Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde appealed directly to a glowering President Donald Trump on behalf of LGBT people and immigrants in an emotional finish to her sermon at Washington National Cathedral’s interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation, which marked the close of Inauguration events on January 21.
“Millions have put their trust in you,” Budde said. “As you said yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of the loving touch of God. In the name of our God, have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”
Budde mentioned gay, lesbian and transgender children, people who pick crops and clean office buildings. “They may not be citizens or have proper documents; the vast majority are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.
“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger. We all were once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being … speak truth to one another in love, walk humbly with God, for the Good of all people, of all people in this nation and the world,” she said.
“I didn’t think it was a good service, no,” Trump told reporters on his return to the White House later in the day. “They could do much better.”
Referencing Budde, Georgia Congressman Mike Collins said on X, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”
‘Unity is Not Partisan’
An interfaith service has been held at the cathedral on the day after the Inauguration since 1993, but this year’s ceremony was different, focusing on the need for national unity. It was planned in August, well ahead of the general election, and cathedral dean Randall Hollerith said when it was announced in October, “This will not be a service for a new administration.”
Prayers were offered by a racially and religiously diverse group of clerics and touched on many different human needs.
Unity was also the theme of Budde’s sermon, which was based on sections of the Sermon on the Mount.
“We have gathered this morning to pray for unity as a people and a nation, not for agreement — political or otherwise — but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division, a unity that serves the common good,” she said.
“Unity is not partisan; rather, unity is a way of being with one another. It encompasses and respects, teaches us to hold multiple experiences as valid; enables us to genuinely care for one another, even when we disagree.”
Jesus, Budde added, “exhorts us to love not only our neighbors, but to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to be merciful as God is merciful; to forgive others who forgive us.”
She decried “the culture of contempt in this country which threatens to destroy us,” and identified three foundations for national unity: a respect for the dignity of all, honesty, and humility.
“In public discourse, honoring each other’s dignity means refusing to mock or discount or demonize those with whom we differ,” she said, seeming to reference the new president’s penchant for referring to his opponents with demeaning nicknames. “We all have our blind spots. We are most dangerous to ourselves and others when without a doubt we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong.”
Budde, who has served as bishop in the nation’s capital since 2011, clashed with Trump several times during his first term in office. She joined with Hollerith and the cathedral’s canon theologian, Kelly Brown Douglas, in rebuking Trump for his vulgar rhetoric about Haiti and Baltimore and his attacks on Black Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings in July 2019.
“As leaders of faith who believe in the sacredness of every single human being, the time for silence is over. We must boldly stand witness against the bigotry, hatred, intolerance, and xenophobia that is hurled at us, especially when it comes from the highest offices of this nation,” the cathedral officials wrote in a public statement, “Have We No Decency?”
The next summer, she condemned Trump for walking to St. John’s Episcopal Church to pose with a Bible after federal troops cleared Lafayette Square of Black Lives Matter protesters.
“Let me be clear,” she told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, and everything that our churches stand for.”
Nonpartisan Prayer
St. John’s, which has long been known as “the Church of the Presidents,” also featured in the Inauguration ceremonies. The neoclassical building, designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the architect of the U.S. Capitol, is adjacent to the White House, and has designated a pew for the head of state since it opened in 1816, during the administration of Episcopalian James Madison.
St. John’s rector, the Rev. Robert Fisher, led a brief Morning Prayer service on the morning of Inauguration Day that was attended by President Trump and his chosen guests. Episcopalian Franklin D. Roosevelt began the tradition in 1933 when he asked the Rev. Robert Johnston to lead a service before his first inauguration.
Some presidents since then have opted for a service of their own faith tradition since then, including former President Biden, who attended Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in 2021, but also attended the National Cathedral’s Service.
Fourteen of the prayer services have been held at St. John’s, including the one held before President Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
That service included a controversial sermon by Dallas Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, in which he compared President Trump to Nehemiah, called by God to “build a wall,” referencing his campaign promise to put up a permanent barrier across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Fisher ruled out a sermon entirely for this year’s service, which he assured parishioners would be nonpartisan. He told Sojourners that “some parishioners who attended the service held eight years ago at St. John’s on the day of Trump’s first inauguration … expressed to me what a bad experience it was.”
“Some felt that the church was used. And those individuals, seeing the current approach we are taking, have expressed gratitude for the changes being made to the nature of the service, and are glad we have agreed to host this time because we will do it in a different way.”
The revised approach, Fisher added, was intended to be “less oriented to the personality of the individual about to become president, and more oriented to the higher responsibilities of the office. That is one major way that it is more in line with the origins of this tradition as opposed to the more recent services.”
The Rev. Meredyth Albright is a longtime journalist and rector of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.