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Barely a nanosecond after Episcopal “bishop” Mariann Edgar Budde castigated President Trump in Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral on January 21, commentators like Megan Kelly asked, “Where was Trump’s team; why did they send him into the arms of a notoriously angry, woke bishop?”
Indeed, why would the president’s team allow him to participate in a potentially volatile prayer service in-of all places-an Episcopal Church where wokeness is practically considered a sacrament?
What was Trump’s team thinking? Even religion 101 students know that Episcopal sermons these days are rarely about Christ and salvation but about social justice and politics.
Is there really anyone alive on the planet who doesn’t realize the Episcopal Church has become a virtue-signaling entity disguised as a pretty vestment?
It can be argued that because ‘The Service of Prayer for the Nation’ was held in the famous National Cathedral-the scene of so many historic ceremonial presidential visits-the atmosphere there on January 21 would be ‘gentlemanly’ and polite. Despite the weirdness the Episcopal Church exhibits in big urban parishes-namely sermons on the protection of illegal migrants-the legacy of the nation’s most famous Episcopal Church offered a false sense of security.
Architectural grandeur notwithstanding, never underestimate the persnickety wickedness of a female “bishop” with thinning hair in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Only a woke “bishop” like this could tarnish the legacy and idea of the National Cathedral, which was the dream of President George Washington.
Washington, of course, was baptized an Anglican and a churchgoer throughout his life although he was a Deist and did not believe in the divinity of Christ-ironically an Episcopal trait that is not uncommon today.
Washington’s dream of a cathedral became a reality when he chose urban planner and architect Pierre L’Enfant, a Frenchman who migrated to America as a young man to fight in the Continental Army. Washington wanted to design “a great church for national purposes,” or a place where bishops do not talk down to presidents.
L’Enfant designed the layout of Washington D.C. although his plan for the city-with wide diagonal avenues, canals and monuments- would not be executed until 1900, years after the architect died in 1825, his legacy all but forgotten. L’Enfant was by all accounts a very difficult man; his temper was so bad that even Washington eventually fired him.
Nevertheless, the National Cathedral became a reality.
In 1898, President William McKinley attended the dedication of the Peace Cross on the cathedral to mark the end of the Spanish American War. Other presidential visitations followed: in 1928, President Coolidge opened the General Convention of the Episcopal Church at the cathedral. President Franklin Roosevelt attended the National Prayer Service in 1937 for his second inauguration. Queen Elizabeth II of England visited the cathedral on at least two occasions.
The cathedral-and by default the Episcopal Church-was by now an institution; in many ways inseparable from the federal government.
Not far from the National Cathedral is St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square. Every president since James Madison was been an occasional attendee there. St. John’s is known as the “Church of the Presidents,” due mainly to the disproportionately Anglican religious affiliation of U.S. presidents as well as the Church’s proximity to the White House.
This presupposes a kind of “good marriage” between Episcopalism and the federal government, a fact most took for granted until January 21, 2025.
While one may wax nostalgic about the historic Anglican tradition, the “soul” of the Episcopal Church has been completely perverted by the revolution that has been transforming the Church since the 1970s.
Recall the June 29, 1973 ordination by three male Episcopal bishops of 11 deaconesses to the priesthood in Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate, a social justice church that has always put social issues ahead of theology and faith. Three years prior in 1970 the General Convention of the Church voted to ordain women as deaconesses. In 1988, Barbara C. Harris was ordained the first female bishop of the Episcopal Church.
The dye was cast.
Today the Episcopal ‘down escalator’ is in full swing. There are 66 Episcopal bishops worldwide; among them 43 are women, some (non-celibate) LGBTQ+.
Clearly, this is not the same Episcopal Church that existed during the early days of the Republic.
This is why the federal government needs to end its cozy relationship with the Episcopal Church, and by default its “partnership” with the National Cathedral. Simply put, there needs to be a divorce.
The nation’s first Church has become an arm of the DNC. Sermons are not about faith or the nature of Christ but about climate change, social justice, racial reconciliation, systematic racism, marginalized communities, migration and environmental stewardship.
One solution to downgrade the inexorable link between this Church and the White House would be an executive order (or an act of Congress) changing the location of official prayer services and ceremonies involving the president-at least during the Trump administration-from the National Cathedral to a more apolitical setting, like Washington’s National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Such a change would probably lower the chances of a woke bishop or priest capsizing a presidential prayer service in the name of social justice.
As the culture becomes increasingly polarized-witness the DNC’s 2025 party leadership election of woke gender activists-future Republican presidents should not have to risk ‘pop up’ rants from the pulpit from left wing ideologues masquerading as clergy. Since the Episcopal Church is now 100% political-the Jesus of advocacy and civic engagement minus the Jesus of sin and repentance-it no longer qualifies as the nation’s “first Church” of choice.
