Recently President Trump sent National Guardsmen and police to tear gas and use flash grenades to clear peaceful protestors from exercising their constitutional right to protest. This was done so the President could stroll to St. John’s Episcopal Church. He did not go there to pray for the country or George Floyd’s family. He went there solely for a photo op of him standing in front of the church holding a Bible. Once the picture was taken he left. It was later turned into a campaign style video, complete with stirring orchestral music showing him striding past National Guard troops, pumping his fist and culminating in him standing holding the Bible aloft in front of the church.
When Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, senior pastor of the church, was asked about this incident she noted the Presidents earlier inflammatory words and militarized approach to the protests. She went on to say, “He did not pray. He did not offer a word of balm or condolence to those who are grieving. He did not seek to unify the country, but rather he used our symbols and our sacred space as a way to reinforce a message that is antithetical to everything that the person of Jesus, whom we follow, and the gospel texts that we strive to emulate…represent.”
President Trump and the First Lady later posed in front of the shrine for John Paul II in Washington D.C. The Catholic Archbishop said he found the President’s actions to be “baffling and reprehensible.”
When Bishop Budde was asked what the Bible has to say to our current crisis she said, “Our faith has many things to say because it speaks to every dimension of the human experience. And so our texts would offer words of consolation to those who are grieving. Our text would offer words of encouragement for those who are striving for justice. Jesus himself spoke of bringing the kingdom of God, the reign of God, God’s shalom and universal love into human experience. The Bible speaks of God’s demand for us to walk humbly and to do justice and to love neighbor. And so all of those things are found in our texts, and those are the texts that I would point us to as a way of saying that God stands with those who are suffering. God walks with those who feel they are oppressed. And God has harsh things to say to those of us with privilege and power who us that power to be instruments of oppression for others.”
