With God On Her Side
I’m not going to try to make a political statement here, just a citizen’s commentary.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is the first woman to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C. She oversees 86 churches with 38,000 members across and D.C. and Maryland. Throughout her long career, she has always given a damn about people in her communities.
You probably saw clips of the prayer service she gave after Trump was inaugurated. You know, the guy who says he was saved by God from an assassin’s bullet. She faced him at the end of her sermon with a plea to “have mercy upon people in our country who are scared now.” Isn’t that what you’d expect from a person of the cloth? Well, she got lambasted. Death threats. Called nasty and stupid and trashed to high heaven on social media. Even though she’s an American citizen, some people have called for her to be deported. Even more people said that she should apologize. For what? Doing her duties as a religious pastor?
Hey, the way I see it, she represents the best of us. For Christ’s sake, is this what this country has become? My mother was an inner-city schoolteacher in Holyoke and she used to always throw that old line, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” And then I’d go pick on one of my six sisters. But I gotta say she was right.
Maybe those days are over. But this bishop showed a lot of courage. We need more of her. Even though I was brought up Catholic, I haven’t been to church for anything except a funeral in a long time. But if we had more pastors like Budde, I’d be sitting there on Sundays to hear the sermons.
Keep your dukes up.
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