As a Christian, I consider religious liberty one of the most sacrosanct freedoms our Founding Fathers left for us to protect and honor. So to see a sitting president openly attack and revile a bishop who asked him to show mercy to immigrants and other vulnerable people is appalling.
Worse, it is un-American.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and America’s third president, is why religious freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment. Jefferson started writing about “religious freedom” when America was still a British colony. While serving as ambassador to France, Jefferson wrote letters to James Madison, encouraging him to include religious freedom in the Constitution. In 1777, Jefferson drafted a bill to establish religious liberty in Virginia based on what he deemed the inalienable right to freedom of conscience. In 1779, he proposed it to the Virginia legislature, but it was opposed by the Church of England. The legislature eventually approved it, but only after Jefferson left office as governor.
Jefferson saw religious freedom as essential for a functioning republic. He was right.
In America, we do not have kings or tyrants. We respect each other’s liberty and the right to worship as we choose or not to worship at all. That makes us unique in the world. It draws other people from around the world to the United States. No state-sanctioned religion. No state-sanctioned church. And our priests, bishops, pastors, rabbis, clerics and clergy are empowered by that freedom to preach unfettered the word of God to their parishioners, to the public and, yes, to heads of state who attend their services. That is America at her finest.
Yet, somehow a portion of the Republican Party, including President Donald Trump and his followers, many of whom profess to love the lord and demand the Ten Commandments be displayed in schools, have decided that it is OK to attack a bishop, Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Church of Washington, for her humble and respectful plea to simply show the least of these among us — our fellow citizens — compassion.
I am not sure how we got here, but this level of corrosive destruction and disrespect for our constitutional order is not sustainable. It is unthinkable for a sitting president to demand a bishop apologize to him because he did not like her speech at a church service he was attending. Worse is the number of so-called leaders, from House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to Ambassador Mike Huckabee — avowed Christians — who attacked the bishop as “inappropriate” or worse.
This sorry episode touches on freedom of speech, too. We have to protect freedom of speech now more than ever. We have to protect and look out for one another. Most of all, when we disagree or do not see the world the same. We need to talk. To listen. To hear and to be heard. When a bishop (or anyone) says something with which we disagree, maybe we engage in a dialogue instead of demanding retraction, apologies and dismissals. And it’s not just the right that’s trying to police thoughts and words.
As a Christian woman of color, I lived it. A few years ago, at a college in Virginia where I taught, I was censored, yelled at and protested for asking on my social media a civil, religious question about a DC Comics character promoted as LGBTQ+. Instead of talking, being civil and engaging in dialogue (which is what universities are for), certain campus communities relentlessly attacked me, making sure I would never teach there again.
This is the type of conduct that put Trump back into office. Nobody wants to hear it, but it is the truth. People got sick and tired of the overreach, of the division, of the policing of what we think or of our differing viewpoints. People do not want to have to fear that they can be suspended, fired or, worse, have their careers and livelihoods ruined for thoughts or speech.
Those who, like me, did not like it when it was done to us must stand up for Budde and others who speak their religious viewpoints. People seem to only embrace “freedom” when it suits their needs or the moment they want to focus on. Cancel culture exists in very overt forms — in our nation’s universities, in our corporations and in our government — and it exists in more covert forms we don’t always see.
Bishop Budde did not engage in politics. Hers was an act of bold faith. It was an act of conscience. And it was protected speech in the pulpit. Period.
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