Reverend asks Trump to have 'mercy' on immigrants, LGBTQ children who 'fear for their lives'

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. 

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."

"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."

"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 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."