Bishop: ‘Was anyone going to say anything?’
Episcopal leader says she felt called upon to preach to the president.
President Donald Trump listens during Tuesday’s service at the National Cathedral. He later criticized Rev. Mariann Budde for asking him to be merciful to others. DOUG MILLS/NYT
“To plead for mercy is actually a very humbling thing,” Budde said later. “I wasn’t demanding anything. ... I was pleading. ... Like, ‘Can you see the humanity of these people?” EVAN VUCCI/AP
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Standing in the storied Canterbury Pulpit above the president on Tuesday, Bishop Mariann E.Budde was a little afraid.
The leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, she had planned for months to preach on three elements of unity — dignity, honesty and humility. But just 24 hours earlier, she had watched President Donald Trump proclaim his agenda from the inauguration stage, as conservative Christians anointed him with prayer.
Trump no longer was just campaigning — he was governing, she thought. His nascent presidency and flurry of executive orders had encountered little resistance so far. She felt called to add a fourth element to her sermon: a plea for mercy, on behalf of everyone who is scared by the ways Trump has threatened to wield his power.
“I had a feeling that there were people watching what was happening and wondering, Was anyone going to say anything?” Budde said quietly during an interview Tuesday night.
“Was anyone going to say anything about the turn the country’s taking?”
So she took a breath, then spoke.
Trump, seated 7 feet below and about 40 feet to her right, made eye contact. One representation of American Christianity began speaking to another, and the most powerful man in the world was arrested by the words of a silver-haired, female bishop in the pulpit. Until he turned away.
For everyone watching, the vastness of Washington National Cathedral compressed, in one stunning moment, into a sudden intimacy. And with it, all the existential fights not simply of politics but of morality itself. In a flash, the war over spiritual authority in America burst into a rare public showdown.
For nearly a decade, American Christianity has been torn apart in every possible way. Christians have fought over whether women should be allowed to preach. Over the place of gay people. The definition of marriage. The separation of church and state. Black Lives Matter. And at the heart of much of it has been Trump’s rise as the de facto head of the modern American church, and the rise of rightwing Christian power declaring itself the one true voice of God.
Many of these fights have been siloed, rarely in dialogue. Christians of opposing perspectives almost never worship in the same sanctuary. They do not listen to one another’s sermons, or hear the other’s prayers. Mainline Protestants have wondered if their voice can have any measure of authority.
At a moment when conservative Christians are poised to gain even more power through Trump’s second term, Budde tried something different at the interfaith service.
Trump was unmoved. When the sermon ended, he exchanged a look with Vice President JD Vance, a conservative Catholic, who shook his head in apparent disapproval.
On Wednesday morning, Trump retorted on his social media platform Truth Social, demanding an apology from the “so-called Bishop” and “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.”
“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,” Trump declared Wednesday. “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
Budde, 65 and the first woman elected to her role, and Trump had previously clashed in 2020 when he held a Bible aloft at St. John’s Church after officers used tear gas against protesters calling for racial justice in nearby Lafayette Square. Budde wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times that she was “outraged” and “horrified” that he used sacred symbols to espouse “positions antithetical to the Bible.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., said Budde should be “added to the deportation list.”
Others said her gender itself undercut any claim to spiritual authority.
“Female bishop is all you needed to know how it was going to turn out,” Kristan Hawkins, a Catholic anti-abortion activist, wrote on the social platform X.
But progressive Christians felt their convictions finally had a voice in the melee. Former President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic who represented a recovery of liberal Christianity after the first Trump presidency, has left Washington, taking an era with him. Catholic power in America has shifted greatly to the right since Pope Francis, now 88, was welcomed to Washington during the Obama era.
More than 14,000 people signed an online petition thanking Budde within four hours. Episcopalians across Washington proudly posted online in gratitude that Budde was their spiritual leader, representing their Christianity.
For her part, Budde felt her sermon was “a perspective that wasn’t getting a lot of airtime right now, and it was a perspective of Christianity that has been kind of muted in the public arena,” she said.
Budde knew she did not have a lot of authority in the room, she said, “because I am not a part of the spiritual circles that have surrounded the president and his party.”
And Budde does not believe she was speaking directly for God: “I’m saying, this is the best that I can do to understand and interpret what I believe our teachings and our scriptures and what the Holy Spirit might be wanting us to hear,” she said.
Previous inaugural prayer services were hosted by the Cathedral but planned with the Presidential Inaugural Committee, meaning the president-elect often picked the participants. But that changed last year, when the Cathedral itself took over the planning well before Election Day, Budde said. It was a move toward religious independence, so the service itself would be free of partisan interference, and so it would not be seen as a coronation or sacred anointing.
