Lawmakers walk out of invocation denouncing 'beast of white Christian nationalism,' Trump as 'tyrant'
State lawmakers streamed out of the Tennessee House of Representatives chamber in Nashville on Thursday as a Baptist minister delivered an invocation railing against “white Evangelical piety” and calling President Donald Trump a tyrannical “callus on the heel of American government.”
Michael Eric Dyson, an ordained minister who serves as distinguished professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University, was first introduced at the beginning of the legislative session by Democratic Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who represents the Memphis area and described Dyson as “a Christian and as a person of faith.”
Claiming Dyson believes “the God of the cosmos and of time itself loves everybody,” Pearson said the professor “believes Jesus is not a token that gets taken off the shelf to separate, bludgeon or disparage people, but an example by which we should be living our lives fighting for the oppressed, the marginalized, the immigrant, the disinherited, the widow and the disenfranchised.”
????????WATCH — @MichaelEDyson leads prayer: “???? is on fire with bigotry & bombs… Hatred of Blackness circulates in the lungs of the beast of white Christian nationalism… We’re victims of a tyrant whose malignant narcissism seduces too many to mimic his deadly deceitfulness…”
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 26, 2026
He… pic.twitter.com/GsAKcwZnFu
Pearson went on to suggest that such is “all inherently a political act — so political that they had to lynch our Savior.”
After thanking Pearson for the opportunity “to address this august body,” Dyson offered a politically and racially charged invocation, accusing the president of being a tyrant while referencing the third anniversary of the Covenant School massacre in Nashville, which was perpetrated by a trans-identified female shooter who harbored hatred toward Christians.
“We are in the midst of an extraordinary battle for the soul of America,” he said. “We are in the shadow of the third anniversary of the Covenant School shooting, and yet we still worship guns. In our country, we claim to love freedom, but we resent those who seek to practice it beyond mere creeds.”
Implying that many Americans disregard the nation’s founding documents, Dyson went on to claim that “slavery was central to the definition of the United States of America” and was “crucial” to how American society was shaped.
Imploring God to “spare us from the hypocrisy of a breed of white Evangelical piety that emphasized the adjective ‘white’ more than the noun ‘Evangelical,’” Dyson added, “The hatred of blackness circulates in the lungs of the beast of white Christian nationalism, and we can feel the fire flaming from the nostrils of the dragon of black animosity.”
Without naming Trump outright, Dyson claimed that “too many of our white Evangelical brothers and sisters toss in with a petty, prevaricating pariah who is a callus on the heel of American government and a wound on the body of American democracy.”
Dyson claimed during his lamentation that “we are victims of a tyrant, whose malignant narcissism seduces too many citizens to mimic his deadly deceitfulness and emulate his corrupt character.”
“His mouth is full of lies; baffling, corrosive and tendentious lies, lies that mock any shred of honesty left in our politics, lies that are made up on the spot to justify wacky and wicked actions that lack a hint of intellectual depth or moral decency,” he continued as lawmakers began leaving the chamber, according to footage.
Dyson also denounced anti-diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and claimed Trump and his supporters are driven by “a mediocrity so pervasive and paralyzing that it is laughable that they dare attack women and queers and black folks and indigenous people and brown folks and yes, immigrants, their ICE initiatives[.]”
After his invocation, Dyson told local outlet The Tennessee Holler that the purpose of his invocation was to “plant the seed” in accordance with his interpretation of the Gospel.
“My job is to plant the seed,” he said. “And I hope that they heard me. I hope that they understood that it’s rooted in a Gospel imperative to love the vulnerable and the oppressed.” He also denounced what he described as “the hypocritical embrace of American ideals on the one hand, and the denunciation of them on the other.”
“You can’t say God says, ‘Love the stranger,’ and you treat people who are immigrants with total disdain,” he continued, suggesting that some Americans deny the history of slavery and oppose DEI while supporting “white mediocrity,” which he said is “the bane of our collective existence.”
WATCH: “My job is to plant the seed. I hope they heard me.”
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 26, 2026
We talked to TN House Chaplain of the Day @MichaelEDyson and Rep. @Justinjpearson, who invited him, after his ???? message today — a truth bomb that sent some Republicans running for the exits: https://t.co/EGqPMX4cXFpic.twitter.com/uDo3OyJrnr
Dyson, who wrote the book Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, has made headlines before for his inflammatory descriptions of Trump supporters, whom he called “maggots” while denouncing “mediocre mealy-mouthed snowflake white men” during an appearance on MSNBC in 2021.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
