Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivers a sermon during the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21, 2025. Invoking the words of Jesus Christ, she pleaded with President Donald Trump to show mercy on vulnerable people who are scared of being targeted by his administration’s policies. Photo by Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Last week, the most powerful words uttered in the most powerful nation on earth were delivered not by the most powerful man in the world but by a servant of God.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who leads the Episcopal Diocese in Washington, D.C., spoke from the pulpit as she directly addressed President Donald Trump at a national, post-inaugural prayer service on Jan. 21.
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” Budde said near the end of a 15-minute sermon on unity and community. “Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.”
Then after a brief pause, as if to gather her courage, she added, “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
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Budde talked about “gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives” now that Trump has returned to the White House.
She referred to the people who “pick our crops, and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants… They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here,” she said. “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, because we were all once strangers in this land.”
Her words, delivered in a calm and spiritual tone, were breathtaking in their strength, clarity and courage.
As she spoke, never turning her gaze from him, the president at one point looked away, shoulders slumped, visibly frustrated by what viewed as the pastor’s lack of respect.
There was no disrespect intended, Budde later told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “I wanted to make, as you heard, a plea, a request that he broaden his characterization of the people that are frightened now and are at risk of losing everything, and I thought that that would be the more respectful way to say it.”
The president’s comments later on the bishop’s sermon were predictably petty in the way that people used to abusing power often respond to criticism. He called her a “so-called Bishop” and said she was “nasty in tone…and not compelling or smart.”
In truth, Budde’s words were compelling, smart, measured, and rooted in her faith, the same faith Trump claims to abide by.
While Trump’s die-hard supporters have roundly dismissed the bishop’s comments as a left-wing attack, her remarks should serve as a means to gird ourselves for the calamity at our doorsteps. Sometimes we speak truth to power not because we’re convinced the powerful will change their minds, but because it allows our allies to know they will not be alone as we face the struggles to come.
Since resuming office, Trump’s barrage of executive orders and authoritarian rhetoric have laid bare what the next four years will bring: another long wave of chaos, incompetence and pervasive corruption.
America chose an explicitly dangerous Donald Trump. What price will we pay?
Most Americans, including many who voted for him, will suffer as a result of the president’s ceaseless efforts to line his pockets at the expense of the American taxpayer, while punishing anyone he regards as powerless or otherwise inferior and lavishing rewards on the rich, at least as long as they slather him with praise — no matter how hollow.
Perhaps no president in American history has been less capable of redemption or spiritual growth than Donald J. Trump.
Budde would almost certainly never say something like this, but I will: Trump is as soulless a man as the human race has ever produced. He revels in exacting cruelty on people, especially anyone who refuses to tolerate his vulgarity and lack of character.
He is not a stupid man, but he is a simpleton — crass, incurious and insatiable in his thirst for money and the power it provides.
Left to his own devices and unfettered by the law, as he believes he is now, Trump will do anything to get his way.
Anything.
His attempt to overthrow our government on Jan. 6, 2021, and his recent decision to pardon and release 1,500 or so rioters who violently assaulted Capitol police officers in his name was just a hint of how far he will go.
It may not be the Christian thing to say, but I have lived long enough to know that there are those who walk among us whose evil must never be appeased.
Trump is one of them.
Does he warrant our hate? No. Even the most despicable in our midst deserve the sort of kindness shown by the Bishop Buddes of the world.
But the Trumps of our world will never deserve our obedience.
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