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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Americans have no idea about contents of inaugural invocations but everyone remembers Bishop Budde

Three cheers for Episcopal Bishop Budde❗🙏✝️"I appreciate his acknowledgment that religious leaders, including those found in the Bible, often feel compelled to hold the powerful to account — which is just what I believe the bishop was doing." From Tom McCullough in Dennis, Massachusette published in the Boston Globe,
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (“What MAGA really hated about Bishop Budde’s homily." Bishop Mariann Budde recited this verse as part of her homily about the need for unity in our polarized society and on resisting the temptation to “mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ.”

Boston Globe opinoin:  One day after the January 20th inauguration, the quadrennial interfaith worship service at the Washington National Cathedral featured the kind of Christian minister Trump disapproves of — the kind who calls on him to heed the better angels of his nature and to remember, even as he orders dramatic changes in federal policy, that empathy and mercy are important ideals.


In her leadership clerical homily, the Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, spoke mostly about the need for unity in our polarized society and for resisting the temptation to “mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ.” Just before concluding, she addressed Trump directly. Acknowledging that millions of Americans have put their trust in the president, she implored him “to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” She spoke in particular of undocumented migrants facing deportation. Most “immigrants are not criminals,” she added. “They pay taxes and are good neighbors.”


Bishop Budde’s tone was respectful, even deferential, but the implied criticism, however brief and gently worded, was more than Trump could abide. 

Cowardly Trumpzi took to social media late that night to slam Bishop Budde as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who was “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.” For good measure he insulted the entire two-and-a-half-hour service, calling it “very boring and uninspiring” and said both Budde and the church “owe the public an apology.”  (Bishop Mariann Budde tells NPR "I won't apologize' for the sermon addressing Trump")

Since antiquity, religious leaders have felt compelled to hold the powerful to account, often at great personal risk. The Bible, of course, is replete with such episodes, like the prophet Nathan confronting King David over his sin with Bathsheba and Elijah condemning King Ahab for his corruption and cruelty. In later centuries, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas spent decades exhorting the Spanish Crown to end the brutal enslavement and mistreatment of indigenous peoples in the Americas. 

The Puritan minister Roger Williams challenged the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s leadership on issues of religious liberty. Martin Luther King Jr. repeatedly appealed to Judeo-Christian values of justice and mercy as he led the fight against racial segregation and the authorities who sustained it.

Nothing is more normal than the invocation of God in our public life. “In God We Trust” appears on all US currency.
The vitriol directed at Bishop Budde from the MAGA cult loyalists reeks of hypocrisy. 

None of them objected when Trump perverted his inaugural address to heap scorn on the outgoing president to his face. None uttered a word of criticism when Franklin Graham fawned over Trump during the benediction. If Budde had praised a Trump executive order during her homily the following day, they would have applauded her sagacity. 

But because Bishop Budde suggested that Trump's
 sweeping new orders ought to be combined with compassion, they berated her. They weren’t offended that she brought politics into the pulpit. But, her message wasn’t Trump-approved, and that was intolerable to the hypocritical right wing MAGA cult.

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