Dear Friends,
Today’s podcast is more political than usual, but then I serve no ecclesiastical body and felt led to address this controversy openly. Comment on it if you are so inclined, and pass it on if you feel prompted.
I go off script a bit, so you may enjoy listening rather than reading.
As always, thank you for joining us on The Church’s One Foundation! I’m grateful for you!
Pressing On,
D. Paul
Bishop Mariann Budde and The Gospel of Fear
With the majestic National Cathedral of Washington D.C. as the backdrop for the inaugural National Prayer Service, it was the perfect photo op for the soft-spoken, Bishop Miriann Edgar Budde to “speak truth to power;” in this case, unarguably, to the most powerful man on the planet, President Donald J. Trump. The Right Rev. Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, had criticized the president on numerous occasions, and she wasn’t about to disappoint her followers this time.
Her “personal” exhortation informed a captive President sitting on the front pew that his policies were creating “fear” in the lives of immigrants (never identified as illegal) and in the lives of LGBTQIA+ people, who “are scarred now,” asking the President to show “mercy” to those “…gay, lesbian and transgender children…who fear for their lives.” Her careless rhetoric prompted one attendee at the annual Prayer Service, the newly appointed Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent (the highest-ranking, openly gay cabinet member in the history of the United States), to say that Bishop Budde “proved herself to be a narrow-minded, out-of-touch elitist with little regard for facts." Continuing, he rhetorically asked, “Where was her prayer for peace? Where was the thank you bringing the [Gaza] hostages home and [vowing to] end the Ukraine war? She chose to hijack the day.”
Bravo to Secretary Bessent, who also scolded Bishop Budde when assuring her that “President Trump is devoid of prejudice when it comes to sexual preference.” Sadly, it was a rare opportunity wasted by the bishop. Rather than inspire the President, his new administration and the nation, praying for God’s protection, guidance, and blessing upon us all, the bishop’s homily became a whiny, politicized sermonette based on the gospel of fear, which is a gospel of lies.
We need go back only two years, to March 27, 2023, when one of the most horrific acts of violence involving a trans person took place: Audrey Hale (aka Aiden) walked into a private Christian school in Nashville, TN, which she had attended, and killed six people—three of them precious children—including the pastor’s nine-year-old daughter who was shot point blank. The bulk of Hale’s rantings and private diaries remain under lock and key by the authorities, fearful, one has to assume, of some phantom, transphobic retaliation. The true “fear factor” of the LGBTQIA+ community is often exaggerated (not always, but often), fueled by the agenda-driven rhetoric of progressive activists, including those in the Church.
It ought not be surprising, then, when returning after a quarter-of-a-century to Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, we find that the evidence for the supposedly homophobic murder of Matthew Shepard may have been a distortion of the truth, as exposed by author Stephen Jimenez, a gay, investigative journalist, who in 2013 wrote The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard,” in which he counters the accepted narrative of Shepherd’s heinous death. After 13 years of diligent research and interviews with over a hundred sources, including Shepard’s killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, journalist Jimenez came to a startling and controversial conclusion: the murder was not a hate crime. Shepard was pistol whipped, hung on a fence, and left dangling to die by his meth-crazed, gay (or bisexual) lover, Aaron McKinney, in a drug deal gone bad. According to Jimenez, neither Aaron McKinney nor his accomplice, Russell Henderson (who are now doing life for murder), were homophobes.
No doubt, any distortions or myths about Shepard’s death will survive, enshrined as he is in plays (The Laramie Project), poems, documentaries, and a major work of choral music—Considering Matthew Shepard—along with his ashes being interred at the National Cathedral in a service presided over by Bishop Budde honoring the hate-crime victim in 2018. But Stephen Jimenez’s persuasive, counter narrative will remain, despite efforts to suppress it. As expected, Jimenez’s life has been threatened multiple times (as, according to Budde, as hers) for his version of the truth that doesn’t fit the political bias of the radical, gender ideologues. And neither does that truth fit the bias of the Episcopal Church’s radical, social activist, Mariann Budde.
