409. The Woman Who Spoke Truth To Trump: Bishop Budde Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, during President Trump's inauguration service, delivered a powerful sermon on unity and directly appealed to the President for mercy on behalf of vulnerable communities. Today, she joins us to discuss her courageous stand and explore how we can embody both strength and compassion in our own lives. -How to carry your despair and cynicism instead of handing it to others -Exposing the lies of partisanship and how to fight for dignity for all -The “sin of empathy”? The chilling rise of this idea in Christian Nationalist circles -Why not knowing what to do in this political moment is part of the preparation Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde serves as spiritual leader for the Episcopal congregations and schools in the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties that comprise the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. The first woman elected to this position, she also serves as the chair of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation which oversees the ministries of the Washington National Cathedral and Cathedral schools. She is an advocate and organizer in support of justice, including racial equity, gun violence prevention, immigration reform, the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons, and the care of creation. She is the author of three books; the most recent, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith, was published in 2023. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What was Bishop Budde's message during Trump's inauguration?
Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We're scared now.
There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops,
and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors.
They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, wadara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us
that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we will all want strangers in this land.
We have a lot to learn from you, Reverend Buddy, and we are so thankful that you are here.
Thank you. It's good to be here. Really honored to meet you, the three of you. Thank you.
We just got to gather ourselves for a second.
And that's the podcast. Thank you so much. Go get her book. Jeez Louise. I think, I mean, you spoke that day to so many of us who feel terrified and angry and exhausted and who feel feel abandoned, frankly, by leadership, wondering where it is. And I think most people right now, we're asking ourselves, we're asking each other, like, what are we going to do? What are we actually going to do?
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Chapter 2: How can we navigate our despair and cynicism?
Well, the image I have is like just standing at the edge of a diving board, right? And at some point, you're either going to have to go back down the ladder or you're going to have to jump. And I find it terrifying every time. So it's not like, you know, it gets easier with time. I think it actually, in some ways, it doesn't change or maybe even gets harder. I don't know. So there's that.
There is that sense of sometimes life pushes you, right? Like you really, I mean, at least in my experience, I don't really feel like I have a choice. It's just what presents itself. And there's even, and I write about this a little bit in the book, there's even a sense of like, you're not really thinking anymore. You're moving more by muscle memory or instinct or just the reality of the moment.
So it could be any number of those things. Though I do believe, and I think your lives have been a testimony to this as well, there are long seasons of preparation when you don't think anything especially dramatic is happening at all. And yet looking back in retrospect, it's like, oh, actually I was being prepared for this. This wasn't just a happenstance thing.
And part of the preparation is failing a lot at trying brave things and getting back up and realizing it didn't kill you to... to try something big and fail. And in some ways you'd rather fail at trying the thing than living with yourself. And you also know that, I know that feeling too. It's like when you let the moment pass and you didn't do anything, it just feels, that feels really like that.
That's not a place I want to stay in. So there are all kinds of things that lead up to and give us opportunities to practice this. That's why I like the learning part, because this is a lifelong learning. And if we focus too much on those moments, as important as they are, we miss the arc of all the things that lead up to it. And then frankly, the things that come after. Mm-hmm.
Can we talk about the preparation period? Because when you're saying the preparation period, I'm thinking of the last few months of my life, which has basically been day after day of some of the most brave, beautiful, amazing activists and artists just sitting with me in my house. Yeah. Just for the first time that I've ever seen them this way, blank, bawling.
confused, just sitting and crying together, which everyone separately feels. I can feel a panic in each person that's, why do I not know what to do? I always know what to do. Why do I not know what to do? But is it possible that sadness and sitting in brokenheartedness is part of the preparation? Because it's like the more sensitive people are, the more brokenhearted they are in the face of this.
And then they think that's weakness. But to me, it feels like the people that have the greatest sadness right now are the ones we need eventually the most. It's like the sadness inside is the difference. It's the gap between what we know could be and what we're seeing is. And the deeper your sadness is, it's because you have that vision. And so- sometimes I feel like worthless in my sadness.
