GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — With a nod to the “I Have a Dream” speech from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a Michigan pastor prayed for President Donald Trump throughout his inauguration Monday.
“Heavenly father, we’re so grateful that you just gave our forty fifth and now our forty seventh president a millimeter miracle. We’re grateful that you’re the one which have referred to as him for such a time as this, that America would start to dream once more,” Rev. Lorenzo Sewell of Detroit said during his benediction. “We pray that we’d fulfill the true which means of our creed, that we maintain these truths to be self-evident, that every one males are created equal. We pray that you just use our president, that we’d dwell in a nation the place we’d not be judged by the colour of our pores and skin however by the content material of our character.”
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Pastor of 180 Church Lorenzo Sewell, delivers a benediction after President Donald Trump was sworn in in the course of the sixtieth Presidential Inauguration within the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (Saul Loeb/Pool photograph through AP)
Sewell additionally made references to “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” and “Free at Last,” two songs that King quoted in the course of the well-known “I Have a Dream” speech.
“We are so grateful today, that you will use our 47th president, so we would sing with new meaning: ‘My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountain side, let freedom ring,'” Sewell stated.
“When we let freedom ring, we will be able speed up that day where all your children, Black men and white men, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and gentile will be able to sing in the meaning of that old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank you God almighty, we are free at last,'” he added whereas wrapping up.
After the prayer, he hugged Trump and shook fingers with Vice President JD Vance.
Senior Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, second left, hugs President Donald Trump in the course of the sixtieth Presidential Inauguration within the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (Kenny Holston/The New York Instances through AP, Pool)
Sewell was born and raised in Detroit, the place the “I Have a Dream” speech was first debuted.
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Whereas in highschool, after his father went to jail and his youthful brother was killed, Sewell turned a gang chief and was concerned in drug dealing, in accordance with the 180 Church web site. In 1999, his senior yr of highschool, he had an “encounter with Christ that set his heart on fire,” in accordance with the church.
He now serves because the lead pastor for 180 Church in Detroit. His work as a pastor has included engaged on a pc lab for grownup literacy lessons, bringing in donations for individuals who have misplaced their houses as a result of emergencies like home fires, and partnering with a program that gives tutoring and mentoring for native college students.
“What an opportunity,” Sewell stated in social media video posted previous to the inauguration. “To God be the glory.”
