When the Rev. Lorenzo Sewell got a call last week from the campaign of Donald Trump asking whether he was interested in his Detroit church hosting an event Saturday with the former president, he couldn't believe it.
"I thought I was being punked," Sewell, senior pastor of 180 Church, told the Free Press on Friday. "I literally thought it was a joke."
But after realizing the opportunity was real, Sewell decided to accept, seeing it as a chance to have the voices of marginalized Detroiters heard by a national campaign. His nondenominational church is located on Detroit's west side, near Grand River and Interstate 96, in a struggling area he said has high rates of mental illness, drug addiction and poverty. Formerly known as Evangel Church, the congregation has been in Detroit for 55 years, renaming itself during the COVID-19 pandemic as 180 Church to symbolize people turning their lives around. The church operates a methadone clinic with hundreds of patients, whom the Trump campaign expressed interest in talking with, Sewell said.
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