Bishop Budde was right to speak truth to Trump
By Sophia A. NelsonThomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and America’s third president, is why religious freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment. Jefferson started writing about “religious freedom” when America was still a British colony. While serving as ambassador to France, Jefferson wrote letters to James Madison, encouraging him to include religious freedom in the Constitution. In 1777, Jefferson drafted a bill to establish religious liberty in Virginia based on what he deemed the inalienable right to freedom of conscience. In 1779, he proposed it to the Virginia legislature, but it was opposed by the Church of England. The legislature eventually approved it, but only after Jefferson left office as governor.
Jefferson saw religious freedom as essential for a functioning republic. He was right.
In America, we do not have kings or tyrants. We respect each other’s liberty and the right to worship as we choose or not to worship at all. That makes us unique in the world. It draws other people from around the world to the United States. No state-sanctioned religion. No state-sanctioned church. And our priests, bishops, pastors, rabbis, clerics and clergy are empowered by that freedom to preach unfettered the word of God to their parishioners, to the public and, yes, to heads of state who attend their services. That is America at her finest.
Yet, somehow a portion of the Republican Party, including President Donald Trump and his followers, many of whom profess to love the lord and demand the Ten Commandments be displayed in schools, have decided that it is OK to attack a bishop, Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Church of Washington, for her humble and respectful plea to simply show the least of these among us — our fellow citizens — compassion.
I am not sure how we got here, but this level of corrosive destruction and disrespect for our constitutional order is not sustainable. It is unthinkable for a sitting president to demand a bishop apologize to him because he did not like her speech at a church service he was attending. Worse is the number of so-called leaders, from House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to Ambassador Mike Huckabee — avowed Christians — who attacked the bishop as “inappropriate” or worse.
https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-bishop-budde-was-right-to-speak-truth-to-trump/UJB3SWQG6NFCBLNILCECVF4QDE/
Complete zinger of an op-ed, and worth the read.
= new reply since forum marked as read
as long as you continue to justify your support for a moral degenerate who openly denies the very faith you claim to practice. No one who sides with Trump has credibility to criticize this Bishop without turning themselves into hypocrites.
Let's take stock of the theology being preached by Bishop Budde, which is consistent with the Christian gospel, and the critiques of the religious far right, which are not. Bishop Budde laid out a core principle, foundational to the practice of Christianity, which rests on grace. Trump's reaction to it, along with those of his apologists, just demonstrate their open denial of Christian faith and practice.
But, this isn't surprising. Huckabee was once an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and a pastor of a large church in Texarkana, Arkansas. They miss the point when it comes to what the Apostle Paul called "rightly handling the word of truth." They have removed the authority of Jesus Christ, who revealed the gospel, from being the filter through which all of the rest of the Bible is interpreted. There's a very good description of people like Huckabee, Johnson, and other Christians who have fallen victim to the false gospel of Trumpism, written by the Apostle Paul, recorded in his second epistle to Timothy:
You must understand this, that in the last days, distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhumane, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with deceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! 2 Timothy 3, 1-5, NRSV
Reading that, it's almost as if Paul was transported to the 21st century and given a vision of the United States, under Trump's leadership. This certainly characterizes the critics of the Christian gospel, preached by Bishop Budde. Paul was pretty good at sensing hypocrisy and false doctrine, and his words have proven to be prophetic over the centuries, including having the ability to address the cult beliefs produced by the blend of fundamentalist legalism, Pentecostal mysticism and right wing political extremism.
But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. I Timothy 6
, NRSV
No conservative, Evangelical pastor or church leader has ever had the courage to speak truth to power, in the way Bishop Budde did. The courage it took for her to do that is evidence that she was filled with the Holy Spirit of God. And those who have become her critics are identifying themselves as hypocrites and pseudo-Christian phonies.