Member-only story
The day Donald Trump visited the National Cathedral
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde had things to say
The day after a presidential inauguration, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. hosts a “Service of Prayer for the Nation.” On January 21st, Donald Trump showed up.
It was advertised as a time to “offer prayers of thanksgiving for our democracy and to seek God’s guidance in the years ahead.”
The presiding cleric would be Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.
Budde has been the Episcopal church’s Bishop of Washington D.C. since 2011.
She is not well-known in American Christianity. As she’d put it, “when I speak or act publicly, few people outside of church circles notice or care.”
Or that was so until she began to critique Donald Trump. In 2020, amid the George Floyd riots, he made an appearance in front of Washington’s St. John’s Church, which had been damaged by fire and graffiti. He held a Bible and called for law and order.
Budde went out on the media circuit to denounce him.
St. John’s Church was in her diocese. She criticized Trump for being indifferent to the rioters’ concerns. She accused him of having ordered peaceful protesters to be dispersed by police to make the appearance.
That was a media narrative of the time, later dismantled in a report by the Interior Department. She never retracted her remarks.
But she’d become known as a Christian cleric who’d “take on Trump.”
Months after the Lafayette Park incident, she appeared at the Democrat National Convention. She offered the benediction.
