Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde isn’t afraid to speak truth to power.
Unlike almost everyone else in President Donald Trump’s orbit these days.
And she has no plans to apologize for asking Trump to show mercy on the people he has terrorized in his first days back in power.
“I don’t feel there’s a need to apologize for a request for mercy,” Budde told NPR’s “All Things Considered” on Wednesday. Before she became the first woman to serve as the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Budde spent 18 years in Minneapolis as the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church.
During her sermon at a prayer service Tuesday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C, Budde locked eyes with the president and offered up a prayer for unity — and a reminder that his executive orders targeting immigrants and transgender Americans are a source of fear and pain to some of the most vulnerable people in this nation.
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Budde said while Trump glowered. Her full sermon is worth a listen:
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. 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 meatpacking 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. … 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, Mr. President.”
In response to the reverend’s request for kindness, decency and national unity, Trump stomped and stormed across social media. Trump demanded an apology and called Budde “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.” His supporters have suggested Budde, a U.S. citizen born in New Jersey, should be deported and said this is the sort of thing that happens when you let women take to the pulpit.
