Predictably, most Republicans were aghast at what the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde preached while most Democrats praised her.
Yet, for me, as a churchgoing Episcopalian, the real controversy at the Washington National Cathedral wasn’t what Budde said to President Donald Trump from the pulpit of the French Gothic revival edifice.
Instead, the real controversy was the service itself, which included the Islamic call to prayer and syncretist prayers that replaced the core Christian belief in the undivided Holy Trinity with universalism.
Simply put, you cannot, with any integrity, incorporate the Hail Mary, the Lord’s Prayer, and other elements of Christian worship with Muslim, Buddhist, and Sikh prayers.
The National Cathedral or, as it’s more formally called, the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, is a consecrated Christian space.
Does anyone actually believe a mosque would incorporate Christian prayers and rites into a service for Muslims? Of course not.
If Budde, who designed the service, wanted to host a genuine interfaith service, then it should have been held on neutral ground in an auditorium or meeting hall with clear and distinct separations between the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish elements of the service.
Ironically, Trump is basically the first Episcopalian president since George H.W. Bush.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump married at the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, the Episcopal parish in Palm Beach, Florida. While Trump was raised Presbyterian and has more recently identified as nondenominational Christian, he was a Christmas and Easter churchgoer at Bethesda-by-the-Sea during his first term. The church was also where Barron Trump was baptized. In more recent years, the youngest Trump child attended an Episcopal private school.
It’s true the Episcopal church hierarchy is uniformly liberal, both theologically and politically, but a significant number of the church’s faithful, 31%, voted for Trump in 2020. Among members of Congress who self-identify as Episcopalian, 13 are Democrats and nine are Republicans, according to Pew.
Given the fact that Budde’s Diocese of Washington and the Episcopal church as a whole have lost more than 20% of members over the last decade, it’s foolish for church leaders not to go out of their way to keep every Episcopalian — conservative, liberal, Democrat, or Republican — in the pews.
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But after the postinaugural service, it’s a safe bet that Trump and other Republicans won’t return to the National Cathedral anytime soon.
It’s also probably a safe bet that future Republican presidents won’t trust the National Cathedral to host similar services in the future.
Dennis Lennox, an Episcopalian, is a political commentator and public affairs consultant. Follow @dennislennox on X.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
