.’
The vice president and second lady leaned over and whispered to one another during the sermon.
At the start of her remarks, Budde began to ‘pray for unity as people and nation, not for agreement, political or otherwise, but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good.’
‘Unity, in this sense, is a threshold requirement for people to live in freedom and together in a free society,’ she said.
‘Rather,’ Budde continued, ‘Unity is a way of being with one another, and it encompasses and respects differences that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect that enables us in our communities to genuinely care for one another, even when we disagree.’
She went on to say, ‘Those of us gathered here, we are not naive about the realities of politics when power and wealth and competing interests are at stake, when views of what America should be are in conflict. When there are strong opinions across a spectrum of possibilities and starkly different understandings of what the right course of action is there, there will be winners and losers when those witness decisions made that set the course of public policy and the prioritization of resources.’
‘Not everyone’s prayers will be answered in the way we would like. But for some, the loss of their hopes and dreams will be far more than political,’ she said, adding that ‘all the faiths represented here affirm the birthright of all people as children of our one God. In public discourse, honoring each other’s dignity means refusing to mock and model, discount, demonize those with whom we differ, choosing instead to respect, respectfully, to make our differences, and whenever possible, to seek common ground.’
In his inaugural address, Trump asserted that there are ‘two genders, male and female,’ to thunderous applause.
‘I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,’ he said. ‘We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit based.’
The president has promised mass deportations of criminal illegal immigrants and further sparked controversy by signing an executive order eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.
It’s not the first time Budde made her left-leaning political views known. A video clip from 2020 shows Budde speaking to an ABC News reporter while protesting in Washington, D.C.
‘It is a message for a call to justice – for swift justice for George Floyd,’ Budde, wearing a face mask, said at the time. ‘For systemic justice for all brown and Black people who have been under the knee of this country in ways that we have witnessed time and time again.’ She went on to say, ‘This is wrong, and this rising up – this spontaneous uprising of people mostly half my age or younger, they are the ones we should be listening to.’
Budde also testified before Congress regarding a June 1, 2020, confrontation between demonstrators and law enforcement near St. John’s Church in Lafayette Square.
She said ‘our government resorted to acts of violence against peaceful protesters’ and said the Episcopal church believes the issues of ‘racial and social justice are core tenants of the Christian faith.’
Budde also condemned Trump for holding up a Bible outside the church following the unrest. Testifying virtually at the time, she told a House committee, ‘When the President held up a Bible outside our church as if to claim the mantle of spiritual authority over what had just transpired, I knew that I had to speak. Nowhere does the Bible condone the use of violence against the innocent.’
Trump revisited that same church on Monday morning before he was sworn in as the 47th president.
Fox News’ Sarah Tobianski contributed to this report
