Four reflections on Bishop Budde’s message to Donald Trump

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Four reflections on Bishop Budde’s message to Donald Trump

January 23, 2025 -

Holy Bible on constitution and American Flag By cherylvb/stock.adobe.com

Holy Bible on constitution and American Flag By cherylvb/stock.adobe.com

Holy Bible on constitution and American Flag By cherylvb/stock.adobe.com

The controversy over Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service is continuing today. In her message, she spoke directly to President Trump, asking him to “have mercy” on LGBTQ persons and immigrants. He responded after the service, saying that she “brought her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way.”

You can read more about her remarks and my initial response in my Daily Article, “Bishop asks Trump to ‘have mercy’ in immigrants and gay people: How should we see this issue through the lens of Scripture?” In this website article, I’d like to explore the larger context of this controversy, taking my cue from a response by New York Times reporter Elizabeth Dias that “the war over spiritual authority in America was ignited anew.”

Dias writes:

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.

Let’s reflect on this “war” for a moment in the light of God’s word. Consider four principles with me.

One: We should be grateful for our religious freedoms.

You and I can be thankful to live in a nation where religious freedom is protected to such a degree that a minister can confront the most powerful person in our nation. We don’t have to agree with all that Bishop Budde said to appreciate the fact that she was free to say what she did.

As Dias notes, the bishop spoke from the same pulpit where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached his final Sunday sermon days before his assassination. In his message, he called racial injustice “the Black man’s burden and the White man’s shame,” speaking prophetically to the systemic injustices of American society.

By contrast, when I have traveled to Cuba over the years, I have known not to speak to or about governmental leaders or policies, lest the churches face the wrath of the Communist government after I return home. Communist informants infiltrate congregations across the island nation, reporting back any time they think Christians are acting or speaking in ways that could be perceived as disloyal to the government.

Christians in Cuba, China, and many Muslim nations around the world could not imagine speaking to their nation’s leader as Bishop Budde spoke to President Trump last Tuesday. For much of Christian history, such freedom was scarce at best. Henry VIII’s advisor, Thomas Cranmer, was burned at the stake by Queen Mary I because he was a Protestant. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley suffered the same fate. My visits over the years to Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford, near the spot where they died, have been deeply moving for me.

By contrast, the First Amendment to the US Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (my emphasis). Often called our nation’s “first freedom,” this foundational principle reflects Jesus’ famous axiom: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

Two: We must have the courage to speak truth to power.

While we can be grateful to live in a nation that constitutionally defends religious freedom, speaking truth to those in power nonetheless requires courage.

More than fourteen thousand people signed an online petition within four hours thanking Bishop Budde for her remarks. However, one congressman responded that she should be “added to the deportation list.” After the service, she heard from some who “said they do wish me dead,” adding, “I’m saddened by the level of vitriol that it has evoked in others, and the intensity of it has been disheartening.”

Across God’s word, we find men and women who speak to the issues of their day at personal cost to themselves. In Jeremiah 37, King Zedekiah refuses to hear the prophet’s words and, in fact, imprisons him for saying them. Peter and John were beaten by the authorities for refusing to cease preaching the gospel (Acts 4:40). John was exiled to Patmos for the same reason (Revelation 1:9).

I am not saying that Bishop Budde’s sermon should be seen as a prophetic word from God (more on that below). But I am saying that speaking truth to power often requires personal courage. Addressing the issues of the day is both mandated and modeled in Scripture, whatever the cost to us.

  • Hosea condemned the “swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery” of his culture (Hosea 4:2) and warned his society against drunkenness and sexual immorality as well (v. 18).
  • Amos condemned enslavement (Amos 1:6–8), mistreatment of pregnant women (1:13) and the poor (2:6), sexual abuse (2:7), drunkenness (4:1), greed (5:11), and corruption (5:12).
  • Obadiah warned against violence (v. 10).
  • Micah condemned theft (Micah 2:1–2).

Are these sins increasingly prevalent in American culture today?

Will we address them by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15)?

Three: We need to address the issues of our day in ways that are fair to their complexity.

After her sermon, Bishop Budde said she 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.

However, as I noted in my Daily Article, she spoke only to one side of the issues she addressed  with regard to those “teachings.” Scripture does call us to care for immigrants and sojourners, but it also calls us to respect the rule of law and national borders. God’s word does call us to love all people, including LGBTQ persons, but it also teaches that God creates us “male and female” (Genesis 1:27), defines marriage as the covenant of one man and one woman, and forbids sexual relations outside that covenant.

Those who emphasize only the rule of law and biblical prohibitions regarding same-sex behavior do injustice to biblical truth by omitting the urgency of caring for immigrants and loving all people. Those who emphasize only the latter do injustice to the former.

God’s word is clear:

These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lᴏʀᴅ (Zechariah 8:16–17).

Paul testified, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Nor should we.

Four: What people need most is a transforming relationship with Christ.

People deserve to know what God’s word says on the vital issues of our day. The Lord lamented, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). We are each called to use our influence as we can to help people know and respond to God’s authoritative word, remembering that it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

At the same time, the cultural problems of our day demonstrate our need for the transformation only Christ can make in the human heart.

  • Poverty will be eliminated only when people with means are willing to share them sacrificially (Acts 2:45) and people without means are willing to work diligently to improve their conditions (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
  • Prejudice will be eliminated only when people love each person as unconditionally as God loves them (Romans 5:8).
  • Crime will be eliminated only when people “learn to do good” and to “seek justice,” whatever the personal cost to themselves (Isaiah 1:17).
  • Sexual immorality will be eliminated only when people seek the sanctification the Spirit can produce, choosing to “abstain from sexual immorality” and to “control his own body in holiness and honor” as a result (1 Thessalonians 4:3–4).

In the meantime, laws can restrict bad behavior and improve conditions, but they cannot change human hearts.

This is why I stated in my Daily Article that Bishop Budde would have utilized her opportunity better by focusing on Jesus, explaining how we can each have a personal relationship with him, and inviting President Trump and all present into such a relationship. And I would have made the same point if she had spoken in favor of his political agenda.

Changed people change the world. This is why the best way to help our fallen culture flourish is to do all we can to lead fallen people to become a “new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I don’t mean to be naïve. I understand that Christians can be just as ungodly as lost people and that lost people can often act with moral courage. But I also know that the systemic changes our culture needs most can be made only by the Holy Spirit acting on the human heart.

Our Father “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). When we submit our lives to that “power” (Ephesians 5:18), the Spirit produces his “fruit” (Galatians 5:22–23) in ways that manifest the character of Christ in us (Romans 8:22).

A handful of people living so fully in the Spirit that lost people “recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13) eventually “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

It can happen again.

But will it?

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