The New Yorker:

“If you know what people are thinking about when they’re coming into church on Sunday morning, it’s very important to acknowledge that,” Budde says.

By Eliza Griswold

The Right Reverend Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., has a history of practicing what’s called “the prophetic tradition”: naming the world’s ills and calling out those who perpetrate them. In 2020, after President Donald Trump ordered the dispersal of Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Square and then posed there for photographs, standing before St. John’s Church and holding a Bible, she expressed outrage. “Mr. Trump used sacred symbols to cloak himself in the mantle of spiritual authority, while espousing positions antithetical to the Bible that he held in his hands,” Budde wrote in an op-ed. When Trump ran for reëlection in 2020, she said that she had “given up speaking to President Trump.”

Yet earlier this week, from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, Budde addressed President Trump directly and personally. Her nearly fifteen-minute sermon focussed on what she described as three necessary elements for national unity: dignity, honesty, and humility.

Then, toward the end of her sermon, she added a fourth, calling on Trump to “have mercy” on those in America, particularly immigrants and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, who are currently afraid. The final two minutes of her sermon went viral, drawing ire from Trump’s supporters, who have commented that she should be placed on “the deportation list,” and that Budde is “exhibit A for why women should not be pastors, priests, or bishops.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Budde was a “so-called Bishop.” “She is not very good at her job!” he added. “She and her church owe the public an apology!”

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