One day after the inauguration of President Trump on January 20, he and his family, Vice President J.D. Vance and his family, and almost all the people who will make up the new Presidential cabinet as well as the Congress and Senate attended a “prayer service” at the National Cathedral-a church which is under the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church. The service was going to be an Ecumenical (multiple religions) one and would be led by the “pastor” of the cathedral church, lady bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. Unlike the religious leaders in the Inauguration the day before, the ones on display here (particularly with “bishop” Budde) were decidedly antichristian/antibiblical and therefore heretical to the extreme.
Several other conservative pastors were present. Reverand Franklin Graham, Dr Robert Jeffress of First Baptists Church Dallas, Dr Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptists Church, and Dr Greg Laurie of Harvest Christian Fellowship of Riverside, California, were present for the service, among many others. But not one of them were involved in the service, and this was by design by bishop Budde and perhaps others.
This service was Ecumenical, meaning it involved religious leaders from Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism-already a problem. But these were the proverbial generic, politically correct type prayers which are regular in such Ecumenical public services. What became infamous was the homily given by bishop Budde. She made it a point of addressing President Trump, admonishing him to “have mercy” on lesbian, homosexual, and particularly on “trans children of both democrats and republicans.” She went on to ask him to “have mercy on the illegals who “clean houses and mow lawns” (and other work the political left claim that “normal people will not do”) who may be here without legal papers or identification.
I will address her support for the LGBT first.
To say this was ridiculous is an understatement. It was first and foremost an abomination, a blasphemy against the God of the Bible, and His Word. Bishop Budde worships some other god who she claims is the one worshipped in synagogues, temples, gurdwaras, and mosque (this last inclusion would land her a death sentence in the Islamic world-according to the Koran). She is free to do so, but not in the name of the Holy Trinity of the Bible. As the late great Presbyterian Pastor, Dr. Peter Marshal (former pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. during the 1930’s and 40s) said in his famous sermon on Elijah’s confrontation with Ahab and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, “if God is God, serve Him. But if this is no longer so, then say so! At least let us not be hypocrites!”
I responded on Truth Social when the question came of how President Trump should respond: President Trump doesn’t have to respond. God has already responded. She (bishop Budde) will go to hell for preaching and living a lie…and for the fact that she has damned so many sinners to hellfire with her lies in her sermons which are a direct contradiction to the Gospel. (By the way, I am echoing a sentiment that Dr. Marshall pointed out in his sermon on Elijah.)
When President Trump expected an apology from the bishop saying that she was too focused on politics, I responded: Don’t expect it Mr. President. Preachers generally cannot avoid the outside world. Karl Barth, the Swiss Theologian said once that every preacher needs an open Bible in one hand the newspaper in the other in order for their sermons to be effective to the people to whom they minister. I will include that every preacher needs the perspective of the Cross of Calvary, otherwise they will not know Who or What the Truth is, or the Purpose and Objective of that Truth. This is a “bishop” who has only a newspaper (probably the Washington Post) open…the Bible is not. Her associating the God of the Bible with the ones in Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, gurdwaras is the first problem. Violation of the First Commandment (of the Ten Commandments). Advocating the LGBT lifestyle and agenda was the next abomination. How in the world can she advocate such ideas and things when such have been called damnable sins for the last 4000 years int the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments? She violates the Creator and the Savior and the Holy Spirit in one statement (i.e. the Trinity). And lastly, about the illegals, her words echoed the same justification of southern preachers who supported slavery and Jim Crow laws during and after the Civil War. She feigned concern, just like many southerners and northerners did, but not for Salvation. I would recommend reading John 8. Crimes committed by illegal aliens mean nothing to her. Over 100,000 people dead from fentanyl poisoning means nothing to her. Rather she is another version of Giant Despair and his wife Diffidence in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. And the National Cathedral should be renamed Doubting Castle!
For those who do not know, Doubting Castle and its “lord and lady”, Giant Despair and his wife Diffidence, was a place that Pilgrims on their way to the Celestial City blundered into in a place called the By-Path Meadow. The right path (referred to as the Way of the King) became rough and difficult at this point, and the By-Path ran parallel to it (at least it seemed to for a while), and it looked soft and smooth. To get to it, one had to cross into it through a staircase. But the path was intentionally deceptive. For a little while it ran parallel to the right path, but Christian and Hopeful (the main characters in part 1) found out too late that as the night comes in, and perhaps the weather changes, the way ahead becomes difficult to see and eventually confusing. And no one knows where they are or how to get back to the original path.
