Why Bishop Mariann Budde wanted to speak to Donald Trump

The Right Reverend Mariann Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., has a history of practicing what is called the prophetic tradition: naming the evils of the world and denouncing those who perpetrate them. In 2020, after President Donald Trump ordered Black Lives Matter protesters to be dispersed from Lafayette Square and then posed for photos there, standing in front of St. Johns Church and holding a Bible, she expressed outrage. Mr. Trump used sacred symbols to cloak himself in the mantle of spiritual authority, while adopting positions antithetical to the Bible he held in his hands, Budde wrote in an op-ed. When Trump ran for office in 2020, she said she had given up on speaking to President Trump.

Yet earlier this week, from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, Budde spoke directly and personally to President Trump. Her nearly fifteen-minute sermon focused on what she described as three elements necessary for national unity: dignity, honesty and humility. Then, toward the end of her sermon, she added a fourth, calling on Trump to have pity on those in America, especially immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community, who are currently in fear. The last two minutes of her sermon went viral, angering Trump supporters, who said she should be put on the deportation list and that Budde was Evidence A for why women should not be pastors , priests or bishops. Trump posted on Truth Social that Budde was a so-called bishop. She's not very good at her job! he added. She and her church owe the public an apology!

Budde, the author of 2023's How We Learn to Be Brave, did not apologize to Trump, or anyone else, for her remarks. Thursday morning, she spoke to me by phone from her home in Washington, DC. During a forty-minute conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Budde reflected on what she intended to say in the sermon, the role of prayer in her life and the responsibility of religious leaders to face the social and political realities of their time.

You mentioned that your decision to talk about mercy came after hearing Trump talk about God's will and invoke the divine right of kings in his inaugural address. Can you explain to us how you made this decision to speak out and the role that prayer played in it?

I was starting to feel incomplete, just unsettled, about the three pillars of unity and thinking that something was missing. In fact, I was having a hard time before Monday morning, just talking to the people I was sharing my ideas and thoughts with.

At some point on Monday and I don't remember when, but it was in the context of sweeping descriptions of entire sections of people in our society in a way that was so harsh and inconsistent with what I knew to be true, what the Most of us know. To be true, the word mercy kept coming back to me, mercy and empathy. I decided to stay with mercy, in part because I knew that, in this context and at this time, I had to honor the office of president and the fact that millions of people, as I said, trusted him and counted on him to lead the country. He himself felt providentially spared to make America great again, as he said, but also to lead, right?

I was trying to find a way to bring into the room those who were not part of the vision of unity that he described in his inaugural address and, in fact, the way he spoke about our country all together. throughout the campaign. And of course, I was praying. I was in conversation with different people as part of my own inner dialogue. So I chose to ask for mercy, and I also tried to humanize the people I was talking about, who need mercy, those who are afraid.

I thought there were probably a thousand people in the cathedral that morning. And I assumed that there were parents of children in the room who were gay and lesbian, or maybe even transgender, or were gay or lesbian themselves, so they would know something about the struggle. I was trying to humanize us, to bring us into this same spirit where we get to know each other, where we are more similar than different. And also, speaking of the immigrant population, and in particular those who arrive in this country and take on the tasks that keep our society going, often behind the scenes or outside of working hours, and who do truly back-breaking work, to say that these are people who many of us know. I wanted to bring them into the room, to help evoke images of real people, rather than broad categories or characterizations.

Writing and you're a writer, so I think you understand that it's a form of prayer for me. That involves everything, right? Every aspect of my being, my entire ego, my insecurities, my strengths. You know those rare moments when you feel like you actually have the energy to write, and other times when you feel like you're going to fall asleep in front of the screen? It's all prayer, and so that was certainly part of it as well.

You've talked in the past about the pointlessness of talking to Trump, about how you're done with Trump. I thought, as I listened, that yes, you were talking to him, but were you talking to Trump?

It's really interesting. I guess when I said in the past that I was done talking to Trump, I really meant that I had given up any illusion that my words would have any influence on him. I didn’t see myself as someone he would consider a credible voice to listen to. And I dare say that is still the case. Yet, at that moment, I chose to address him personally. I could have kept it in the third person plural, as I did for the other three. [principles of unity]RIGHT? We need these three things. We must do them all. But I thought in that moment, I would honor his office.

As a communication technique, people in the family system will often tell us that if you really want someone around you to hear you, let them hear you talking to someone else. As if my children, my adult children, were talking to someone else about their lives, and I was listening at the doors. I'm sitting in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, you know what I mean, and they're talking to a friend from college, or they're talking to a friend. family friend or uncle, they speak differently and I listen differently.

In fact, I was counting on people hearing me talking to Trump in a way that would connect with them. So there was that. The other part was that I was very aware that I was not simply speaking to those gathered in the cathedral sanctuary, but that we were actually part of a public discourse that had been taking place throughout the season policy. As I mentioned, there is a certain rhetoric that we consider normal now, and particularly in political times, and that is a really dangerous way to run a country. If we talk to ourselves like this all the time, we are heading down the path to self-destruction as a nation.

You just mentioned your children, and as a pastor's kid, I have some experience with how politics can play out on a personal level. I imagine your children are so proud of you. How are they? How is your family doing with all this?

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