Consecrated in November of 2011 as the ninth and first female diocesan Bishop of Washington, in many ways, Bishop Budde has lived a protected if not sheltered life, having spent her childhood and teen years in an ultra-progressive Sweden, and now in her adult years behind the tired tropes and threadbare robes of a Pharisaic “social justice” that has replaced the primacy of Jesus Christ—the Church’s only one foundation. Either Bishop Budde is oblivious or indifferent to the majority of Americans opposed to illegal immigration and the trans and nonbinary pandemic that has infected our institutions—from the military to our prisons and our schools. Up until Wednesday, Feb 5, 2025, by virtue of Trump’s Executive Order 14168 (which keeps men out of women’s sports), hundreds of young women in high school and college were living in fear of having to shower with biological men who self-identified as women. Was the bishop concerned about their worst fears coming true, when after years of hard work their legitimate medals and potential scholarships were denied them? Is Bishop Budde concerned about the hundreds of female prisoners who live in fear of being abused and raped by a biological man who now identifies as a woman and has been transferred to a women’s prison? Is she concerned about the fearful young women who have been molested in high school because they are forced to use gender-neutral restrooms? Is she concerned about the tens-of-thousands who are dying annually due to fentanyl being brought over the border and sold on our streets, or the thousands of missing children who have entered the country illegally, many now victims of sex-trafficking? Forgive the bluntness but does the bishop empathize with the horrific fear that slain Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, must have felt as she “fought for her life” for 18 minutes prior to her skull being crushed in by a crazed, illegal immigrant.
Whether you agree with him or not, these are the legitimate concerns of a U.S. President—concerns held by President Trump, Vice President Vance, the President’s family, and his unsuspecting appointees who came to that inaugural, early-morning interfaith service assuming it would be a unifying, uplifting service—“inter-political,” if you will—above the fray of party divisiveness. But, no, the bishop couldn’t resist injecting her political bias into the sermon, garnering praise for her courage in “speaking truth to power,” telling the usual, talk-show suspects on CNN, MSNBC, and “The View,” etc., that she spoke for the Church, “…and these are the values on which we are to order our society.” Wow! How telling is that—the self-righteousness of a Church that has forsaken its “first love” and replaced it with their view of social justice and what the “ordering of society” should look like! The bishop would have been served well to have taken her talking points from Christ.
Living under the tyranny of Caesar and the cruelty of Pontius Pilate as Jesus did, you might recall the amazing story of the Roman centurion (I draw freely from the Matthew, chapter 8, account) who came to Christ “beseeching” him to heal his “valued” servant who was “grievously” ill. Rather than lecture the centurion on the inherent exploitation in the servant/master dynamic, or go into a diatribe on the Roman Empire’s oppressive occupation of the Jews, with its merciless crucifixions and exorbitantly high taxes, Jesus “marveled,” we are told (the only time he does so in all of Scripture), at the centurion’s faith who said, “…but speak the word only [Jesus], and my servant shall be healed,” and Christ, who “had not found such faith in all of Israel,” healed the centurion’s servant “at that moment.” Rather than “speak truth to power,” Jesus was more concerned in blessing the faith that was the centurion’s than in condemning him, not turning a profound, spiritual moment of healing into a political sideshow, which is what makes this particular National Prayer Service so sad: rather than bless the President, Bishop Budde chose to ambush him, and, in so doing, ambushed the Church. Time and again, Christ refrained from “speaking,” even His “truth to power”— but rather “rendered unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s,” and “spoke not a word” when pressed by Pilate at the trial of his pending crucifixion.
“Vanity…vanity, all is vanity.” Little wonder that the once great Episcopal Church, not unlike the dying fig tree accursed by Christ, is withering on the vine, replacing the true Gospel of hope and love with the gospel of victimization and fear.
My friends, in spite of any and all of our differences, here is what we are to declare from our pulpits and live out in our lives—“Fear not!”—for “There is no fear in love. But [His] perfect love drives out fear!” (I John 4:18 NIV).
May we believe it, my brothers and sisters in Christ. May we live it, may we teach it, and may we preach it!
Amen
The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord!
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