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President Donald Trump attended the inaugural prayer ser-vice at the Washington National Cathedral Tuesday morning (Jan. 21), finishing off the festivities marking the beginning of his second term with an interfaith service filled with prayers and hymns – and a sermon that offered a religious challenge to his administration’s stated goals.
About halfway through the service, Trump, seated in the front row, heard a sermon that fun-ctioned as one of the first public criticisms of his second admini-stration. After beginning her homily by exploring the difficulty of forging a “kind of unity that fosters community across diver-sity and division, a unity that ser-ves the common good,” the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the Epis-copal bishop of Washington, singled out three foundational principles for the task: honouring the inherent dignity of every hu-man being, honesty and humility.
Near the end of her sermon, Budde directed her remarks to Trump himself, noting the declaration in his inaugural address that he believes he was “saved by God” from an assassination attempt last year. She then expressed concern for LGBTQ people who may feel targeted by his administration.” “Millions have put their trust in you. 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,” Budde said in her sermon. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives.”
Budde also made a plea for immigrants, a group under fire from Trump’s incoming admi-nistration, saying they include people who “pick our crops” and “work the night shift in hospitals,” among other vital roles.
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