WASHINGTON – The Right Rev. Mariann Budde made headlines this week after she angered President Donald Trump with her sermon during an inaugural prayer service.
It was not the first time the cleric has publicly disagreed with Trump, but it became a striking moment in what is usually a staid and scripted event.
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Here’s more about the Episcopal bishop of Washington, who has continued to speak out in the wake of the president’s derision.
What did Bishop Budde and President Trump say?
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” the soft-spoken bishop said from the pulpit of Washington National Cathedral.
“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said.
“There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde preached.
She said “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” calling them “good neighbors” and “faithful members” of religious communities.
The Trump administration has already issued executive orders rolling back transgender rights and toughening immigration policies.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance looked visibly disgruntled at times as they sat in the front pew with their wives. Vance raised his eyebrows and said something to second lady Usha Vance, who stared straight ahead.
At the White House afterward, Trump said he “didn’t think it was a good service.”
He later called Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” on his Truth Social site and demanded an apology for “her inappropriate statements.”
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Budde said she would continue to pray for the president, as is custom in Episcopal worship.
“I don’t agree with many of his values and assumptions about American society and how to respond to the challenges of our time,” she said. “I strongly disagree, actually. But I believe we can disagree respectfully.”
She is the first woman to hold her church position
Budde, 65, is the first woman to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, a position she has held since 2011. She oversees 86 churches across Washington, D.C., and Maryland, with 38,000 members.
National spokespeople for the Episcopal Church called Budde “a valued and trusted pastor.” They said, “We stand by Bishop Budde and her appeal for the Christian values of mercy and compassion.”
Before her current post, she served as a parish priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis for 18 years.
Budde grew up in New Jersey and Colorado, and for a time as a teenager, she identified as an evangelical. Later she returned to the Episcopal Church, the mainline Protestant denomination of her childhood.
She graduated from the University of Rochester and Virginia Theological Seminary, an Episcopal institution just outside Washington.
“I’m a mom. I’m a grandmother. I really care about the people in our communities,” Budde said.
A different kind of prayer service
She revised her sermon over and over again.
Budde knew last summer that the theme of the inaugural service would be unity after a “divisive election season.”
“Couldn’t we just acknowledge that we can’t paint whole groups of people in one broad stroke? That’s the stuff of political campaigning. I understand that. But we’re running the country now,” she said.
And as she watched the inauguration the day before she was set to preach, she noted Trump-supporting clergy offered a different Christian perspective in their prayers than her own. She hoped to show another way to interpret the world through the lens of faith.
More than a dozen religious leaders spoke during the cathedral’s interfaith service, including those from Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
Notably absent from the invited clergy with speaking roles were conservative evangelicals, who are among Trump’s strongest supporters and now among Budde’s loudest critics.
The strong reactions to Budde’s sermon largely fell along predictable political and religious lines. Progressive people of faith found in her an inspiring example of “ speaking truth to power.” Some conservative religious voices found her plea confrontational and disrespectful. Others took issue with a woman in a powerful church leadership role, which their traditions reserve for men.
Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, a prominent Trump supporter, was at the service and posted on X that Budde “insulted rather than encouraged our great president” and “there was palpable disgust in the audience with her words.”
Budde felt some of that pushback when she processed down the aisle of the cathedral after the service. The president did not acknowledge her when she passed.
She thought phrasing her words to the president as a plea for mercy “was a very gentle way to do it because I was acknowledging his authority and his power.”
“I guess I had that wrong,” she said.
Budde has clashed with Trump before
The national cathedral has long been the ceremonial home of high-profile political events. But in 2017, it faced criticism from liberal-leaning Episcopalians for hosting Trump’s first inaugural prayer service. While Budde spoke at the service, there was no sermon that year at Trump’s request.
The content of Budde’s words this time should come as no surprise to those who have watched her career.
Budde has joined other cathedral leaders in rebuking Trump’s “racialized rhetoric” and blaming him for inciting violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to keep him in power.
Most notably, she said she was “outraged” in 2020 after Trump staged an appearance in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is near the White House. He held up a Bible after the area had been cleared of peaceful protesters.
In 2023, Budde published a book that reflected on that summer of 2020 after George Floyd’s death, when she criticized the sitting president. It’s titled, “How We Learn to Be Brave.”
“The capacity to respond in such a moment doesn’t drop from the sky, nor is its significance measured by a week’s worth of media coverage,” Budde wrote.
That kind of boldness, she argued, is preceded by countless, smaller decisions that summon bravery.
“Its ultimate significance is determined by how we live after the moment passes.”
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Associated Press reporters Darlene Superville and Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.
___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.