After a bishop at the National Cathedral prayer service for the inauguration on Tuesday implored Donald Trump to “have mercy upon” immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, many have spoken out about the remarks – including Trump himself.
In a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday, Trump called the Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” adding that “she brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and criticized her tone as “nasty”.
Later on in the statement, Trump described the service as “boring” and “uninspiring” and said that Budde and her church “owe the public an apology!”
Budde, 65, who is the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, used her inaugural prayer service sermon at the Washington National Cathedral to appeal to Trump directly.
She urged him to show mercy to scared individuals, including “gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families” some, who she said “fear for their lives”.
Budde emphasized the contributions of immigrants, and stated that “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes, and are good neighbors, they are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara and temples”, and added: “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.”
Budde also urged Trump to show mercy for families fearing deportation and to help those fleeing war and persecution.
Right after the service, Trump told reporters that the sermon “wasn’t too exciting” and that “they can do much better”.
In an interview with CNN after her sermon, Budde said that her remarks were intended to remind Trump and listeners of the humanity of those negatively portrayed in his political campaign.
Budde, who has led the diocese since 2011, said she wanted to “counter as gently as I could with a reminder of their humanity and their place in our wider community”.
“I was speaking to the president, because I felt that he has this moment now where he feels charged and empowered to do what he feels called to do,” she said.
“I wanted to say there is room for mercy, there’s room for a broader compassion. We don’t need to portray with a broad cloth in the harshest of terms some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who are in fact, our neighbors, our friends, our children, our friends, children, and so forth.”
Some of Trump’s allies joined the president in criticizing Budde’s remarks.
The Georgia representative Mike Collins suggested on social media that Budde “should be added to the deportation list”, while the Fox News host Sean Hannity called her a “so-called Bishop” who turned the service into a “woke tirade” and described her prayer “disgraceful” and filled with “fearmongering and division”.
Robert Jeffress, a Trump supporter and pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist church, who was in attendance for the sermon, criticized Budde for “insulting rather than encouraging our great president” and said that there “was palpable disgust in the audience with her words”.
In other circles, Budde was described as courageous and brave and her sermon was praised.
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Bernice King, daughter of the civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr and the CEO of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, said that the sermon was “an appeal to his humanity and an appeal on behalf of humanity”.
Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of Pope Francis, wrote on social media that Budde spoke with “apostolic courage” to Trump and JD Vance.
“She named the truth their policies deny,” Ivereigh said. “Their expressions of fury and discomfort suggest she nailed it.”
Rev Caitlin Frazier, the assistant rector at St Mark’s Episcopal church on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, said in a statement that she was “proud to hear Bishop Budde speak the truths that Jesus calls us to speak”.
“We are commanded to love our neighbor: our trans neighbor, our immigrant neighbor, our neighbors in public office,” Frazier said. “Her plea for mercy met this moment in American history. I pray that it will be received, although I fear it was not.”
Budde previously clashed with Trump during his first term. In 2020, she published an opinion piece in the New York Times expressing her outrage over Trump’s appearance in front of St John’s Episcopal church in Washington DC, where he held up a Bible for a photo after federal officers used teargas to clear a crowd of peaceful protesters demonstrating against the death of George Floyd.
In the piece, Budde wrote that Trump had “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”.
The website for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington describes Budde as “an advocate and organizer in support of justice concerns, including racial equity, gun violence prevention, immigration reform, the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons, and the care of creation”.
Before serving in Washington, she served 18 years as rector of St John’s Episcopal church in Minneapolis. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Rochester, graduating magna cum laude, and earned both a master’s in divinity and a doctor of ministry from Virginia Theological Seminary.
