The Democratic National Committee has invited a number of faith leaders from various denominations to address their members during the virtual convention slated to start Monday, the Associated Press reports.
The most notable among them is Bishop Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC, who will deliver the benediction on Tuesday night.
Buddle denounced the Trump Administration for using riot police, federal agents and chemical weapons to clear the area around St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square in DC so President Trump could have a photo op holding a Bible. The Trump Administration took its actions without the permission of the Church.
During the 2016 republican National Convention, Jerry Falwell, Jr., who is a real estate developer and the currently-on-extended-leave president of Liberty University, not a minister, addressed the final night of the event.
Other faith leaders invited to speak at the DNC include:
- the Rev. Gabriel Salguero, the Florida-based pastor who founded the National Latino Evangelical Coalition;
- Jerry Young of the New Hope Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi;
- Archbishop Elpidophoros, leader of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America;
- Rabbi Lauren Berkun, vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America;
- Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the advocacy group NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice;
- the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of the Jesuit magazine America; and
- Imam Al-Hajj Talib ’Abdur-Rashid, leader of the New York-based Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood.