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. 

But Don't Afterlife-focused Evangelists Show More Love Than Social Gospel Evangelists?

Yesterday I faulted afterlife-focused evangelism--the "trust Jesus in order to avoid Hell" approach--for fostering a lack of care for people's temporal concerns. Why care about solving poverty, addressing injustices, or repairing the environment if the only thing that really matters is your soul's eternal resting place? Certainly, many afterlife-focused evangelicals also participate in social justice ministries, seeing an either/or, social gospel/evangelizing dichotomy as false. But a significant number of evangelists, however, view a church's focus on social gospel programs as a distraction, draining time and energy away from the one true mission: evangelize.

These latter evangelicals would take offense at the idea that they are somehow showing less love to their neighbors than do the feed-the-poor, comfort-the-afflicted social gospel Christians. Indeed, the argument from the afterlife-focused point of view is that saving someone's soul before saving their bodies shows greater love.

Why? Well, for one thing, earthly suffering can never be totally eradicated; they result from the fallen-ness that has corrupted God's good creation since Eden. Efforts to ameliorate that suffering are like trying to hold back the tide. In the long run, they can never work. The only aspect of creation that is redeemable is the human soul, and that only by the sanctifying action of Christ. This redemption, while it does not make earthly suffering disappear, has an eternal character and a certain outcome: the soul goes to heaven for eternity.

If you accept the afterlife-focused premises, the logic is fairly convincing. Even Penn Jillette, an outspoken atheist, got raves from evangelicals for his argument that anyone who believes in a literal, eternal hell ought to proselytize. Indeed, Jillette sees proselytization as evidence of conviction. He proselytizes about his Truth; afterlife-focused evangelicals proselytize about theirs. Anyone who doesn't proselytize, for Jillette, deserves no respect since they stand for no Truth.

As I've hinted, though, I do not buy the afterlife-focused premises of a literal/eternal hell and the irredeemability of the world. But besides that, my own experience as a former afterlife-focused evangelical leads me to question the greater-love argument.

I want to take people at their word when they insist that they evangelize out of a sincere love for their neighbors. They don't want anyone to end up in hell, so all of their efforts are dedicated to getting people to trust in Christ for their salvation. But--and I can only speak for myself here--so much of my experience as a Southern Baptist surrounded the evangelical imperative with an aura of self-concern.

To review: I think it's fairly apparent that the afterlife-focused evangelical appeal plays on a person's instincts for self-preservation: you don't want to go to hell, do you? Once you believe in the reality of hell and the inevitability of damnation, then trusting Christ/becoming a Christian becomes a foregone conclusion. It's an offer you dare not refuse. (As I've also argued, in this configuration of salvation, it really doesn't matter whether you see God as loving or as a capricious tyrant. If God is the only means of salvation from eternal torture, you'll take God no matter what, right?).

I have trouble, then, seeing how a conversion experience born out of self-concern blossoms into a faith life of self-sacrifice. More than that, I lived that difficulty in my childhood and teenage years as I struggled to reach out to others in faith. Evangelical training teaches you to imagine the immanent danger that the unsaved around you face. How would you like it if they went to hell? Of course I wouldn't like that. I wanted my friends and neighbors--heck, even strangers--to avoid the unimaginable torments of the lake of fire.

But surprisingly that desire often wasn't quite enough for me to broach the subject of Christianity to them. The social conventions that restrain people from turning a conversation toward the Threat Of Hell are exquisitely difficult to break. Whole books, curricula, sermons, podcasts, etc. deal with this very issue: getting past fear to "Dare 2 Share."

What got me past that fear, though, wasn't love. It was guilt. Or, more accurately, it was a deeper fear that, if I didn't share then I didn't really believe. It's Jillette's Law of Ultimate Truths. If you really believe in a truth, you will proselytize. Not proselytizing=not really believing.

I mentioned early on that I was taught that God poses not one but two questions to souls at the Judgment: 1) Is your name written in the Book of Life (i.e., are you saved)? 2) Whom did you bring with you? Now technically, only the first question was necessary for salvation. A mass murderer who, on her deathbed, truly trusts in Christ is saved--full stop. Moreover, merely proselytizing does not in and of itself save--no human work does.

Nevertheless, if you are saved, the logic goes, you will proselytize. And if you don't share your faith? If you don't breech those social (i.e., man-made, worldly, not-of-God) conventions? Well...you have to wonder about your faith.

Thus--again, I can only speak for myself--while I did wish for those around me to go to heaven, it was my own fate, my own afterlife that moved me to actually share the gospel with people.

This mix of other-love and self-interest, I submit, shapes the tenor of evangelical outreach techniques. If your evangelism has as its goal actually seeing other people convert, then your strategy will be efficacy-focused: what techniques actually reach people? If your evangelism has as its goal fulfilling a requirement for your own salvation, though, efficacy falls by the wayside...

More tomorrow,

JF