Let the Democrats resurrect the Episcopal Church if-God forbid-at some future date a non-binary DEI left wing candidate is elected to the White House.
The demotion of the Episcopal Church under the Trump administration should apply to presidential funerals as well. President Carter, for instance, was not an Episcopalian but a Baptist. There was no reason why any religious ceremony honoring his life and commemorating his death should have been held in a church that was not Baptist.
But even if a divorce between the Episcopal Church and the federal government is not in the cards, the Episcopal Church may be “dead” in a couple of decades anyway.
An Anglican Watch 2023 article explained the decline in Episcopal Church attendance and came to the conclusion that the Church was actually dying. Most readers’ comments agreed and shared why they felt this way.
One reader offered:
“The problem began when Episcopal priests started apologizing for instead of proclaiming the Gospel. The last time I attended an Episcopal service, the priest on the first Sunday of Lent, greeted me with ‘Namaste:’ (a Buddhist greeting) from the pulpit and then turned things over to a guest speaker. A black woman who harangued the congregation for 45 minutes about the “1619 Project” and our hereditary guilt as white people of “racism” and our perpetual obligation to apologize to a serve blacks. Missing was any mention of God, Jesus, forgiveness and sin. My family has been Episcopalian for at least four generations. Combine that with the cowardly compliance with the anti-Christian social engineers in Washington during the COVID ‘pandemic’ have completely turned me off.”
Another reader mentioned the problem of diminishing orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church:
“There seems to be an engagement to participate in other world religions and a New Age like mysticism by those in the highest positions of the church and some leaders at larger urban churches….”
However the “divorce” happens, it’s almost certain that the Church’s cozy affiliation with Washington D.C. is on the wane.
Excommunicate the whole lot
I’ve heard many Christian preachers in many different churches including Catholic, Christian Mormon and many others. Never heard any one speak like this to a president or anyone. This was hate.
Not only that but if they’re not preaching about God and Jesus then they not a church. So they should be paying taxes and that goes for the rest of the churches that don’t believe in Jesus Christ.
Anyone who is Jesus bible believing Christian can see through
the liberal political “ anti Christian anti American crapola”’that Bishop Budde is spreeing out of
her politicking mouth! Trump should to dump this leftist, Biishop, her failing Episcopal Church and the “very few attendees” who are being politically indoctrinated with anti Christian hate hrhetoric!
The David Platt incident of 2019 should have schooled Trump and his team to be weary wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Donald walked into the lion’s den. What could he have been thinking? Oh, now the lions are neutered.
That was despicable. Not very Christian and nothing to be proud of. I was disgusted with her statements. Who did she think she was.
A Catholic Church is not a good substitute for the Episcopalian Church! Good grief, pay attention to what is happening in the Christian faith, Catholics and the Pope are just the other side of the coin.
Trump is getting no solid theological advice…proven by his choice of Paula White as head of the White House’s Faith Office. He may as well have dug up Jezebel and made her the head of the Church!
Millions of Christians are praying for Trump to be saved in Christ. Until he is, he will not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Who alone guides us into all truth.
Trump could really fry their bacon and associate with a strong faith oriented house of worship like the Assembly of God, or similar. I have had many members of those churches as employees. Honest, hard working and loyal. Anti-woke. Anti-DEI.
“Where was Trump’s team?” Paula White is all that needs to be said. She is deceived and a deceiver, nothing good will come out of her being the “head” of The White House Faith Office.
I am praying DJT comes to know Jesus
Aside from the sophomoric statement “Washington was a deist”, the author has the measure of modern Episcopalianism. I remember a woman “bishop” of the church some years ago explain that the church did not have a missionary program because it was expected that the church would wither away, depending upon its dwindling capital accumulation for support. And few will miss the church when it does.
Well written, Thom. I am absolutely allergic to any combination of religion and politics — regardless of denomination. She was “over-the-top” and out-of-line for reasons we all know.
Move Presidential prayer services from the “National” Cathedral to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception? From the frying pan of the U.S. Episcopal Church into the fires of Bergoglio’s even more woke and broke theology? Why not use the expansive South Lawn of the White House (weather permitting?)
Six of one and a half dozen of the other, Both are well down, if not past the point of no return, from apostasy.
Let’s all come to the table with positivity and compromise with empathy and support ❤️❤️❤️
The article seems to imply that the ordination of women is part of the problem here, but there are women in ministry who are faithful to the truth (Phoebe in the NT was one such, as was Salvation Army General Evangeline Booth) just as there are clergymen who are not. Paul’s limit-setting on the roles of women was done at a time when many women were illiterate, and would therefore have been unable to access the Scriptures. Jesus approved of Mary of Bethany’s choice to sit at His feet and learn with the disciples; Paul was later to describe himself as having sat at Rabbi Gamaliel’s feet, so the term clearly referenced learning from a master (this may also partly account for Martha’s reaction).
