A brave bishop stumped Trump. You could call it a Bible bashing

Well, that was awkward. In front of a man claiming to have been appointed by God, saved by God, a man to whom conservative evangelicals have flocked, someone dared to mention … the Bible. Mercy. Compassion. Love. Among the Trump team sitting in the front pews, it was as though someone had released a stink bomb from the pulpit; brows furrowed, voluminous lips pursed, expressions of distaste, even anger.

Since the Episcopalian Bishop of Washington, the Right Rev Mariann Budde, spoke at the prayer service held the day after the inauguration, Republicans have called for her to be deported, and President Trump called her “nasty”, saying she should apologise to the American public. Others praised her uncommon courage.

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:

So what were these incendiary words? The diminutive Budde spoke directly to the president, referring to his claim of the “providential hand of God” saving him from assassination, and asking him “to have mercy upon the people in our country that are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.”

She then asked for mercy on illegal immigrants: “The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals … the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes and are good neighbours …

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear 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. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being.”

It’s pretty much Christianity 101, woven directly from Bible verses. But, watching the reaction, it became clear how many of those public figures who have weaponised religion in the name of their own ideology have forgotten what Christianity is actually about. That Jesus sat with the outcast, not billionaires. That he urged love and forgiveness, not contempt and hate; peace, not violence.

Trump brandishes a Bible outside St John’s Church near the White House in 2020.Credit: AP

Many seem to associate values like compassion with “wokeism”, not with faith, although as scholars like Tom Holland (also the co-host of The Rest Is History podcast) have pointed out, wokeism owes a significant intellectual debt to Christian thinking – the idea that eyes can be opened, the oppressed rise up, the last becoming first. The fundamentals of Christian faith are not the seeking of power but an absence of power.

Jesus didn’t arrive by golden escalator but in a dirty wooden trough. He did not hype up hate, he fostered love. It has become convenient for the powerful, though, to forget this, and the astonishing, evangelical US support for a felon found to have sexually abused women, and incited January 6 violence, has enabled this amnesia, this cover-up of the actual words of the leader of the religion Trump claims as his own.

Fox’s Sean Hannity called Budde’s words a “disgraceful woke tirade”.

A Texan Baptist pastor who was sitting in the congregation, Robert Jeffress, said Budde was “insulting” and that there “was palpable disgust in the audience”.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and President Donald Trump during the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral.Credit: Getty Images

The tabloid media cried: “Trump watches in disbelief as smug female bishop SCORNS president in prayer service with woke lecture about ‘transgender children fearing for their lives’ after his inauguration.”

You know things are bonkers when a biblically based sermon is dismissed as a woke, “wild”, “stunningly negative” tirade. Trump himself called her a “radical left hard-line Trump hater”.

Underlining her point, Budde is now facing mass hostility and hatred. On CNN she later revealed her allegedly sinister intent: “I wanted to say there is room for mercy, there’s room for a broader compassion. We don’t need to portray with a broad cloth in the harshest of terms some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who are, in fact, our neighbours, our friends, our children, our friends’ children, and so forth.”

Catholic leaders have made similar points. Shortly after Trump’s election, Pope Francis appointed a man who has been publicly critical of Trump’s policies as the new leader for the Catholic Church in Washington DC. In Trump’s first term, Cardinal Robert McElroy called on Americans to “disrupt” his plans to deport millions of immigrants, saying that Catholics “simply can’t stand by and watch [immigrants] get deported”. The Pope’s clearly deliberate decision to elevate McElroy to Washington was considered a “bold move”.

Just a few days ago, the Pope called Trump’s mass deportation plans “a disgrace”.

“It will make poor unfortunates, who have nothing, foot the bill for [global] imbalances,” he said. In 2016, when discussing Trump’s border wall policy, the Pope said that the president was “not Christian”. The Pope. Yet Trump has presented himself as a Christian champion.

Exit polls show Catholics in the US voted for Trump by a double-digit margin (the Pope also criticised Kamala Harris’ pro-choice stance). About eight in 10 white evangelical voters supported him, too. As of August, Trump had made $US300,000 ($475,000) from selling “The Trump Bible”.

So where does this leave faith? Why the shock over Budde’s gentle words?

You don’t need to be a biblical scholar to realise the way immigrants are spoken of as pet-eating savages, rapists and evil criminals will have appalled those who read the Bible. But it provokes the question – how much dissent against Trump will come from the church? As Democrats sat in their chairs this week, depressed, humiliated, wilted by the fire of Trump’s triumphant authority, it seemed clear that resistance to some of the more brutal demands of the MAGA movement may come from those who actually read between the covers of the book Donald Trump has sold under his own name: the Bible.

Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything.

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