For Christian and Hopeful, the situation becomes worse as rain begins to pour in the night, and they look to find any place to shelter thinking to wait for day light to get back to the Right Path. Only they did not know that the moment they climbed the stairs to enter the By-Path, they entered the domain of the horrible Giant Despair, who finds them and takes them prisoners into his fortress Doubting Castle.
There are apologetics books based on the original Pilgrims Progress. One of the recent books-Pilgrim’s Progress Today by Christian apologists Lael Arrington-puts the story into modern day America. In her book, she makes Doubting Castle a massive mental hospital in which the chief doctor is so “caring” and “compassionate” but never curing anyone who comes into that place. Rather the patience/victims are smothered by the doctor’s “care” and “compassion” into subjective ideas, practices, and drugs that deviate further and further from the Truth of God’s Word to an oblivion of doubt and fear. The irony was that they were free to leave the hospital but seemingly could not. And so, they lingered until they once again, secretly, began to turn to the Word of God and prayer. Slowly their spiritual strength begins to return.
When Christian and Hopeful decide to make their way out of that hospital, telling the doctor that they would turn again to the promises of the Word which seem to them to be of more help than the treatment at the hospital; that was the point the façade of the “good doctor” fell off and revealed the grotesque monster of a giant from who Christian and Hopeful barely manage to escape.
It occurred to me in the aftermath of that “prayer service” that many of the mainstream/nominal churches and denominations have turned into Doubting Castle. One commentator said that the reasons for America’s moral and social decline should be laid at the feet of these churches and their clergy more than the politicians in government.
In the original book, Giant Despair beats and starves the Pilgrims with the intent of making them so hopeless so that they kill themselves. For many of his victims (the one who did not suicide or were not personally murdered by him), he would instead blind them and set the “free” in a graveyard where they tripped and fell among the gravestones, always searching to get back to the Right Path. The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains who showed the Christian and Hopeful the site of these unfortunate souls quoted from Proverbs 21:16, “the man that wanders from the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.”
I believe the National Cathedral, and “bishop” Budde are emblematic of Doubting Castle. She feigns concern over LGBT individuals, but in reality, her “ministry and sermons” exacerbate problems and subsequently they live to their dying day in mental and spiritual torment. Some of whom spiral into such hopelessness that they become hooked to medication always looking for a freedom and joy, both of which are elusive in the National Cathedral because that church has no relationship whatsoever with the Truth of God’s Word. Instead of the solid foundation of the Word of God, there is the quicksand of convenience and fake smiles, and a bishop smiling, seemingly with poison filled fangs, saying “don’t worry, you are alright” with sermon of psychology and the adoration of nebulous, schizophrenic deity who subject to mankind.
In his famous “If I were the devil” radio broadcast in 1965, the legendary radio personality Paul Harvey said: “…within a decade a I’d have prisons overflowing and judges promoting pornography-soon I could evict God from the courthouse, then the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches, I would substitute psychology for religion and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money. If I were the devil I would make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas a bottle.”
Paul Harvey’s words were prophetic and beyond the shadow of a doubt, one can see its foremost fulfillment in the National Cathedral and its “pastor”, bishop Budde. And it is for this reason, I say that she and others like her all throughout this nation and around the world will answer to God for the souls that they have damned.
And what of her “concern” for the illegals? Let me speak from experience. For the last 12 years, Maranatha Full Gospel Church in Dallas has ministered to the Spanish community in this city. From the day that we started that ministry, up to this very moment, it is a learning process filled with shock and sorrow. Bishop Budde’s comments were nothing but superficial virtue signaling because she has no direct involvement with what is the reality of the conditions regarding most of the people who comes into this nation illegally, particularly from the nations south of the United States.
There are two types of communities regarding those who come from Latin America. One are those who are legal immigrants who followed the law of the United States, and who are the largest group of people who become American Citizens every year. The other are those who come illegally. And many people are ignorant of what is happening in and to that group of people.
I call it the modern rendition of the old Slave Trade. Central and South American nations deal with two demonic trends. Whether it is Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, -every nation in central and south America that is a socialist/communist paradise/social experiment is a hell hole where people live in such misery prompting them to flee for their lives. At the same time, in Mexico, (and until recently) El Salvador, Columbia, Honduras, criminal gangs and drug cartels have a long, sordid, tragic history. It should be said, that there is hardly a stable government south of the Rio Grande. Corruption is rife. Economies are manhandled. Societies are turned upside down.
The situation was so horrible, that when El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele came into power, he suspended the constitution to deal with the problem…and the people agreed. He rounded everyone who was an MS-13 gangster, or suspected as such, or had any kind of tattoos indicating such, or imitating such membership, thrown into maximum security prison. (It was later found out that many of these were given a one-way ticket out of El Salvador into the US with a warning never to return, on pain of imprisonment or death.) Venezuela’s Maduro government did the same. This trend is not only from Central America. The criminal element from nations as disparate as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Bangladesh, and Hatii have been making the trek to the southern border via Nicaragua.
