Bishop Budde's Plea

 I've been thinking a lot about the minor kerfuffle that's emerged around the sermon delivered during the Inaugural Prayer Service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Jan 12. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, delivered the message. She gave a brief, less-than-15-minute homily about unity, perfectly generic and tuned to the event's ecumenical vibe. 

She made news, though, for her final bit:

"Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and the courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one other in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world."

Various news outlets have characterized the sermon as "confronting" or "calling out" Trump. Spokespeople for the new President's administration have lambasted Budde for injecting politics into the event, making the service political. Trump himself went on Truth Social to gripe about the "so-called Bishop" who was a "Trump hater": "She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart." Other of his supporters have suggested that she (or the Episcopal Church) owes him an apology. GOP Congressman Mike Collins (Georgia) tweeted, "The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list."

In subsequent interviews, Budde has declined to comment on Trump's reaction, reinforcing that she does not hate Trump and that she simply plead with him. "I don't feel there's a need to apologize for a request for mercy," she told NPR. 

Now, it is true the Budde has in the past made news criticizing Mr. Trump. In 2020, after his staged photo op in front of the National Cathedral where he infamously held a Bible upside down, she spoke out against him. Yet, according to Religion News Service, Budde was among those defending the National Cathedral's decision to host Trump's first Prayer Service back in 2017. RNS quotes her from then saying that she was "trying to create a church where we actually speak to people who see the world differently than we do."

On Bluesky and other lefty places, of course, Budde is being hailed as speaking truth to power. In an era that seems to have lost its taste for the large-scale left-progressive protests of the first Trump administration, say many skeeters, it falls to those people with platforms like Budde to voice the concerns of those whose pleas go unheard.

Alongside from the familiar not-surprised-but-still-disappointed feeling, I admit a grim curiosity about exactly how pro-Trump Christianity (especially evangelicalism) will spin this. I mean, I expect the typical double standard: right-wing, white-nationalist Christianity is just normal, but any talk about mercy or consideration for those on the margins qualifies as inappropriate politicking. The new elements I'm seeing include a few truly creative takes on the Good Samaritan parable and the command to "love your enemy" quoted on Bluesky and elsewhere. Such interpreters craft twisted takeaways that exempt Christians from having to love as the good Samaritan did (e.g., See, the Good Samaritan is Jesus, not humans, right? No human could be expected to do what the Samaritan in the story did.).

Bishop Budde is correct: a plea for mercy--especially a plea to a leader who campaigned on mercilessness--is bog-standard Christianity. If the Trump administration doesn't want those kind of messages, perhaps they should stop going to Christian services.