“To plead for mercy is actually a very humbling thing to do,” Budde said. “I wasn’t demanding anything of him. I was pleading with him, like, ‘Can you see the humanity of these people? Can you acknowledge that there are people in this country who are scared?’ … If not him, if not the president, could others?”
The leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, she had planned for months to preach on three elements of unity — dignity, honesty and humility. But just 24 hours earlier, she had watched President Donald Trump proclaim his agenda from the inauguration stage, as conservative Christians anointed him with prayer.
Trump no longer was just campaigning — he was governing, she thought. His nascent presidency and flurry of executive orders had encountered little resistance so far. She felt called to add a fourth element to her sermon: a plea for mercy, on behalf of everyone who is scared by the ways Trump has threatened to wield his power.
“I had a feeling that there were people watching what was happening and wondering, Was anyone going to say anything?” Budde said quietly during an interview Tuesday night.
“Was anyone going to say anything about the turn the country’s taking?”
So she took a breath, then spoke.
Trump, seated 7 feet below and about 40 feet to her right, made eye contact. One representation of American Christianity began speaking to another, and the most powerful man in the world was arrested by the words of a silver-haired, female bishop in the pulpit. Until he turned away.
For everyone watching, the vastness of Washington National Cathedral compressed, in one stunning moment, into a sudden intimacy. And with it, all the existential fights not simply of politics but of morality itself. In a flash, the war over spiritual authority in America burst into a rare public showdown.
For nearly a decade, American Christianity has been torn apart in every possible way. Christians have fought over whether women should be allowed to preach. Over the place of gay people. The definition of marriage. The separation of church and state. Black Lives Matter. And at the heart of much of it has been Trump’s rise as the de facto head of the modern American church, and the rise of rightwing Christian power declaring itself the one true voice of God.
Many of these fights have been siloed, rarely in dialogue. Christians of opposing perspectives almost never worship in the same sanctuary. They do not listen to one another’s sermons, or hear the other’s prayers. Mainline Protestants have wondered if their voice can have any measure of authority.
At a moment when conservative Christians are poised to gain even more power through Trump’s second term, Budde tried something different at the interfaith service.
Trump was unmoved. When the sermon ended, he exchanged a look with Vice President JD Vance, a conservative Catholic, who shook his head in apparent disapproval.
On Wednesday morning, Trump retorted on his social media platform Truth Social, demanding an apology from the “so-called Bishop” and “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.”
“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,” Trump declared Wednesday. “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
Budde, 65 and the first woman elected to her role, and Trump had previously clashed in 2020 when he held a Bible aloft at St. John’s Church after officers used tear gas against protesters calling for racial justice in nearby Lafayette Square. Budde wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times that she was “outraged” and “horrified” that he used sacred symbols to espouse “positions antithetical to the Bible.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., said Budde should be “added to the deportation list.”
Others said her gender itself undercut any claim to spiritual authority.
“Female bishop is all you needed to know how it was going to turn out,” Kristan Hawkins, a Catholic anti-abortion activist, wrote on the social platform X.
But progressive Christians felt their convictions finally had a voice in the melee. Former President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic who represented a recovery of liberal Christianity after the first Trump presidency, has left Washington, taking an era with him. Catholic power in America has shifted greatly to the right since Pope Francis, now 88, was welcomed to Washington during the Obama era.
More than 14,000 people signed an online petition thanking Budde within four hours. Episcopalians across Washington proudly posted online in gratitude that Budde was their spiritual leader, representing their Christianity.
For her part, Budde felt her sermon was “a perspective that wasn’t getting a lot of airtime right now, and it was a perspective of Christianity that has been kind of muted in the public arena,” she said.
Budde knew she did not have a lot of authority in the room, she said, “because I am not a part of the spiritual circles that have surrounded the president and his party.”
And Budde does not believe she was speaking directly for God: “I’m saying, this is the best that I can do to understand and interpret what I believe our teachings and our scriptures and what the Holy Spirit might be wanting us to hear,” she said.
Previous inaugural prayer services were hosted by the Cathedral but planned with the Presidential Inaugural Committee, meaning the president-elect often picked the participants. But that changed last year, when the Cathedral itself took over the planning well before Election Day, Budde said. It was a move toward religious independence, so the service itself would be free of partisan interference, and so it would not be seen as a coronation or sacred anointing.
“To plead for mercy is actually a very humbling thing to do,” Budde said. “I wasn’t demanding anything of him. I was pleading with him, like, ‘Can you see the humanity of these people? Can you acknowledge that there are people in this country who are scared?’ … If not him, if not the president, could others?”