Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell of 180 Church slammed Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde for calling out President Trump during the National Prayer Service.
Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell, who attended the National Prayer Service with President Donald Trump, was highly critical of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde due to her sermon devolving into political sentiments.
“It was theological malpractice on every angle,” Sewell, the pastor of 180 Church in Detroit, Michigan, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
“There is nowhere in Scripture that we see that a leader would stand up without God’s permission and speak to someone who is in authority… What happens in the midst of our Christian tradition is that we think that we can stand before kings and just act like we can say whatever we want, how we want in the name of God.”
Rev. Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington was among several faith leaders who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday. She was a previous critic of Trump and the U.S. government following George Floyd’s death.
DETROIT PASTOR LORENZO SEWELL ARGUES IT’S ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ FOR CHRISTIANS TO BE ‘POLITICALLY NEUTRAL’
Budde’s sermon first focused on “unity,” but then her remarks turned to immigrants and LGBTQ youth.
Budde 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.”
Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance appeared to be irritated by the bishop’s sermon.
Budde explained further that “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
“They pay taxes and are good neighbors,” Budde said. She went on to say, “They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues… and temples.”
The bishop 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.”
Afterward, Trump took to Truth Social to blast Budde’s performance, suggesting that she and her church should apologize to the public.
Sewell was in the audience “sitting with the first family” while Budde delivered the sermon. He described her speech as a “political agenda.”
“She not only did she not preach the texts of Scripture, not only did she not use her opportunity to preach to death, to bear on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but she, quite frankly, took a political agenda, superimposed it, and acted as if she was speaking for God,” Sewell said.
“She said, in the name of our God, as if God was speaking through her. As it pertains to immigration, as if God was speaking through her, as it pertains to the LGBTQ+ community. She was speaking as if God was speaking through her to the president of the United States of America.”
Sewell told Fox News Digital that “we have to make sure that our faith communities are educated.”
“Now, if she would have had a solution, if she would have spoke about how the church and how the state could work together to make sure people could get a clear pathway to citizenship, that would have made sense,” he said.
Sewell also shared with Fox News Digital what it was like praying for the country after Trump was sworn in during the 60th Presidential Inauguration on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Sewell frequently emphasized Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“It was Dr. King’s birthday. What does it look like for Black Americans to get out of the nightmare that they’re in in order for us to live the dream? Remember, Dr. King, he passed legislation through his spiritual and political activism,” he told Fox News Digital.
“The Bible says faith without works is dead. So my prayer was prophetic. But my prayer was also very practical as it pertains to what we expect through our 47th president in this amazing administration.”
He told Fox News Digital that Trump personally asked if he could pray at the inauguration.
Sewell, a Republican, spoke at the last Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July. He endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election and hosted the then-GOP presidential candidate at his church in Detroit last summer.
