An Apostate Priestess Admonishes a President

On Tuesday, President Trump attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral and was upbraided by the preacher directly from the pulpit. The preacher was Mariann Edgar Budde, who is a progressive activist and Episcopal Bishop of the Washington, D. C. diocese.

The theme of her message was unity, with the obvious subtext that the election of Donald Trump is a threat to national unity. She warns that his election—for many “marginalized” people—will result in “a loss of equality and dignity and their livelihoods.” She says that true unity means that we can never have certainty about the truth. She cautions, “Perhaps we are most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded without a doubt that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong.”

She closes her message by suggesting LGBT people have good reason to fear for their lives under the new administration. She suggests that that illegal aliens are right to fear Trump and his policies. She says that “mercy” requires us not to enforce national borders but to accept anyone from anywhere who happens to show up in the United States. If she believes there are to be limits to immigration, she didn’t share them.

It was by all accounts the wrong message from the wrong person at the wrong place. What do I mean by that?

1. It was the wrong message because it was much more about emoting than preaching. Budde calls for unity but does not want that unity based upon truth. Indeed, she warns that we are a danger to others and ourselves when we experience confidence about truth. This kind of agnostic posture toward the truth cannot be reconciled with any form of orthodox Christianity, but that seems lost on the Bishop.

Budde’s message is of a piece with her wider teaching. In her book Receiving Jesus: The Way of Love (2019), she narrates her transition from Bible-believing churches to the Episcopal Church. She felt compelled to make the transition because she could no longer live “within the confines of their non-negotiable beliefs” (p. 9). Notice that she portrays certainty about the truth as a straitjacket from which to escape. As Budde confided to her Episcopal mentor:

I told him that I didn’t believe that only a very narrow group of Christians would be saved, whatever being saved meant, he agreed with me. “A good rule of thumb when thinking about God,” he said, “is to assume if you wouldn’t do something because it isn’t loving or kind, then God—who is the source of all love—wouldn’t do it either.” That insight changed my life, and it remains foundational for me (p. 9).

Central to Budde’s belief and teaching is that God’s nature is to be defined by a sinner’s opinion about what is “loving” and “kind.”

How does this principle cash-out practically? If God’s word makes gay people feel bad about their sin, then we can scuttle God’s word because we know that God wouldn’t be mean. Nevermind holiness or righteousness or repentance or redemption. Who needs any of that when the order of the day is unconditional affirmation, even if it means disaffirming the word of God?

2. It was the wrong person because Budde is disqualified from the teaching office of the church on at least two grounds. First, she is a woman, and the Bible instructs us that the teaching office of the church is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. Paul writes, “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet” (1 Tim. 2:12). He elaborates that a bishop must be “the husband of one wife” and able to “manage his own household well” (1 Tim. 3:2, 4). God calls men to lead his church and to deliver prophetic words in season and out of season. Budde is usurping an office that doesn’t belong to her.

But she’s also disqualified by her false teaching. She doesn’t believe that faith in Christ is required for salvation. She affirms homosexual immorality as morally good. There is no telling how many other central doctrines of the faith that she undermines by her teaching. Male or female, this fact alone would disqualify anyone because a “bishop” must be “able to teach” and “to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:9). She clearly is not submitted to the word of God, which is manifest by her false teaching and by her assuming an office that does not rightfully belong to any woman.

3. Her message was at the wrong place in that it occurred under the auspices of the Episcopal Church USA, a theologically liberal denomination that long ago abandoned biblical authority and many of Christianity’s central teachings. As J. Gresham Machen so powerfully demonstrated, theological liberalism isn’t just a different Christian denomination. It’s a different religion altogether. And the same is true of the “woke” successors to the older liberals of the theological mainlines.

It was 22 years ago that the Episcopal Church USA consecrated its first openly gay bishop, Eugene Robinson. And that abhorrent precedent has only been amplified across the apostate Episcopal “Church” in the United States. Indeed, Eugene Robinson himself has retired to Washington, D.C. and is a frequent preacher at the National Cathedral.

I am not opposed to pastors delivering prophetic and even confrontational messages to politicians from God’s word. But that is not what Budde provided on Tuesday. Rather, it was a manipulative distortion of God’s word that included no gospel in it.

Mariann Edgar Budde is a false teacher who has no authority or right to speak in the name of Jesus. Be warned. This is not John the Baptist confronting Herod. This is a hidden reef in the church’s love feast (Jude 12). On Tuesday, we needed a faithful pastor to call the President to repentance from sin and to faith in Christ alone for salvation. What we got was an apostate priestess usurping the pastoral office and leading the President away from Christ and not to him. And there is nothing more tragic or consequential than that.

A transcript of Mariann Edgar Budde’s message can be found here. The video can be accessed here.