The Bishop's Power Trip

A naked political rebuke cloaked in churchy language.

As most of you know, I am a priest in the Episcopal Church. I love my denomination and consider it a great hope to a country too much knotted up in political fights.

We were in the news this week when Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde presided over the traditional National Prayer Service for the incoming president. The service took place at the National Cathedral and Bishop Budde, from the pulpit, told Donald Trump this:

There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.

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 — 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.

Trump responded that the bishop “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart."

To which Bishop Budde said later to NPR: "I don't hate the president, and I pray for him. I don't feel there's a need to apologize for a request for mercy."

Here’s my take on this.

Bishop Budde doesn’t owe anyone an apology. She preached what she felt she had to preach — a message of “mercy,” she says, for immigrants and the sexually different.

She had the president in the front row and she used the opportunity to speak directly to him. But she’s not being honest with herself if she thinks this appropriate.

She later described what she did as a “one-on-one conversation” in which everyone could listen in.

C’mon, bish.

This wasn’t a conversation. It was Bishop Budde using her pulpit to express her political views on the national stage in front of a national television audience. If the bishop really wanted to engage the president in a “conversation,” she could have done that privately.

She held the power that day. And, she wielded it on an individual congregant. She can call that a “gentle” request for mercy, if she wants. But, the truth is it was a naked political rebuke cloaked in churchy language.

In my view, this is a problem within my church community. It is populated with a clergy that hold political views like Bishop Budde’s, or even further left. And while they talk a good game about being inclusive and open, they are not.

Look, my guess is half of the Episcopalians in America voted for Donald Trump. They don’t leave the church, even when liberal politics spew from the pulpit and the clergy, because the liturgical expression found there is meaningful to them. The church is bigger than politics.

If and when church leadership understands this, the Episcopal Church will become a refuge for a divided country. A place where people from opposite sides of the political fence find ways to build gates.

I don’t know Bishop Budde. She seems like a gentle soul. But let’s not kid ourselves. What she did that day was not a conversation. It was more like yelling at the neighbors over the fence.

Both unproductive and unbecoming.

The Deep State

In the vast array of shameful acts by Democrats and Washington’s “Deep State,” one of the most blatant has to be the 51 former “intelligence” officials who agreed to sign on to a political ad casting doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop.