180 Church Senior Pastor Lorenzo Sewell called out Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday evening during an appearance on Fox News for her lecture of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
During Tuesday’s National Prayer Service, Budde lectured both Trump and Vance, pleading for their administration to show “mercy” to illegal immigrants and “gay, lesbian, and transgender children,” who she said “fear for their lives.” On “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham asked Sewell for his thoughts on Budde and the message she delivered.
“I was in her service. I was physically sitting next to the First Family. What was so sad about this bishop, she had the opportunity to preach the gospel,” Sewell said.
“She had the opportunity to talk about the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. She had the opportunity to bring people into the faith,” Sewell added. “It was a salvific moment instead of using the authority of the word of God to preach the message of Christ and to draw our president closer to Jesus. She used it to practice what I call theological and spiritual malpractice.”
Following her public criticism of Trump and Vance, Budde appeared on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday, telling the hosts that her goal had been to preach “unity” and “emphasize respecting the honor and dignity of every human being, basic honesty, and humility.” Sewell responded by criticizing Budde’s sermon, calling her the “worst preacher” he had ever heard, and said he had stayed after the service to pray for Trump.
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“It was awful. It was so bad. I’m grateful my wife was not there. She would have ran out of that church,” Sewell said. “I cannot believe that she would use that moment to speak a demonic message as if she was using the Bible. She used her platform to practice theological malpractice.”
“It was horrible. It was the worst message I’ve ever been in my life. It was believers — we prayed after. We prayed for our president after that message. I was the last person to leave that building because I was so offended about how she used her platform,” Sewell said.
Budde has been a public critic of Trump, previously condemning the use of tear gas during the 2020 George Floyd riots. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” she said the tactic was “antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.”
Trump later demanded an apology from the bishop, writing on Truth Social that Budde had brought her church into politics in “a very ungracious way.”
“She was nasty in tone and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people,” the president wrote. “Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News/”The Ingraham Angle”)
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