More than a week after Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde asked President Donald Trump to show mercy on Americans, her comments remain a hot topic in Christian circles. Budde, the first female bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, spoke during a Jan. 21 interfaith prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.
Budde said people are “scared” about Trump’s second term, specifically mentioning members of the LGBTQ community and immigrants. The president and vice president, in attendance with their families, were visibly displeased by the bishop’s comments.
RELATED: Trump Tells Bishop Budde She Owes the Public an ‘Apology’ After Prayer Service Plea To Show Mercy
Afterward, Trump said, “I didn’t think it was a good service.” The president criticized Budde and her “nasty tone,” saying she owed the public an apology. In response, Budde said she would continue to pray for the president. Meanwhile, some Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives submitted a resolution condemning the bishop’s Jan. 21 sermon.
Some Christian denominations have issued statements in support of Budde’s words. On Jan. 26, the Committee on Faith and Order of the United Methodist Church wrote that Budde “sought to ground national unity in honoring the inherent dignity of all, in honest conversation and humility.” In a letter, the committee’s chairperson, Bishop David A. Bard, praised Budde’s “prophetic voice for justice in a suffering and conflicted world,” which he said she “delivered with gentleness and respect.”
Sharing that letter on social media, the Rev. Benjamin Cremer wrote, “Thankful that the United Methodist Church publicly supports Bishop Budde and her sermon.” Cremer, a digital pastor based in Idaho, wrote on his blog about the “politics of mercy”:
My immediate thought when I saw the backlash was, “This is always what happens when you preach about the need for mercy to a people who worship power.” Especially mercy towards people many have already decided are evil and not worthy of love. People like our LGBT siblings and immigrant neighbors who have long been the target of disinformation, fear, and hateful rhetoric. An appeal to mercy for demonized groups challenges the narratives that demonize them.
Critics of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde Speak Out
Joe Rigney, a fellow of theology at Doug Wilson’s New Saint Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho, criticized Budde’s “untethered empathy.” In a Jan. 25 opinion piece for World magazine, Rigney wrote that the bishop, “in the halting and syrupy tone of a schoolmarm,” offered “a clear example of the man-eating weed of Humanistic Mercy, untethered from what is true and good.”
Budde’s comments, Rigney added, remind Christians “of how destructive the feminist cancer is in the Church.” God made women more empathetic than men, he wrote, which is a “great blessing” in the home but “a curse…when it comes to upholding strict standards of justice.”
After citing numerous Bible passages regarding the submission of women, Rigney concluded that “the greatest evil…is conceived and supported…in grandiose cathedrals, by earnest women with rainbow robes and closely cropped haircuts who do not need to raise their voice.”