IN HIS first hours as returning President, Donald Trump signed an order restoring biological truth and recognising ‘two sexes, male and female’, saying this is set at birth and cannot be changed. He ordered immigration officers to ramp up deportations of people in the country without authorisation. He signed executive orders to leave the World Health Organization and withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
Trump’s other initial executive orders included a move to end birthright citizenship (the automatic American citizenship granted to anyone born in the country) and a measure declaring a near-total halt of the US refugee admissions programme — a move widely opposed by Trump’s religious critics.
To show that he means business this time he revoked 78 executive orders signed by President Biden related to racial equality, climate, migration, voting and the federal workforce, among other issues. He has sent troops to the southern border and sacked the female head of the Coastguard because of her emphasis on DEI initiatives instead of guarding the coast. This time he is not messing around.
As expected, the new Trump administration has been greeted with horror by the usual suspects and Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has been in full flow. Few examples of TDS are more deranged than that of French MEP Majdouline Sbai (Greens). She said that Trump was a symptom of the ‘rise of fascism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ throughout the West. She thinks that the first step of healing is recognising your ‘sickness’ and suggested that Europe should cut itself off from the infection and build relationships with other countries instead.
It was at home that perhaps the worst example occurred. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington, preached at the National Prayer Service following the inauguration and used the occasion to mount an attack on Trump.
People are asking why such an inflammatory preacher should have been selected; surely the incoming administration knew her track record of anti-Trump pronouncements? The answer is simple: she was chosen during the Biden administration.
The service differed from past inaugurations in that the preacher was announced before Election Day, and the incoming administration had less say over the event than previously. The changes were announced in October when cathedral dean the Very Rev Randolph Marshall Hollerith insisted in a statement that ‘This will not be a service for a new administration.’ He was certainly prophetic.
The service, which Trump officials call a ‘National Prayer Service’ but which cathedral sources refer to as ‘A Service of Prayer for the Nation’, featured prayers, invocations and Scripture readings from Episcopalian, African Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Mennonite, Jewish, Indigenous, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh traditions as well as Mormons.
Christians’ prayers are very specific: we pray to the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do not pray to the false gods of Allah, Vishnu etc. When we preach it is from the Bible, not the Koran, Vedas, or the Book of Mormon. This, however, is no problem to progressive Christians who turn their backs on the 2,000-year teaching of the Church in order to re-invent the faith to suit the mores of the present day.
The Episcopal Church is probably the most liberal, not to say progressive, denomination in the USA. It is fully committed to promoting LGBTQ+ rights and treats DEI initiatives as though they had come down from the mountain top written in stone. In her speech, it wasn’t a sermon, which was light on the Bible but heavy on righteous condemnation, Bishop Budde went peak episcopalian.
She painted a picture of a dystopian America where people live in dread of the coming administration. ‘In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.’ These people included ‘gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families’ all across the country ‘who fear for their lives’. Illegal immigrants were not left out: ‘I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.’
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde a ‘radical Left hardline Trump-hater’ who is ‘not very good at her job’. He said she ‘brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way’ and demanded an apology. The description is accurate: she clearly loathes Donald Trump and was certainly very ungracious.
Most importantly, Trump got it right when he said she is ‘not very good at her job’. With a congregation consisting of 2,000 of the most influential people in the world, she blew it. Instead of preaching Christ crucified, she went off on a rant against one man expressing her personal political views. The task of the preacher is to bring God’s Word to bear on the people, not to express personal thoughts and preferences.
We should admire those like Becket and Bonhoeffer and be prepared in our own smaller way to emulate them.
There have been Christian teachers such as Thomas Becket and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who have stood against the powers that be and been prepared to pay the price. The heaviest price Bishop Budde has paid is rock star status amongst the progressive left.
We should admire those like Becket and Bonhoeffer and be prepared in our own smaller way to emulate them. They acted from a profound devotion to God and from a deep understanding of the teaching of the Church. These were men who knew their theology. Bishop Budde is no Becket or Bonhoeffer.
Christians must speak about the conditions which exist in the world, and play our part in shaping society. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us we are salt and light, the salt which prevents corruption and the light which pushes back darkness. We should act from a biblical standpoint, holding the world and its ways up to the bar of God’s judgement, not our own.
The pronouncements of liberal Christians like Bishop Budde make that task more difficult. She makes it easier for unbelievers to dismiss Christian intervention in social affairs as ill-thought-out regurgitation of progressive talking points garnished with a few Christian terms. If Christians are to speak out, we must do the serious and hard work of examining our world from a biblical perspective. Only then will we deserve to be heard.