No one will cross the southern border of the United States without the involvement of individuals known as “coyotes”. Human traffickers. According to many people that I talked to about the subject, the average price the “coyotes” charge to bring people into the United State-in whatever way possible- is $10,000…per person. And the conditions in which they are transported are often atrocious. (I have written previously about this in other articles.) The trek is dangerous not only because of the mode of transport, but also for criminal element involved during it. Across the Rio Grande border of the United States one can see “rape trees”-plants and shrubbery on which female underwear is strewn. All from people who have been sexually assaulted…and there is no age limit. And still the people come. The business is lucrative enough to have not only agents of criminal cartels in Mexico and other central American nations involved, but also citizens in the United States.
Every vile evil is coming into this nation from that southern corridor. Besides human trafficking/slavery, there is international terrorism, foreign spies, prostitution, drug trafficking-particularly fentanyl a poisoned supply of which has resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 people in the United States since 2022.
The criminal elements have moved into the United States with the horrible tragedies taking place like the deaths of nursing student Laken Riley at the University of Georgia and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston, Texas. South American street gangs such as Tren de Agua from Venezuela criminal operations throughout this nation from Texas to New York and was so openly flagrant as to take over apartment complexes in Colorado. Their operations have become so extreme that Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has them designated as a terrorist group.
Bishop Budde and people who are of her ilk would like to sweep these realities under the proverbial rug, but this is not something so easily done. Every day, another brutal incident will resharpen everyone’s perception.
Perhaps the most enraging point of all of this has been the indifference displayed toward the victims of all this evil by clergy such as “bishop” Budde and liberal/woke churches and denominations as well as liberal politicians in many of the cities and states where illegal alien crime statistics are the worst. They seem to take a position in where as bad as a criminal act was, the perpetrator is always the “real” victim. They are the ones who will get all the sympathy and understanding no matter how diabolical their actions.
Without mincing words, I will say that bishop Budde will damn a lot of people into an eternity in Hell because of the false Gospel that undergirds virtually everything that she and her church/denomination believe and practice. All beliefs and stances contrary to the Bible. She cannot say with Jesus Christ to sinners that they must be Born Again if she keeps telling people in essence, “oh don’t worry; you were born that way.” The Cross of Calvary is something that neither she nor anyone like her want to talk about other than to mention it in passing.
She must avoid focusing on Scripture as much as possible. Passages such as the Gospel of John chapters 3 and 10, will never be read from her pulpit or mentioned in her sermons. And especially not the Book of Revelation! In short, she would prefer using a few Scripture verses either as platitudes or incomplete and outside of its context. But with a majority of people not taking their Bibles to their local church on Sunday morning, let alone reading it regularly, many are mesmerized by the lies that come from their person standing at the pulpit in clerical garb! (Especially in the Anglican/Episcopalian church!)
Conservative podcaster Matt Walsh accurately pointed out the absurdity of anyone defending and/or supporting the abomination of the trans gender push in this nation. He simplified the argument: “I think it is a bad thing to mutilate children.” Bishop Budde position would indicate, in essence, “oh if you feel that way, go right ahead, and I’ll continue to help you feel better when I know that what you are doing will never help you but will increasingly torment until you die!”
There is no Truth with bishop Budde or in her church, just confusion! If the Bible is not the ONLY Word of God, if all OTHER religions and religious ideas are to be tolerated to the point of veneration, if the only offence is toward the Christian faith revealed in the entirety of the Bible, then what is a clergyman like bishop Budde anyway? Jesus Christ gave the answer. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or for the purpose of this essay, a version of Giant Despair and his wife Diffidence. Is it any wonder why Washington D.C. and other places of influence and power in this nation is a cesspool? A putrid Slough of Despond into which people fall and cannot get out!
The National Cathedral was no place for a prayer service, especially after the inauguration of the second Trump Presidency. May God wake up his servants, everyone one of us from the local church in some rural village to mega churches in cities, from Christian schools to universities! May we get on our knees and pray not only for the new Trump Administration, but also for a power revival in this nation. O God in heaven, prepare us for that!
POSTSCRIPT: It was found out by the Elon Musk led Department of Government Efficiency that Bishop Budde and her church, as well as several other left leaning churches and ministries were received tens of millions of dollars via USAID. During the Biden Administration, the government was hijacked, according to many whistleblowers, by some of the worst of the woke leftists in the nation, looking to push their agenda on this nation. It is not wonder that Budde decided to peddle her concern at that prayer service! More about this later.