This week, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivered a powerful sermon in the National Cathedral prayer service for the inauguration, fearlessly speaking truth to power about the realities all marginalized people face under the new presidential administration. She urged mercy and compassion directly from the pulpit.
President Trump, Vice President Vance, their families, and key administration officials were in attendance, and Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Bishop of Washington, D.C., spoke to them in her sermon:
View this post on Instagram
“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 pick our crops, and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat-packing 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.”
After the service, Trump called the Right Rev. Budde a “radical left hard line Trump hater” despite her clear message of love and pleading for mercy and understanding. Trump baselessly called the Bishop’s tone “nasty,” as she pleaded for mercy for marginalized people, and name-called the Bishop as “not compelling or smart.” He dispatched his press secretary to Fox News to falsely claim the Bishop’s call for mercy and kindness was “spewing lies” while the press secretary went on to defame immigrants as “criminals” (though said nothing about the January 6 criminals Pres. Trump just released) and demanded an apology from the Bishop.
“I don’t feel there’s a need to apologize for a request for mercy,” the Bishop explained to NPR.
The Right Rev. Budde serves as spiritual leader for 86 Episcopal congregations and ten Episcopal schools in the Washington, D.C., area. She is the first woman elected to this position, and also serves as the chair of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation.