Published January 24, 2025 

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is a name I’m guessing most of you have heard by now. The backlash to her comments this week brought me here to ask, “What has happened to so-called Christians? What has happened to the Jesus people? To us as a country?”

Here is what the worst person to ever graduate from Captain Shreve High School had to say about her.

Calling upon the powerful to show mercy is radical ideology now? I ask again, what has happened to this country?

Shameful, indeed, but the shame is all on Speaker Johnson and his party.

If I thought I needed to actually explain what’s wrong about what he and other “Christians” are saying about her, I wouldn’t be able to find the words. Luckily, there are Bible passages that cover that subject matter.

Bishop Budde told Time she’s received death threats since her sermon asking Trump to show mercy to LGBTQ children & undocumented migrants (time.com/7209222/bish…). That’s sadly not surprising given animosity against her by Trumpian pastors & pundits (publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/brave-serm…)

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— Brian Kaylor (@briankaylor.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 1:26 PM

If her name sounds familiar …

“In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests in Washington, DC, Budde criticized the use of police and National Guard troops to forcibly clear protestors from Lafayette Square”

Wikipedia

— Bob Booten (@bobooten.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 6:49 PM

“As bishop, Budde oversaw the removal of the Washington National Cathedral’s stained-glass panes honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”

Wikipedia

— Bob Booten (@bobooten.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 6:47 PM

And most memorably:

Republican and Republican-adjacent people I know who’ve practiced Catholicism/Christianity a la carte forever seem to think they can similarly justify voting Republican, telling me this week that people vote GOP for all kinds of reasons, not necessarily hate. But I say that anyone voting Republican since 2015 has no excuse for not knowing what they’ve enabled and are complicit in.

If you hang your vote on one or two issues that are important to you, you’re not electing a percentage of a person. You’re electing the whole person and all of their agenda. You’ve effectively co-signed everything they believe in and will fight for. If you decided your 401(k) or your religious beliefs are more important to you than protecting me and other vulnerable people from harm, own it. Own your shit.

Trump: “Transgender operations, which have become the rage, will occur very rarely.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 23, 2025 at 8:21 AM

Editing to add something I read after publishing this:

“Being a good person isn’t about being harmless when times are good. It’s about being ethical when times are not.”

I think about Jesus overturning tables and conclude that he wouldn’t be popular with many of today’s “Christian” leaders in America. When asking a powerful leader to be merciful prompts anger and is called “radical ideology,” something has gone horribly wrong.

We are in trouble.

Featured image by Olga Gold via Shutterstock.

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