If there is a woman in the Pulpit, you are not in a Church that is part of the Body of Jesus Christ.
As a lifelong Episcopalian, descendant of at least 3 known generations of Episcopalian families, I couldn’t agree more. There is no longer a church home that fits me. The Episcopal and Roman churches have moved away from orthodoxy, and Orthodox liturgy and worship are too foreign for this old man to adapt to.
Perhaps there is a Western Rite Orthodox parish near you. Look for Western Rite on the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocesan website.
I can thoroughly recommend John McArthur of Grace Church in California. He has plenty of videoed sermons on YouTube and all he does is preach the Bible.
R.C Sproul also is an excellent preach and although he died a few years ago, he too has many excellent videos on YouTube which concentrate exclusively on the Bible.
And both of them would confirm that women are forbidden from preaching, as specified in the Bible.
I grew up in a world of Episcopalians, a number of whom had distinguished forebears— and all of whom were well-educated, kindly people, with lovely manners. I mean that sincerely. It was not a pretentious, virtue-signaling group looking, in any way, to social climb.
Admittedly, multi-generational community ties WERE of social importance. But where, and among what people, is that not true?
Whoever is left of that world, and is still seeking to keep its corpse animated, is currently in the position of having to denounce everything about that world in the snottiest, most hateful and derogatory Newspeak possible. It’s important to display the proper lefty-lib vocabulary in doing so—because that establishes that YOU went to right schools and YOU are currently acceptable in the right social circles.
So the Teddy Roosevelt statue is dispatched to North Dakota, and some snooty-poot descendent of his is more than happy to denounce him for racism and colonialism, etc.
In any event, today’s politically correct, we’ll-educated, upper middle class person, whose self-esteem and ability to virtue -signal rests on his or her own sense of self-loathing, is in the process of being extincted—along with the Episcopal Church—which has some very nice buildings and a perfectly idiotic (suicidally idiotic) priesthood.
The extinction to some extent involves AI and super-computing turning all those who fill the middle ranks of society into expensive and unneeded anchor chains ready to be pushed overboard. Combine that with the rest of us being really turned off by what the chattering class of lefty-libs keeps pushing out as their fashionable belief systems—and that completes the extinction.
So there is that which is headed into the abyss, presided over by the likes of Mariann Edgar Budde. But that’s not the living church or the living faith—which IS eternal.
Why not let the President-elect choose the church or no church at all? Trump should break out the big, black Sharpie and put a “yuuge” X through the “National Church” and any public funds it recieves.
90% of the church is counterfeit and they are exposing themselves for what they are; Lucifer’s controlled opposition.
The ELCA. My mother’s “church.” Her “”pasture” (sp intentional) offered mutli-week classes on the wonderful of islam.
He was “Christian” FILTH. He had no time for shut-ins. (My mother) He drove his church into the ground. He emptied the pews.
When my mother passed, I told the FD pasture Jim was not permitted at her service.
I agree that President Trump needs to distance himself from Paula White, who is not a Biblical Christian. In his first term, Trump seemingly had close relationships with Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress, who are both Biblically sound Ministers of the Gospel. What caused him to abandon those Godly men in deference to White?
just because you call yourself a church doesnt mean you are in the true biblical meaning . if you have a woman in the pulpit you certainly arent . having a man standing up front is no guarantee either . most are heretics . we are in the last days . israel is the canary in the coalmine . prepare for worse .
“Woke” is a very anti-Christian ideology:
* White people cannot be saved.
* Black people don’t need to be saved.
THE central theme of Christianity is that Jesus died for our sins, so that anyone can come to Him for forgiveness and redemption. The fact that Jesus died for all means:
* ALL need to be saved.
* ALL can be saved.
Imagine a black person standing before God on the Judgment Day, telling God, “But I didn’t need to be saved”, or a white person telling God, “But I couldn’t be saved”. Both of them would be lost forever if they bought into that doctrine of demons.
Maybe……….Just Maybe this was deliberate on Trump’s part. Look at the results, bad PR and damage.
After all, Trump’s been a student of Sun Tzu all his adult life. Hmmmm.
Good article. I agree w/ most of it except 1 thing. George Washington was NOT a ”deist”, & neither were most of our nation’s founders. That is revisionist history.
Why do we have a National Cathedral anyway? Why not have it in the Capital Building. Prayer is prayer. When they go woke let them “go broke”.
Republicans should consider switching to either the Anglican Church in North America or the Anglican Catholic Church.