And then usually there comes a moment where I find myself speaking or doing, and I can always look back and think, oh my God, that was the wilderness for me. That sadness was the 40 days in the desert. Or if people are sad right now, they could just be preparing.
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Chapter 3: What does it mean to be brave in our current political climate?
Well, maybe, but it also could be surrender in that moment to live through that and wait for the other forces of the universe represented by the resurrection that will not allow evil to have the final word. I mean, that's a faith statement. I say that as a believing Christian, but I think that human mythology, that's what keeps our species going, which is like the worst thing that happens
will not have the final say. And so as, as people, I mean, that's what faith is. I mean, faith isn't like things are going to turn out okay. Faith is the worst thing that can happen. And if you still have breath inside you, you're going to get up and be part of the solution. And, but while the destruction is happening, which frankly, we're still living in it, right?
We are living in a time of destruction that is being celebrated, right? That is being celebrated and that is being controlled by significant forces of lying forces that will benefit or think they will benefit from a complete reorganization of our society. And so hats off to all of them, right? That's what they believe.
But we're watching the fallout and the closer, as you said, Glenn, and the closest we are to that, the grief of that, and then also all the things that we thought would stop it didn't, right? And there's some Obviously, lots of thoughts of what could we have done differently? Why did, you know, what happened? If we're honest, like what mistakes did we make?
I mean, all those things that you just have to go through. And in the end, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what will happen next, but I'm determined. I do believe. And that's I think one of the reasons why the sermon resonated the way it did is because it was talking about something that wasn't a foreign concept. Right.
I mean, frankly, it's not that different a sermon that you would have heard in like a lot of churches. But just to say, look, you know what? Well, there are some things that we know are true. And just saying them, it's like, you know what? Yeah. These are foundational principles. These are not some radical leftist anti-Trump woke idea. This is like pretty mainstream compassion, right?
The pillars of human decency. So that gives me some sense of like, all right, well, at least there's something to be said for being that kind of a pillar, right? Like we're not going to let some of these things go. And we have to be aware that there's a whole new future out there that we cannot see. And I don't know how it's going to go.
but I'm going to be a person till my last breath, particularly now, since I've got so many people coming up behind me, I'm not, I'm not going to ask people to carry my despair or my cynicism for me, right? Like I'm going to carry whatever I have to carry.
I'll carry for myself, but I'm not going to ask those coming up behind me to carry it for me because I want them to have as much power and wind in their sails as they can. Cause frankly, they've got the heavier lift.
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Chapter 4: How can we prepare for action amidst uncertainty?
So good. I am just beginning to enter into that whole worldview. I was not aware of it. And you're right. I mean, I think Elon Musk was just recently quoted as saying something about it was like the suicide of Western civilization. And The idea that our compassion or our ability to, I think it's basically, I think they're confusing empathy with compassion, which is an easy thing to do.
I do it all the time. Bless their hearts. Yeah. Our feelings, our feelings, our feelings of wanting to be kind and good and caring might cloud our judgment. And what we need now is judgment. And what we need now is judgment to fill in the blank because we really need to close the borders because otherwise we're going to lose our identity as a country.
Otherwise we are going to allow this, you know, fill in the blank. We're going to, you know, just all these horrible things are going to happen if we don't use our judgment, which means right now we have to be callous as hell because what we have to do is destroy a lot of things so we can rebuild them. I mean, that is the strategy. It's just a, It's just a crash and burn strategy.
Chapter 5: Can sadness be part of our preparation for action?
We're going to mess as many things up as possible so that we can rebuild it to something else. And empathy will get in our way because we'll start seeing the other people that we are treating right now as human beings. And more than that, we could imagine ourselves in their shoes.
