The Longhouse Goes to Church
The Washington National Cathedral, a cathedral of the Episcopal Church, stands as what should be a symbol of our nation’s Protestant heritage. It is the second-largest cathedral in America. Construction spanned both world wars and 16 different presidents. It was finally completed in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush was in office.
It operates under the charter of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation of the District of Columbia. This foundation was established by an Act of Congress in 1893, which granted it the authority to create and maintain it. The National Cathedral serves as both a house of worship and a national venue for events of spiritual significance, such as presidential funerals, interfaith services, and cultural events.
But now, this magnificent building with its neo-gothic design which once stood as a paragon of American excellence, has become the apotheosis of our civilizational decline and the latest example of how wokeness ruins everything it touches—including Christianity.
Yesterday, decent Americans across the country were shocked when a video of Bishop Mariann Budde lecturing Trump, Vance, and their families about “showing mercy” to the LGBT community and illegal immigrants went viral.
Budde was appointed Bishop(ess) of Washington in 2011. She is the first woman to serve in that position. She is openly for “gay marriage” and a supporter of Black Lives Matter. While she is the first woman appointed to this position, she is not the first Leftist to occupy this role, following in a long line of Episcopal Bishops who have used that historic pulpit to advance gay race communism wrapped in Christianese.
And at the official National Prayer Service held on January 21, 2025, as part of the official inauguration of the 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, Bishop Budde made sure to dial her clerical activism up to 10 and make it abundantly clear that Christ is not honored in her house of worship.
Putting on her best school marm voice, Budde tried and failed to put Trump in the ecclesial longhouse by pleading with him:
“To have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.
And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes in restaurants, and work the nightshifts in hospitals…they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.
They pay taxes. And are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras, and temples.
I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing warzones and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.”
This highly emotional manipulation from woke pastors, priests, and “so-called Bishops” in service of extreme progressive political ideologies (transgenderism, open borders) is all too familiar these days. Rather than exhorting the President to uphold the laws of our land and honor God, she used the age-old liberal tactic of gutting the Bible in service of (unknown) god.
Well, I think we do know which god she worships—the false god of progressive political power.
The entire charade was an embarrassment. Her radical views were just resoundingly rejected at the ballot box in November—as made obvious by the fact that it was President Trump, and not President Harris, suffering through her woke-scold substitute for a sermon.
I’ve heard it said before, “pagans will be pagans.” Budde is obviously not a Christian by any historic or orthodox definition of the faith, but rather a priestess in the neo-pagan cult of wokeism. So, ultimately, her use of the prayer service to push for transgenderism and open borders isn’t that big of a surprise, even if it was shockingly inappropriate.
But as a conservative Protestant and a Baptist, what I find most shocking about the “sermon” Budde delivered is how similar her language was on these flashpoint issues to some evangelical leaders within our camp.
Surely, no Southern Baptist or Bible-believing evangelical would consider Bishop Budde one of their own. And yet, many of our own have used the exact same sleight of hand tactics she employed in trying to emotionally manipulate the President when trying to convince our churches, seminaries, and denominations to embrace CRT, DEI, and the soft-pedaling of LGBT toleration.
Her exhortation for Trump to have “mercy” on “gay, lesbian, and transgender children” sounds eerily similar to what Revoice and Preston Sprinkle advocate for with their conferences and writings. While Revoice has been slowly (but rightly) rejected by most faithful conservative evangelicals, Sprinkle is still welcome and celebrated in evangelical churches and seminaries, and even has his own study Bible with Zondervan. It also sounds like former SBC President J.D. Greear, who once called for compassion and sympathy for sexual perversion through the practice of “pronoun hospitality.”
And on the issue of immigration, our own “conservative” Christian institutions are not much different than Bishop Budde. The SBC’s ERLC has taken money from George Soros of all people for the sake of “welcoming the stranger.” Christianity Today is already on the beat to drum up “compassion” for illegal immigrants being deported. As Megan Basham revealed, CT’s latest hire, Marvin Olasky, is already on the hunt for anyone who can help him emotionally manipulate Bible-believing Christians into opposing Trump’s righteous plans for the mass deportations of illegal aliens in America.
