While much attention on cable news and internet chatter has focused on the conclusion to the sermon delivered by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde during a post-inaugural prayer service held at Washington National Cathedral, relatively little has been said or written about the prayers offered during the inaugural ceremony itself the day before.
In those two minutes at the end of her 14-minute homily, Bishop Budde pleaded with President Donald Trump to show mercy to undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ citizens.
As divisive and dispiriting as was Trump’s sad excuse of an inaugural address, the blessings said over him by some of the five invited clergymen — and they all were men — were similarly discouraging. Perhaps more so, given the fact that all but one either actively campaigned for Trump or had befriended and praised him.
Stan Hastey
Moments into his inaugural address on Jan. 20, the 45th and now 47th chief executive referred to the assassination attempt on him last July while campaigning in a field outside Butler, Pa., and declared: “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
This after Franklin Graham, invited to offer one of two invocations, directed these words, not to the Almighty, but to the incoming head of state: “Mr. President, the last four years, there are times I’m sure you thought it was pretty dark, but look what God has done. We praise him and give him glory.” Then the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association prayed, comparing Trump to Moses, the liberator and first leader of ancient Israel: “You and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand.” Graham, an unabashed Trump fan, campaigned for him repeatedly.
In one of the three benedictions, which together went on for more than 11 minutes, Lorenzo Sewell, a Black pastor from Detroit, began by thanking God for the “millimeter miracle” that saved Trump’s life, a reference to the failed assassination.
“We are grateful that you are the one that have called him for such a time as this, that America would begin to dream again,” he intoned, before launching into an animated recitation of the climactic ending of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” address at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Mann, pastor of Detroit’s 180 Church, had hosted a Trump rally in the congregation’s sanctuary filled with MAGA supporters.
At the end of another of the benedictions, Frank Mann, a retired Roman Catholic priest in the diocese of Brooklyn, called upon the president’s deceased parents, Mary and Fred Trump, to “shield their son from all harm by their loving protection and give him the strength to guide our nation along the path that will make America great again.” According to OSV News, a Catholic source, Mann appeared alongside Trump at two of his campaign rallies, including one at Madison Square Garden nearing the end of the election cycle.
Listening to these prayers, I couldn’t help thinking of the cautionary note Jesus of Nazareth gave during what many biblical scholars have called his inaugural address, known to Christians as the Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. “Beware of practicing your piety before others to be seen by them,” he warned, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. …. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”
Without question, it’s a great honor to be invited to pray at a presidential inauguration — and an enormous responsibility. Some if not all of those who prayed in the Capitol Rotunda Jan. 20 are likely to be invited to the White House to pray over the president once more, a practice he encouraged during his first term in office. If so, they will have received quite a reward.
The question they should be asking themselves as spiritual leaders is whether the reward is worth the risk.
For her part, Bishop Budde faces risks of another kind.
Stan Hastey served as Baptist Press Washington bureau chief during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and covered the three inaugurations of the 39th and 40th presidents.
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