Speaking Truth to Power: Budde and Trump

Anglican theologian and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes this fact:

“By the end of the second century, Roman officials were not particularly aware of the nuances of Christian teaching, but they did know what the word ‘bishop’ meant—it meant someone who kept on agitating about the needs of the poor.”

Because we live 2000 years downstream from the time of Christ (A.D.), we often just assume the world we grew up in has always been pretty much this way. We forget that before the time of Christ, other than various tiny threads of people and cultures to the contrary, most of the world was marked by the simple fact that the strong ruled and the weak kept their mouths shut, which included women as well.

But then this new cult, this new movement built around a man recently crucified but believed by his followers to have risen from the dead, began to challenge such an understanding of societal and familial relations. They became the voice of the weak, the poor, those on the edges, those on the fringe and outside. They challenged the strong and powerful. They said things to the effect of, “These people matter and we think they should be protected and helped—we will not let you forget them nor continue to let you abuse them.”

As the Church grew in influence and even became the official religion of Rome, this advocacy continued and changed the Western world forever. We live in that stream. This care for the poor, the weak, and those without a voice has been an integral part of the Church’s very life and being. This then became ingrained in the ethical formation of the general populace and culture. Throughout the centuries, the Church has done this well but sometimes poorly. It has been very easy for the Church to side with the rich and powerful over the poor and weak and they have often done so to their shame. I fear we are in one of those moments.

In the Protestant world in America, the stream of fundamentalism/evangelicalism, even though it was, ironically, made up of mostly those in the lower and middle classes, began to move away from this age-old solidarity with the poor and helpless. For reasons that would require another post, that stream of Western, American Christianity, began to associate the poor and weak with a lazy rabble, those without character or morals. They were too immoral and indifferent to “pull themselves up” by their own bootstraps.

Thus, the wealthy and successful were seen as moral and clearly blessed by God, whereas the poor and those on the fringes of society were seen as immoral and solely responsible for their unfortunate station in life and circumstances. God, it was mistakenly thought, had forgotten them and left them to their own devices due to their own poor choices and behavior.

In other words, there was a terrible and shameful break with an ethos and tradition that stretched back to the time of Jesus and was, in fact, established by Jesus. Something established by his life and confirmed in what would come to be the Bible. It was called the “good news” or gospel. From Luke’s Gospel, chapter 4:

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me.

He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,

to proclaim release to the prisoners

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to liberate the oppressed,

and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.[a]

He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.”

And guess who were often included in the world of the poor? The stranger, the immigrant, and the refugee. Those in such circumstances, by the very nature of those circumstances, are rarely well-off or comfortable. Not only are they often poor, but they also bear the burden of being different, of not being “from here,” of not understanding the language or culture very well. They are the easy targets of bullies, the insecure, and the ignorant. And many others (the LGBTQ community and women in general) fall into that category of the oppressed, along with the poor.

Enter our heroine, Mariann Edgar Budde, the reverend and Bishop of the Washington D.C. Episcopal Diocese. Unlike the insecure, emasculated, male pastors/priests/leaders who have bowed the knee and kissed the ring, this Christian leader stood strong in the tradition dating back to the Church of the first centuries. She spoke truth to power. She did what too many male Christian leaders are afraid to do, the poor pitiful little boys.

Thank God for leaders like Reverend Budde. We need more like her and less like the Mark Driscolls of our time. Christian men leaders, take notice. Take heed your better. While many of you almost wet your pants in fear, lest you criticize the golden calf currently running our country and lose some giving and members, she courageously and obediently does the work Jesus called us to do. Respect.

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