Megan Basham, author of Shepherds for Sale, also noticed the similarities, warning that: “It cannot be said enough that we have men leading the Southern Baptist Convention who have actively worked to ensure we follow the same trajectory that led to this woman occupying a pulpit. I don’t know if they’re wolves. But I know they’re agents of destruction. I will never stop opposing them in [the] strongest terms. What I want to know is why they have so little zeal for their Father’s house?”
While Budde may obviously present herself as the wolf (or witch) that she is, there are those within our ranks who also want to soft-sell women’s ordination as a good and right interpretation of Scripture.
Southern Baptists have begun the hard work of fighting this Leftist incursion but there is still much work to be done. Women should not be ordained because the Bible says so. Simple as. That is unless you’re part of The Baptist Review or hold a cushy gig in the SBC system. Then it gets much more “complicated.”
As made clear by Budde’s actions, when women are unbiblically appointed to such roles as “minister” or even “bishop” (a title itself which is foreign to our American Protestant heritage), they do what women often do: Weaponize empathy instead of heralding the full counsel of God. As Joe Rigney stated, “Women’s ordination is a cancer that unleashes untethered empathy in the church (and spills over into society).”
Budde says she wants unity. She “pleads” with the president for “compassion” all while she herself publicly celebrates all manner of depravity and leftist activism from a pulpit she should not occupy. Unity she pleads while she sows division. There can be no unity with her ilk.
While the spectacle was indeed sordid, it was eye-opening for many. For that, I am thankful. Too many American Christians and conservatives have been asleep at the wheel while the Marxists marched through our institutions, hollowing out our religion and wearing it as a skinsuit.
I pray that this event will spark revival, even as it has sparked backlash. Ben Shapiro, who is not a Protestant but an Orthodox Jew, gave a clear-eyed response and call to action, pointing out that, “The Left’s hollowing out of the church is perhaps the single most dangerous change over the course of the last half-century. Left-wing radicalism wearing around the flesh mask of Biblical values. Reverse it. Now.”
And Protestant political commentator and author Jeremy Carl rightly argued that “Republicans must stop giving free publicity to ‘churches’ that kill the Christian faith and wear it as a skin suit while pushing far-left politics, which is the only thing they believe in. Trump won’t do it again, and he was correct to respond how he did.”
Yes, Republicans should stop this. But our churches and Christian institutions bear far more responsibility than any political party. If judgment begins with the household of God, so too should reform. The hour is getting late and it’s time to flip some tables. What we saw in the National Cathedral yesterday we may very well see at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting tomorrow. Don’t believe me? Just ask the United Methodists.
The great news is that while the Washington National Cathedral should symbolize the beauty of American religious life, it was never about a cathedral in the first place. It was about the American people, a deeply religious people.
A people who were once Christian people who actually worshiped the One True God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
A people who just elected President Donald Trump for a second time.
A people who have recovered their hunger for excellence after years of malaise under a regime intent on forced globalization and national de-homogenization (read destabilization).
And a people who, by many accounts, are turning to God again.
So what now? First, pray that Bishop Budde repents of her woke paganism and comes to know the real and risen Jesus Christ. Pray that Donald Trump is surrounded by true men of faith who can preach the Word of God to him instead of “exvangelical” nonsense. Pray that this embarrassing event serves as a wake-up call for the few remaining Protestant denominations that still stand, if imperfectly, against the Spirit of the Age. Pray that we do everything we can to make sure that our denominations refuse to tolerate even one drop of the poison that is cultural Marxism, wokeness, and progressive politics masquerading as “love for neighbor.”
Personally, I think Trump should revoke the 1893 charter, or at least amend it, and turn the National Cathedral over to a Protestant denomination that honors our nation’s history and esteems God’s Word.
One need look no further than Southern Baptists for such a church.
That is, if we can get our house in order first.
