Millions of people watched Trump’s inauguration as the 47th President of the United States, in addition to those in America and even outside.
A lecture given at the first prayer service was one of the numerous ceremonies and activities that some people were particularly interested in. A few themes that listeners were surprised to hear at such an event were mentioned in the sermon.
Read on to find out more.
Many were taken aback by the Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde’s speech during Tuesday’s prayer session at Washington’s National Cathedral. She made a couple demands of President Donald Trump directly throughout the lecture.
“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.
Trump issued a series of executive orders the day before this sermon, including one that called for “recognizing that women are biologically distinct from men,” another that declared a national emergency at the southern border, and several that dealt with immigration, including one that aimed to abolish birthright citizenship.
Budde addressed these directives and pleaded with President Donald Trump throughout her sermon.
“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 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 previously criticized Trump. When Trump took a picture of her holding a bible outside of a boarded-up St. John’s Episcopal Church in 2020, she made news. People who were protesting for racial justice had been dispersed by law officers using chemical agents. 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.”
Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia posted on X, saying, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list,” while President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance sat through the sermon in silence and without showing too much emotion.
At 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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