Because I think that is the ultimate definition of empathy is like, I not only have compassion for you, but I actually can see myself in you. And so seeing the world through your eyes would be a way for me to understand that I could be there too. And so it's a kind of identification that is human to human. And and it has I think it has real survival overtones to it. I mean, I think we evolution.
I mean, I think it was a key part of human evolution, not only to have the survival of the fittest, but actually, no, we have to work together. We have to come together in kinship and family and we have to have affection for each other and care for each other and look out for each other.
I mean, those are those are qualities that don't necessarily make you the king of the jungle, but it might let your community survive. So I am actually dumbfounded by, you know, when someone, the whole sin of empathy. So I don't know about you, but I have to take some of these ideas in pretty small doses. Otherwise I can really fall into some despair.
But I try to stay as engaged as I can so that I can understand enough to understand how it might speak to someone else. Like, why is that? Why does that have appeal?
It makes sense. They're right. They just have their own religion. I mean, everybody has a religion. capitalism based on white supremacy and patriarchy, you are correct that the sin of your religion, what would throw it all off is empathy.
Empathy would be the one thing you need people not to have because that would slow down the building of your religion because you would start asking questions and you would start caring for each other and you would not have, oh, the end justifies all the means. And that's why when we say over and over again, staying human is so important. It's not just a line in a poem. It's no, no, no.
Everything that's human to us is what is being squashed. I mean, that's, of course, they're afraid of empathetic people. Empathetic people are the thing that will get in their way. Of course, they're afraid of queerness. Queerness is a sign of aliveness. It's proof of freedom. And freedom is contagious. So of course, you would have to squash queerness. Queerness in itself is nonconformity.
And in order for this world order of capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, for these guys to build, they have to create submission based on a slow deadening, a slow numbing of everything that makes us human. So anything that is too human, you will see squashed with legislation, squashed with fear, squashed with whatever's being squashed, you know, is your symbol to hold onto for dear life.
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Chapter 6: Why is empathy important in times of division?
Chapter 7: How can we carry our burdens without passing them to others?
And who knows? I mean, there have been times in our history where there just wasn't any clear movement toward whatever justice or freedom people were longing for, but there were these the struggle was kept alive, right? Torch by torch, person by person.
And that you can look back and you can see the path and you could see how people would go to their grave, never knowing if what they fought for would ever come to fruition, right? I mean, that's just part of our human story. And we don't know where we are ever in the arc of anything that we're working toward, right?
I've lived long enough to see some of the things that I never thought would happen, happen. And I praise God for that. But I also may be living at a time now where I'm just keeping a few things going and I'm going to hand them on to the next generation and they're going to take it up. And that is just part of the human story too.
So to your point, we don't know, like it may feel like we failed, but whatever we did might have had an impact on someone who then went on, who then goes on to do the thing that we had hoped to see realized. But We weren't the ones.
I think that that's a really important thing that you just said, which is causing so many awesome, amazing artists and activists to come to our house. It's the non-acceptance of failure that feels like it's the heaviest weight. It's honestly, you know, because it does feel like this gigantic failure. But if you think about it from the bigger, like zoom out, Let's look at it from a longer arc.
And this might be a blip. This might, in fact, feel and be a failure. Yeah. But we have to say, OK, this is what's happening. Before we can actually get up, dust ourselves off and move forward and make that next brave leap into the unknown. But I think that there's a lot of us that are feeling a little bit like the lack of acceptance of the perception of failure.
Well, we didn't even, I mean, to hear Reverend Buddy say that she watched the entire inauguration, what went into my mind was the women who watched the crucifixion. And since they witnessed it, since they stayed. Since they said, I will be here through the time of despair, they were the ones who got to be with Jesus at the resurrection.
The witnessing of the reality of the pain is part, we always say first the pain, then the waiting, then the rising. Right. We're in a rhythm right now. And when you said the struggle, the struggle, it's the first time I've considered the connection between, you know, what people keep saying to me now is I'm really struggling.
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of speaking truth to power?
Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren LaGrasso, Alison Schott, and Bill Schultz.