Not since the last time the Duchess of Cambridge wore a coat to a carol concert has a church service been under such scrutiny. The National Prayer Service – I assume we’re all big fans? – saw Team Trump in church on Tuesday for a second day in a row… which must be an annual record.
There, Bishop Mariann Budde delivered a sermon asking for compassion on LGBT+ people and immigrants, after which Trump ranted that it was “nasty” and the bishop was a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater”. (Apropos of nothing, Nigella Lawson posted ‘Bitter Orange Tart’ as her recipe of the day this morning.)
It’s worth emphasising that Bishop Budde is the Bishop of Washington, a position she has held since 2011. Most coverage makes it sound like she’s some random unqualified bishop who’s just toddled in off a chessboard to cause a ruckus. Headlines described the bishop as “ambushing” or “lecturing” Trump to “have mercy”– this last always in inverted commas, much in the way of “Nazi salute”.
By ambushing or lecturing, do we perhaps mean “delivering a sermon as is usual in every church service and therefore doing her actual job”? There was outrage that the bishop spoke to Trump at a prayer service when, presumably, they should be focusing on the bland “thoughts and prayers” beloved of social media commentary after a mass shooting, rather than doing any reflecting themselves.
For someone who extols the support of God as often as Trump, he seems wholly unacquainted with the church. This might explain why he didn’t put his hand on either Bible he had at his swearing-in ceremony. Railing, as he has, about a sermon that preaches compassion is like turning up to a carol service and then complaining about all the songs about snow and babies.
Bishop Budde is an Episcopalian, equivalent to an Anglican in the UK. In evangelical Christianity, however, women are not allowed to preach, so the mere existence of the Bishop of Washington is an insult. Trump’s responses suggest the bishop came in storming. Rather, she delivered her sermon so gently – meek and mild, you might even say – that she came across like an unusually brave dormouse. The female canon who joined my family’s True Blue Hampshire village congregation in 1995 after the C of E first allowed female priests would have been more forthcoming.
Yet for a man with as fragile an ego as Trump, even a dormouse speaking these words must be terrifying. It has certainly rattled a right wing that is unused to any kind of pushback, let alone publicly – and shared widely on television and social media. In Aesop’s fable, The Lion and the Mouse, a lion roars at a mouse for waking it and is later saved by the same mouse. In Trump’s case, you suspect he would either imprison or deport it. Rep Mike Collins called for the bishop’s deportation on X – her being born in New Jersey is, of course, an irrelevance. Who needs facts when Trump is in charge?
I appreciate that Christianity has been overwhelmed by people loudly proclaiming they know best – often in extremely wealthy megachurches or hastily-assumed baptisms in an apparent attempt to fend off sexual assault investigations – but when it comes down to it, basic Christian values are laid out in the New Testament. Love thy neighbour. Cast not the first stone. A saviour is born in the humblest of dwellings.
Even Old Testament Leviticus, a book beloved of the pick ‘n’ choose religious right for its words on homosexuality (they remain strangely silent on its equally strong prohibition of mixing fabrics, or having tattoos) proclaims of immigrants: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” White evangelicals may bristle – yet even the loftiest among them came in as strangers on the Mayflower. As we’re told in another fable, the Emperor’s New Clothes, it is on us to point out when we are being told nonsense.
There is supposed to be a total separation of Church and state in the US, yet for decades, this has been completely untrue. Evangelical Christianity took a stranglehold over the corporation classes in the 70s through the development of the “prosperity gospel” beloved by megachurches – namely, that God wants to bless you with wealth. This is decidedly against Christ’s decree, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Note that “again” – even then, people didn’t want to hear it.
Trump seems to be a man who uses God like some people use their children: useful to show off in public, but ignored in private. As we have seen throughout his political rise and, indeed, through the shaming rise of populism here in the UK, rhetoric is king. If it sounds good and looks impactful, what do the facts matter?
Yet, Christian or otherwise, it is on all of us to point out when the Emperor is naked – with Bishop Budde’s quiet, brave sermon leading the way. The strongest words are not always those shouted out with the most force.
